GNUstep Project Gets New Chief Maintainer

stivi writes "OSNews is reporting that Gregory Casamento has accepted the position of GNUstep Maintainer. Adam Fedor, former GNUstep leader writes: 'After over 15 years of being the Chief Maintainer for GNUstep, I've found I have too many other responsibilities to devote as much time to GNUstep as is necessary. I still plan on contributing to GNUstep in the future in a lower capacity.' Gregory has been a prolific developer for GNUstep for the past seven years and is currently the maintainer for Gorm (the graphical interface designer) and the GUI library. I think he will make a great choice to lead GNUstep in the future. New plans for change have been set up already. Thank you Adam for the past, congratulations Gregory to the future."

Re:Direction

[Somnus]

There is at least one effort [etoile-project.org] in the direction of a desktop environment. Theming is provided by the Camaelon [etoile-project.org] bundle.

On the toolkit/tools side of things, the major hurdles are:

• app icon (perhaps could be integrated with/translated to the f.d.o. systray standard)
  
• the work it takes to set up GNUstep just to launch an app (e.g., setting up paths -- thankfully handled transparently in my Gentoo setup)
  
• incompatibility between GNUstep services and dbus, etc. etc.
  
• non-standard build system (still easy enough to making into ebuilds/RPMs/etc.) and monolithic libraries

Sidestep [gna.org] is an experiment in addressing these issues.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Please explain if you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing you assume everyone aspires to to be associated with 'artistic' types. In reality they're mostly vapid poseurs, interested in being seen to be seen and desperate to culture an outward appearance that detracts from their inner-dullness.

Re:The *big* problem with GNUStep...

[lieven_dekeyser]

Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) will have official support for writing Cocoa apps in Python and Ruby [theocacao.com]

Re:Ok I read TFA

[mungtor]

"He says that he thinks KDE and Gnome are "amateurish" but doesn't bother to explain his reasoning behind the assertion."

He does to some degree. He clearly states that neither look like they started with a clean vision of what the desktop environment should be and have simply "evolved" to what you see now. He also states that the code base which makes up most of Gnome is a nightmare. I can't speak about KDE too much since I don't use it (strikes me too much as Windows, which I don't particularly like).

GNUStep looks something like the Sun OpenWindows desktop used to... Icons and apps minimize to the desktop, not the the taskbar area.

Either way, I just hope that it will finally be easy to customize the behavior of windows... For example:

I want my Xterm window to maximize to the vertical height of the screen without changing width when I double-click the title bar. How would you tell a non-programmer to accomplish that in Gnome or KDE? Will it be easier in GNUStep?

(and I am sure the Gnome answer is to navigate some XML file to find the variable Window.click.title.bar.some.other.arbitrary.and.me aningless.string.that.you.will.not.know.unless.you .coded.it and change the default value from 1 to 3. Excellent usability there)

Re:Where to begin?

[WillAdams]

Tony said:
>Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT.

Other interesting programs which began on NeXTstep:

  - FreeHand v4 (essentially a port to Windows and the Mac of Altsys Virtuoso v2)
  - Doom
  - Lotus Improv
  - Stone Design's Create
  - sBook

An interesting opensource app w/ NeXTstep roots:

  - http://www.cenon.info/ [cenon.info]

William

Re:gnustep

[_|()|\|]

Those interested in GNUstep as a poor man's Yellow Box may be interested in a younger, more focused project: Cocotron [cocotron.org]. It seeks to clone Foundation and Appkit, and to provide tools to cross compile for other platforms with Xcode. It's a little Windows centric, but support for Linux, Solaris, and others seems to be in the works.

Apple for one...

[Junta]

Well, to be more accurate, they cared about NeXT enough to base OSX off of it. GNUstep is the most API-compatible option that can run on alternative platforms. Of course, its not because of the API that it is so interesting as a desktop platform, and developers and users have come to appreciate it in OSX.

The two main open desktop projects (GNOME and KDE) heavily mimick the user interface paradigm established by MS. GNUstep is a good complement with the NeXT (also OSX) user interface paradigm (separate menu, management of windows individually and by application, applications registering services for more complex/powerful gui actions than what is done by drag/drop, copy/paste, etc).

GNUstep/NeXT/OSX services are the only appropriate equivalent of command line pipes in GUI land, which makes it a highly logical fit for those who understand the beauty and power of pipes in *nix. For example, in Gnome/KDE if an application wants spell check, they need to implement it themselves or at least take in a library and hook things around it. In GNUstep, any text application I can highlight something, click services/spell check if I have a spell check app installed, and it will happen. People complained for a long time about browsers not having spellcheck, but with services implemented and used browsers would have had it for free. It's kinda like piping the output from some command into aspell. All kinds of interesting things have been done with services, and someone implementing something new and different ends up enhancing all the desktop software that is appropriate for it without extra effort.

I have used GNUstep many a time to see how they are going, and if the environment were more complete (i.e. a GNUstep web browser, and IM client, office software) I would use it as my desktop full time. I remember before gcc had objc++ and before gnustep & gorm had nib support, that those two barriers going away was expected to allow all kinds of wonderful porting from OSX (i.e. the OSX Firefox code, one of their IM clients, whatever else). I haven't seen any word on efforts since those developments. I would love to contribute, but my plate is too full.

The downside is that in GNUstep more so than KDE/Gnome, non-native applications are really jarring, without separate menu and not interfacing with services. WindowMaker does a good job grouping windows by application for application hiding, but it isn't enough. Also GNUstep is capable of doing a lot, but fonts, for example, are a pain in the ass (at last check with the decent backend with anti-aliasing you had to package fonts in .nfonts). Also GNUstep could probably accomodate more of the freedesktop specification than they currently do, however I do recognize that freedesktop specifications pretty much have the MS way of doing things in mind and therefore some things aren't appropriate for GNUstep. Also, GNUstep doesn't have a perfect window manager to use with it. WindowMaker is very good, but doesn't render menus/dock in a way that is guaranteed to be visually consistant with GNUstep. WindowMaker is probably the best effort to focus on moving forward, but there is work to be done.

If you work it, GNUstep is a lot further along than most people realize, but the fact you have to work hard to get a complete environment discourages new users. And even when all is said and done, things are a bit rough around the edges in spots...

Re:Ok I read TFA

[claes]

This is not what you asked for but something handy to know: middle-clicking the "Maximize" button maximizes vertically. Left-clicking it maximizes horizontally. In KDE, at least.