GNUstep Weekly Editorial 09-11-2001

[Adam Fedor]

   A new weekly editorial is available from [1]http://www.gnustep.org.

Editorial 9 November 2001

  The mailing-lists

   Just for all you people wondering what GNUstep and Mac OS X could have
   for you in the future. Stan Shebs from Apple Computer Inc. told us
   that gcc 3.x will be the next compiler on the Mac OS X platform, they
   are currently running gcc 2.95.x. This means that the code written for
   the current GNUstep Objective-C runtime from gcc 3.x will be closer to
   Mac OS X then ever.
   Seems like we are getting closer to them and they to us. Good
   thing(tm) open specifications; like OpenStep.

   Another large treat was about file optimizations. Meaning that
   sometimes you don't want a specific file compiled with the default
   optimization (-O2). Nicola Pero wrote an extension on the GNUstep
   make-system, so that it is supported now. To quote him on the made
   changes:
I implemented this for gnustep-make, it's already on CVS.

To compile asm in the Objective-C file file.m you can now add to the 
GNUmakefil
e

file.m_FILE_FILTER_OUT_FLAGS = -O% -fomit-frame-pointer

that will automatically instruct gnustep-make to filter-out -O% and 
-fomit-fram
e-pointer
from the flags when file.m is compiled.  Flags for other files won't be 
touched
.
No need to touch/redefine any internal compilation rule.

(the same for C, C++, java files - for example

file.c_FILE_FILTER_OUT_FLAGS = -O% -fomit-frame-pointer

works the same)

you can also add flags (and they are added after the other ones), so I guess

file.m_FILE_FLAGS = -O0 -fno-omit-frame-pointer

should have the same result because as you say the last flags should 
take the
precedence.

  Code changes

   See the above GNUstep make changes.

   Richard Frith-Macdonald added a patch by Ludovic Marcotte to make
   defaults data only read/write to the user. He also added an initial
   attempt to make defaults thread-safe. A lot of testing is now needed.

   Fred Kiefer added a couple of new functions to NSSpellChecker, like
   guessesForWord and checkSpelling.

   Laurent Julliard added NSDrawFramePhoto to the NSImageCell.

   Adam Fedor created a simple printing/pagination implementation. He
   also made sure that Xft library was included in the backend (xgps)
   when we have Xft installed. This is for the anti-aliased font support.

  Applications

   Still going on is the porting effort of GWorkspace.app to Mac OS X. It
   is now in a workable state, to see prove of this, here is a
   screenshot.

   Richard Frith-Macdonald has improved GORM, so time for a new CVS
   checkout.

  Documentation

   Update and fixes on the Defaults documentation page, with thanks to
   Martin Brecher and Chris Vetter.

   Dennis Leeuw

References

   1. http://www.gnustep.org/