GORM 1.0 Release to Take on GNOME/KDE? 451
qa'lth writes "Today marks the occasion of the release of Gorm 1.0, the Interface Builder for the GNUstep project, and with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects. Finally, today, Free Software users can enjoy the power of a well-designed, powerful object-oriented system derived from OpenStep, legacy to the acclaimed MacOSX, through GNUstep, our loving reimplementation of the OpenStep standard."
Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe... No. (Score:5, Informative)
And Gorm is supposed to be Interface Builder for GNUStep.
That said, it's not GNOME or KDE. You've still got to write that whole boring desktop thing. Gorm might make it a lot easier to write all the stuff that's still missing but saying it made GNOME and KDE obsolete is just plain bullshit.
Lighten up (Score:5, Informative)
GNUstep is another choice, not a replacement. (Score:5, Informative)
Me thinks that this poster is a bit sarcastic.
But whatever. GNUstep is a mature and well thought out system for power users. Not my cup of tea, but in absence of Gnome 2.4 and newer software I would probably be using it.
It's also great for systems with lower resources. X terminals, Pentium 2 machines, and the like. Very nice and is picking up the slack that KDE and Gnome leave as they race to beat Microsoft Vista (hopefully before Vista reaches critical mass 2-3 years after it finally gets released (MS still saying it's end of next year?))
If your like me and KDE makes you twitch nerviously, or unlike my you don't have a gig of RAM to deal with Gnome's concept of "simplicity thru complexity" then definately give GNUstep-based systems a look. (GNUstep is actually the API stuff, other projects do the desktop bits)
The nice thing about GNUstep that may attract people is that it's a implimentation for OpenSTEP.
Software previously developed for the Openstep API is what Apple used to create the 'modern' Cocoa half of OS X. (were as the 'older' half is Carbon which follows along the lines of OS 9 and OS 8).
Effectively this makes Cocoa a extended version of Openstep. GNUstep and Cocoa then share a high degree of API compatability. That means that if you write for Cocoa you can much more easily port your applications to run in Linux on Gnustep API and visa versa.
Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:who cares (Score:4, Informative)
Gorm Videos Demonstrations (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bit tedious to explain with words what Gorm is all about -- it's much simpler to actually *see* it :-)
If you have only one video to see, check the one about the custom palette [xdev.org] -- but the other are interesting too :-) (the StepTalk one demonstrate a creation of a simple calculator *entirely* in Gorm, using the StepTalk palette, which let you code in various languages).
Re:Thats one ugly interface (Score:3, Informative)
First: ugly appearance is not equal to non-funcionality. Flashy and colorful does not mean functional. If you want it to be pretty, use Camaelon as depicted here [xdev.org]. The Camaelon bundle is in the progress of being included into the main GNUstep distribution. Themability was low priority to the project, compared to functionality.
Besides that, if you would like to know, then I have seen many expert applications that are "ugly" because of some obsolete GUI toolkits. And guess what? The experts use it and do not care about the appearance at all, but about the functionality.
And how it competes with KDE? By different application development approach, by different point of view on objects (C++ objects vs. Objective-C/Smalltalk-like), by another objective runtime, by different paradigms... If it had everything that KDE has, it would be KDE, not GNUstep. It is different so developers can have an alternative. Can you imagine a world where everyone would be the same?
Re:Maybe... No. (Score:3, Informative)
That's what GNUStep is for. The whole point here is that now the GNUStep project has a complete, released desktop development environment.
That said...this is essentially the equivalent of announcing GNU/Hurd, 1.0, thus making the Linux kernel obsolete.
Re:Mirror? (Score:2, Informative)
GNUstep [mirrordot.org]
Re:open step vs cocoa (Score:3, Informative)
More information, missing links (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Informative)
the dock [roard.com]
like GTK, Everything looks better once it is themed [roard.com]
look at this [jesseross.com]
The new icons are really nice too
gorm [jesseross.com]
help [jesseross.com]
installer [jesseross.com]
Tongue firmly planted in cheek... (Score:5, Informative)
For all of those of you who can't take a joke, tongue was firmly planted in cheek regarding the "KDE/GNOME obsolesence" bit of the post. While I didn't write the post, I know who did and that part, at least, was meant as a joke. Also look on it as something of a commentary on slashdot itself: sometimes it's impossible to get anything on here unless it's sensationalistic or overly stated.
I, personally, tried posting 6 times before giving up. Imagine my suprise at seeing this when I woke up this morning!
Later, GJC
Features of Gorm vs. Glade (Score:5, Informative)
So from that standpoint alone Gorm is compares favorably. I think you better step back from that "BMW" for a while and ask yourself what you're really getting.
GJC
Re:The rumors of KDE/Gnome's demise.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Informative)
I follow the GNUstep-dev mailing lists (big fan, myself), and I can assure you the poster was making a joke. Among the GNUstep developer community I do not think there is any misconception as to how "complete" the system is. I use it, and I write apps for GNUstep using Gorm and ProjectCenter, but there is a lot of ground to cover before obsoleting the likes of GNOME.
Amusingly, there was recently a thread about trying to get the release of Gorm 1.0 announced here. Plenty of folks said that they had submitted the story numerous times, only to be rejected. There is perhaps a feeling that the editors deny the existence of anthing that isn't KDE/GNOME, Microsoft/Google/Apple, etc., and perhaps the poster just didn't have very high hopes that the story would even get through.
Re:Riiight. (Score:2, Informative)
Let's cut through some of the crud here... (Score:4, Informative)
First, the way the interface looks is irrelevant. A GNUstep theme engine is available here [gna.org]. There's a nice theme in progress called Nesedah (mockup [dromasoftware.com] and screenshot of IRC client [sourceforge.net] along with OS X comparison shot [sourceforge.net])
Second, why is this such a big deal? Don't QT, Visual Basic, and Delphi provide the same RAD approach? No. I've used all of those tools and they just don't stack up. QT is about as good as you're going to get out of a static compile-time-oriented C++ approach. But it's not as simple or direct as a runtime-oriented OO solution like Smalltalk or Objective-C. This is the power of Cocoa/OpenStep/GNUstep.
Delphi, .NET, and QT GUI designers focus on generating code. This is cumbersome and brittle. But Apple/NeXT's Interface Builder and GNUstep's Gorm take a different approach. They actually instantiate objects, set state, create inter-object connnections, and then persist the in-memory objects to disk. When your application is loaded, these objects are unarchived and your application connects to them. This prevents the OO-mocking approach of subclassing a Window class just to create your own instance--something that always makes me laugh but is ubiquitous in the Windows world and has been blindly copied by KDE and GNOME.
Finally, the poster is not a native speaker of English and clearly was not able to convey the sense of humor intended.
Re:Eye candy??? (Score:2, Informative)
Ass [jesseross.com].
Re:who cares (Score:3, Informative)
2) OS X was partialy inspired by NeXTStep, which also inspired GnuSTEP (through the OpenStep standard). Which is *what the article's about* and which existed before OS X.
BTW, Expose just rearranges windows for you, so saying that it makes it unneccesary to rearrange windows is a bit of a stretch.
Just for the record, Drag-n-drop is only useful for simple actions - it becomes a nuiscance for more complicated tasks, or is simply non-intuitive in some situations. What if I drag a file and drop it on the icon of a text file - do I want to concatenate them, do I want to run the perl script in that text file, do I want to rename a file, do I want the guy down the hall to spontaneously combust? I drop a file in the middle of a word document. Do I want to insert the file there, do I want to open a new window, do I want to replace the current window, so I want the file name inserted at the drop point? What's intuitive to every user? What's sensible?
Re:Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:3, Informative)
In the end X11 is a protocol, not an application - there are lots of different implementations. X11 can definitely be a stunning graphical environemnt: IRIX used to use X and you can hardly say SGI was all about shitty quality graphics. You seem to be suffering under a poor driver for your Xserver. Wanting to scrap X11 because of this is like wanting to scrap HTML because there's a page that takes a while to load, or wanting to scrap KDE because someone wroite a crappy application for it.
Almost all the hatred of X11 is largely misdirected. Scrapping X11 is not going to magically make everythign better. Using a better X11 implementation (again, check out Keith Packard's work, which is slowly making it's way into Xorg) is the answer for the problems you're raising, and we don't lose the network transparency which, to be frank, is a truly wonderful thing.
I suggest you actually take some time to learn about what X11 is and how it works before you call to scrap it. There are some legitimate complaints that can be made about X11, but I don't think they're sufficient to start from scratch, and they certainly aren't anything like the ill-informed arguments you are touting.
Jedidiah.
Re:So, why all the jokes? (Score:3, Informative)
You mean like this [dromasoftware.com][1]? Not only is it visually attractive, it's been carefully designed for usability as well - for example only controls that can be manipulated with the mouse have a gradient. The default theme for GNUstep is still the original NeXT look which, while dated in appearance, is very usable (although possibly because the developers put more effort into the feel than the look). Many of the GNUstep developers are NeXT refugees, and so the default theme is unlikely to change, although Étoilé - a GNUstep-based desktop environment - uses the Nesedah theme.
[1] The window borders in this screenshot are provided by WindowMaker, not GNUstep, and are not themed. A native GNUstep WM exists, but was not used here.
Re:Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:1, Informative)
loaded as bundle. It may sound strange to you to do things like this,
but it makes sense if - for example - you want to extend a class
in the standard class library (which you usually don't want - and often
aren't even able - to modify.)
Yes, every programming language is Turing-complete, but not
every language is as dynamic as ObjectiveC, and allows introspection
that goes this far.
Btw, enabling dynamic binding in C++ means that you have to
mark every method 'virtual'. Statically bound method calls
may provide a performance improvement in high-performance
scenarios, but after all developing with a completely dynamic-bound
language is much easier and makes classes extendable even if they
aren't thought to be so. (One may of course argue that programmers
shouldn't extend classes that aren't thought to be extended, but
looking at the programmers I know (me included), I can ensure you
that most classes won't be designed to be extendable - just because
you often can't think of a scenario where this makes sense for you.)
(Sorry for the long answer. I didn't want you all to have to read so much.
-Guenther
Re:Windows -- Bizarro Edition? (Score:3, Informative)
Odd, every one of the examples you mentioned works in MY Windows.
I don't get why the previous poster used those examples because they're the same function-wise, but there is a difference in the GUI implementations. The thing about the Windows drag and drop I remember (it's been a while) is that many times it simply changes the cursor to indicate you're dragging something. For example, when you're dragging a picture off a web page onto the desktop, or when you are dragging highlighted text. In OS X, you actually have a transparent image of what you are dragging, like the picture or highlighted text. I actually think this has more to do with how Microsoft would integrate features from other software producers, but simply change the look and feel [wikipedia.org] to make sure it doesn't infringe on copyright, rather than lack of functionality. Like I said, it's been a while so I'm not sure if they have changed this.