GNUstep 0.6.5 freeze 95
teferi writes " The GNUstep project, a GPL'ed implementation of the OpenStep environment, has gone into a code freeze for the 0.6.5 release. The base library is 94% done, and the various parts, including the DPS/DGS graphics backend are coming along well. "
wmaker? (Score:1)
That's great... (Score:2)
There's like maybe two that have been released. Having the library is great, but if there's no real use for it, no one will care.
I don't know if there are very many open-source NeXTSTEP apps out there either.
Comment removed (Score:4)
NEXTSTEP / Mac OS X relationship? (Score:3)
Re:That's great... (Score:2)
BTW, if you don't use afterstep: It's real nice, try it!
D'oh (Score:2)
Hooray! (Score:2)
Plus, OpenStep has a better look & feel than KDE or GNOME*
(Yeah, I know, OpenStep is a spec, not an implementation. It still looks nice).
Re:That's great... (Score:2)
Afterstep is a window manager. it could put its prefs in ~/Windows98, but that wouldn't make linux a microsoft product.
Windowmaker [windowmaker.org] is the official GNUStep Window Manager (and also the official GNU Window Manager), and has a look/feel more reminiscent of NeXTs.
Re:NEXTSTEP / Mac OS X relationship? (Score:1)
MacOS X Server looks very much like a NeXT with more macish controls, though, if you;ve ever seen screeenshots of it.
Good use for "FREE" Solaris (Score:1)
Interestingly enough, the OpenStep spec was from Sun & NeXT, and if you look hard enough, you can find an unfinished OpenStep implementation for Solaris. Unfortunately, Sun let it die in favor of Java (smooth move, dickwads), and the binaries are for SPARC only.
I'm glad to see GNUStep is progressing though. I tried it back in the 0.5.0 era, but it was, well, in the development stage :-)
Re:NEXTSTEP / Mac OS X relationship? (Score:5)
NeXTSTEP (an operating system) was first, and had a damn good programming model, but originally only ran on NeXT's hardware.(which was pretty sweet, but also pretty expensive) (and also one version on RS/6000, running on AIX, again fast, sweet and expensive.).
NeXT then began making moves to dump hardware and make NeXTSTEP available on Intel hardware.
Right around that time, they also started development on OpenStep, which has a very similar object hierarchy to NeXTSTEP, but uses a better object allocation model, and has renamed many methods to make the API "cleaner".
To move an application from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep, you ran a series of scripts that would convert to the new API.
OpenStep was made to run on several OS's including Solaris, Mach (from NeXT), HP/UX and Windows. OpenStep meant two things at the time, both the API and the NeXT delivered operating system as a whole. One was called OpenStep, and the other was OPENSTEP. You guess which was which.
Any ways, Apple bought NeXT so that the NeXT management team could take over Apple, and now all that API is part of OSX Server and soon OSX.
It is easy to move a program from NeXTSTEP to OpenStep or OSX Server. I moved Xox, an arcade style shooter with a few days of work.
It is trivial to move the average program from OpenStep or OSX Server to GNUstep. In many cases the same code compiles on both.
We moved our entire development over to GNUstep, and haven't looked back yet. We found the Foundation kit to be more stable than Apple's and easier to explore.
Re:wmaker? (Score:1)
DPS vs DPDF (Score:1)
Methinks the xdps component may see a surge of interest, with all these tantalizing reports of what OSX can do with dynamic scaling and alpha-channelling....
Re:That's great... (Score:3)
Very simple.. Once GNUstep is 100% done, it should
require little effort to port tons of NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/MacOS X
apps to GNUstep... The process is already on its way to port
some of those.
Not to mention the fact that ProjectCenter.app, once completed, will
provide a really nice environment to create new GNUstep apps with
a minimum of effort. (kinda like Steve Jobs demonstrating how to
create a word processor in 5 minutes using NeXSTEP's ProjectBuilder.app).
The final word is that the applications are just around the corner...
Cheers.
This is AC of Borg.
Accounts are futile;
Trolls are irrelevant.
You will be slashdotted.
they are there, just... (Score:3)
Re:Yes! (Score:1)
GNUStep isn't a desktop, you're thinking of window maker...
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
Isn't that what people used to (and still) say about Linux? The fact is that it's a great API, and as it get's better more and more people will release it.
There's like maybe two that have been released. Having the library is great, but if there's no real use for it, no one will care.
There is a real use for it. We use it internally to deploy apps that were originally written for OpenStep. Most current OpenStep developers are survivors of the great MCCA purge, and as a result, commercial apps aren't their highest priority or best focus. I
I don't know if there are very many open-source NeXTSTEP apps out there either.
Many NeXT apps were released as OpenSource before the term was invented. You can find some of the latest and greatest on StepWise, or on ftp.peak.org.
Re:NEXTSTEP / Mac OS X relationship? (Score:1)
What'd be nice is if Apple realized that as soon as OS-X consumer is out, NextStep and OpenStep are basically completely dead products. Even if they didn't release all the source (which wouldn't be happen because of license from Adobe, Pantone and others), it'd still be nice if they shipped the OS CD's at a neglible cost so people could have the option of installing OpenStep on their windows machines and at least see what the fuss used to be about.
Re:they are there, just... (Score:2)
We find most command line stuff "just builds". We type make, and it's off to the races. The GUI stuff is a bit harder. It compiles, but the interface format used by NeXT / Apple is un-documented, so you have to convert the interfaces. The GUI apps compile, they just run a bit funky.
Re:Good use for "FREE" Solaris (Score:1)
I know about ibcs (?), but had trouble getting it to do anything with Solaris x86 apps.
(Yup, solaris stuff is not free software, but on the otherhand, the licence from Sun for personal solaris is cheeep, and it would be nice to make use of the software I paid for.)
--
Ah yes! (Score:3)
Re:Another (L)GPLed project that will never finish (Score:4)
Please, tell us what you really think. I devote time to GNUstep because it allows me to quickly write cool software that we need and distribute it on commodity hardware that runs an operating system that supports the cards and features we need. I make money doing this. How does this make me an idiot?
It is possible to work with GPLed software for the wrong, and wasteful reasons. But just choosing GNUstep over the competition doesn't make one an idiot.
This project will clearly never finish.
Probably so. Like most free software it will continue to live and improve each day. However they have met several important goals, and they stuff the code as it stands is useful TODAY.
GNUstep is in the same hopeless position as projects such as GNU Classpath, forever trying to catch up to an evolving standard.
At the time GNUstep started, OpenStep was supposed to become a certified standard. Since then Apple bought NeXT (who saw it coming?) and is trying to take their existing code base and justify the purchase. Whether they actually ship it is another question.
The libraries are LPGL, not GPL. There is nothing in the GPL that prevents commercial projects from using the source. There is nothing that requires them to distribute the source unless they distribute binaries. For MCCA users, there is no conflict
Yawn. Another Whiner that will never finish (Score:1)
Yes, like its fellow GNU brothers--GCC, Emacs, Gnome, Bash, SmallEiffel and so on--GNUstep probably never will be finished. Wink ;^) -- it will continually keep getting better.
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
What? Shouldn't that be Enlightenment? Since that's the official GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) window manager?
Re:Ah yes! (Score:2)
KDE and GNOME are good steps in the right direction.
I don't think GNUStep/OpenStep/NeXTStep whatever is really going to ever be any sort of standard, IMHO. Nice interface, nice technology, but too far from mainstream interfaces.
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
No. AfterStep is an X window manager. The GNUstep/* hierarchy is part of the specification of GNUstep, so AfterStep aims at conforming to that standard. AS has not been officially accepted as a GNUstep window manager. There was some attempt during the 1.6.x releases to get authorization as a GNUstep window manager; I have not heard any reports of success.
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
So _that's_ where they've been hiding all the time!
I wish the GNUStep page had a link there.
Also, peanuts.org seems to have a decent selection...
Re:Ah yes! (Score:3)
All that said, CDE does some things right. Like a web browser icon on the panel that runs sdtwebclient, which acts as the equivalent of the netscape-wrapper script for netscape or hotjava. The panel isn't very flexible, but it's far more intuitive and easy to navigate than any START button or knockoff thereof.
I'd love KDE on Solaris if it were actually as functional as CDE. Give it a year or two and it'll probably get there, faster than CDE, for sure.
About the *step interface... (Score:2)
Re:NEXTSTEP / Mac OS X relationship? (Score:1)
better object allocation model? would you care to explain that a bit further? I would be interested in hearing more about that.
Re:DPS vs DPDF (Score:1)
Re:That's great... (Score:2)
But as a result, it's only a matter of policy that Window Maker is part of GNUStep, while I imagine the rest of GNUStep will be connected at more of an architectural level, being based on Objective C, the Foundation libraries, and all that.
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
But, those things aside, GNOME and GNUStep aren't really related, even though they are both sponsered by GNU. GNOME was a reaction to KDE/Qt, and demanded much shorter-term success. GNUStep, because it was ambitious and a little monolithic, took a long time to get to a usable point. It actually preceded GNOME by several years, but development languished while the core developers worked on the basic functionality -- essentially writing the standard library for Objective C.
Re:Ah yes! (Score:2)
But that won't be the problem -- the biggest issue is, IMHO, Objective C. Now, I'm not saying anything bad about Objective C, but it's a new language to most people, and people get weird about that sort of thing. It doesn't have the hype behind it that Java does, the history and maturity of C, or the mainstream acceptance of C++. Too bad, it's better than all of them.
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:1)
I wouldn't be surprised that NeXT was forward-thinking when it came to hardware, since the hardware itself was always top-of-the-line (perhaps to a fault). The icons where pretty big (64x64, I think). The original screens were 4-color (black, white, two shades of gray) so that would explain the original color scheme (very grey). But they were big and fairly high resolution.
Re:Ah yes! (Score:1)
Re:Ah yes!-Walk this way. (Score:1)
GNUStep/OpenStep/NeXTStep represent a viable solution to the comments generated *but* is shot down because it isn't mainstream (read not Windows/Mac). Ahh the price we will pay for our "conformist" ways.
GNUstep clarification: Support GNUstep! (Score:3)
GNUstep is: an implementation of the OpenStep API. The OpenStep API makes it quite easy to develop programs for it, as the developer doesn't have to worry about the little things, and spend their time innovating and writing great code . It's cross-platform (between Windows w/ the YellowBox, anything running GNUstep, Mac OS X/Cocoa). It's a dream to develop with, and the Objective-C language, to me, is much nicer to use than C++ (although I think there's wrappers for Java, and perhaps C/C++).
GNUstep will: Allow for easy ports to platforms running GNUstep from source written under OpenStep, Rhapsody, or Mac OS X (using Cocoa/YellowBox). This encourages cross-platform development, and hopefully will help bring many apps to Mac OS X/Cocoa, as well as Linux/FreeBSD/etc.
GNUstep is not: a window manager or a desktop environment. Desktop environments can (and quite easily) built with GNUstep. In fact, someone is working on a NeXT-like file manager right now, which is working and developed under OpenStep, and easily recompiled on a FreeBSD box using GNUstep.
For more information, see the GNUstep website [www.http] or the unofficial GNUstep website [current.nu], both of which have plenty of information on the OpenStep spec, and where GNUstep is going.
In short-- definately check it out!
Aaron
Tools will pop up VERY SOON (Score:2)
They are running right now on Intel and NeXT machines running OPENSTEP. As soon as GNUstep can host the code base, these tools will be released.
Linux is about ready to get the best application development environment on any platform--and it'll all be open source.
Interface Builder is a GUI-building tool that works something like VisualAge in that it allows you to (a) visually build connections between GUI controls and methods and instance variables in objects and (b) create new instances of non-UI objects.
Finished UIs in Interface Builder do not contain code. Instead the connections and controls are archived into "NIBs." This allows you to create and maintain UIs without having to write a single line of code. If you've ever written a Java Swing application, you know what a pain in the ass it is to write GUIs by hand.
However, the tool does generate stubs for the custom, non-UI-related objects you create. This allows you to visually create a new object, connect up its stub methods to your controls visually, then "fill in the blank" to generate the core logic of your object's methods.
Project Builder is similar to a Smalltalk code browser, with a Miller column view of your class hierarchy and an integrated editor window that displays source code and documentation depending on the currently browsed object. If you've used JBuilder, Visual Cafe, or VisualAge, you already know how this kind of thing works.
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:1)
According to folklore, NeXTSTEP has that menu system because they were afraid of simply wholesale copying the application menu in MacOS (the one across the top). I can't think of any other reason they'd waste the space with an "always on top" object that can grow both vertically (more options) and horizontally (long words).
And yes, NeXTSTEP originally ran on 17" monitors minimum. The Color NeXTs could come with 17" and 21" monitors, and a NeXTDimension system (NeXTCube with NeXTDimension board) could come with a 17" monochrome and a 21" color monitor, dual-head.
The 64x64 icons seemed quite reasonable on screens of that size, and even the annoying application menu isn't too annoying there. NeXTSTEP for intel suffered in that many people (myself included) stuck it on a system with a 15" monitor, which it was never designed for.
Since the smallest display Apple currently offers is a 15" flat panel (and the smallest CRT is 17"), I suspect that current complaints about the size of Aqua icons (variable, apparently, from 32x32 to 128x128) will be rendered "not too relevant."
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:2)
I read somewhere that much of the design of the *step interface was based on large computers with large monitors.
I can believe this. I started using X under Solaris and CDE (and I didn't think it was too bad. Yeah the file manager sucked, but I never really use a file manager... (am I missing something?)). Then I used a customized fvwm2 set up under RH5.x. I liked that well enough, since I constantly twiddled with it over the course of a year or so.
Then I installed RH6.0 and dealt with GNOME for a while. It is great for newbies, most every one in my lab uses it. It is just point and click configurable enough for them to make life livable for themselves. They are all used to fvwm-95 or whatever that default config was under RH5.x (YUCK!), so GNOME/E is just peachy as far as they know.
I soon got sick of GNOME though. It just wasn't configurable enough. Granted, I didn't spend a lot of time figuring it out, but shit, I have work to do man. I can't just fuck around with my WM all day.
So I looked around and decided to try GNUstep (WindowMaker). It is awesome on my machine at work (1600x1200 on a 21" monitor). But when I installed it at home (1024x768 on a 17") I really wanted smaller icons. You can change the icon size, but then you have to use pictures on those icons that are the right size. So I know it is possible to do, but once again, too much effort. WindowMaker should be smart enough to use a 32x32 set of xpm's or whatever if I tell it I want 32x32 icons.
I still like WindowMaker and GNUStep. But I think it would be pretty impossible to use on a system Now maybe we are all complaining about something that is easily fixed but we just don't know about. Any WindowMaker/GNUStep guru's know something we don't?
Re:Hooray! (Score:1)
I would say OPENSTEP is nicer, much because of the language (Objective-C).
If you look closely at the BeOS API and then the OPENSTEP API, you notice that BeOS have borrowed a lot from NeXT. Did you know that BeOS originally didn't have a desktop (Just like NeXT), and instead a dock? (Just like NeXT)
There are other similarities too:
NeXT was started by a former Apple Executive.
Be was started by a former Apple Executive.
NeXT was originally making a computer and an OS.
Be was originally making a computer and an OS.
NeXT had to leave the hardware bussines. Instead, they made an Intel version of their OS and became a pure software company.
Be had to leave the hardware bussines. Instead, they made an Intel version of their OS and became a pure software company.
When Apple realised they couldn't make a modern OS by themselves, they decided that they would by an OS vendor. They choice was between NeXT and Be.
Re:Tools will pop up VERY SOON (Score:1)
Scott.
Re:Good use for "FREE" Solaris (Score:1)
Of course. SunX has DPS as an X extension, whereas Display Ghostscript is a DPS/NX agent, which means that it talks to the X server through the usual X protocol. It doesn't require a DPS extension at the server, so it can use any X display. Of course, this is much slower than having DPS integrated with the display server.
There is a free DPS/X extension [sourceforge.net] under development, but it's in a very early stage. When it's ready, i'll change my sig.
Re:Nextstep Hype (Score:2)
Have you asked anyone who has used it? Everyone I know who has done Openstep development would be happy to share with you. My list? I wrote a TextEditor with search and replace, multiple undos/redos, selectable font size and style, spell checking, cut and paste, and drag and drop integration with 7 lines of code in under 4 minutes.
Show me somewhere else I can do that.
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
cool (Score:1)
marc
Re:they are there, just... (Score:1)
sort've (Score:2)
Interface feel (Score:2)
Gnome and KDE can be snazzified with themes and config and whatnot, but in the end it's mostly just chrome. They are struggling to retrofit the same degree of dynamism and integration that OpenStep had from the get-go.
Re:Nextstep Hype (Score:1)
It seems that there must be massive pre-fabbed components to be able to do your TextEditor in only 7 lines of code.
Wrong (Score:1)
OpenStep used to use a full PS interpreter to drive the GUI. Apple's new system just allocates a chunk of screen real estate, and the program links against the "Quartz" libraries that use PDF to draw into it. One annoying consequence is you can no longer in MacOS X use "NSHosting" - basically, sending the PS stream from a remote machine to display locally, similar to how X works.
Objective C (Score:2)
Note that there is an Objective C binding for GTK...
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:2)
That is a very good point. It is probably a reason why WindowMaker has the Root Menu able to be dragged around, most users don't have that much screen space.
This NextStep way of the user interface is interesting to me. I only now realize how much of a mess our interfaces are that try to *hide* the information from the user.
Re:Another (L)GPLed project that will never finish (Score:1)
>Since then Apple bought NeXT (who saw it coming?) >and is trying to take their existing
>code base and justify the purchase. Whether they >actually ship it is another question
Does this mean that openstep and objective-C was going through the process of standardization(standards committee) and all that when Apple bought Next and is now trying to milk openstep's proprietory old code for all its worth? thus killing the standards process?
IF the GNUstep guys are trying to reverse engineer Openstep... wouldn't they be in the same boat as the WINE ppl and never quite be able to get there? I dont know much about the state of openstep and its documentation but if it were standardized and had all the specs available then i guess it would be possible.
was thinking of learning objective-c (objective-c==openstep?) but if i gotta buy some devkit from apple to get the full functionality and only be able to run stuff on OSX then i guess i wouldn't be bothered...
You misunderstand. (Score:1)
This person has put up a web-page. That is fine. However, he is also spamming it (under false pretenses, too... he disguises the link as being relevant to the discussion). That is not fine. It is spam, plain and simple. And we are responding to him as we would to any spammer, to any person that abuses their internet accounts. By reporting them to their ISP and hoping that their detrimental activities are stopped.
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
--
- Sean
Re: (Score:2)
Re:GNUstep clarification: Support GNUstep! (Score:1)
It's a dream to develop with, and the Objective-C language, to me, is much nicer to use than C++ (although I think there's wrappers for Java, and perhaps C/C++).
I sort of doubt there'd be a wrapper for C or C++, since Objective-C uses class objects (factories) and message-passing semantics for method calls; C++'s RTTI and virtual member functions can't emulate some features that I know *Step uses.
WindowMaker makes a Great Thin Client Interface! (Score:1)
for thin client computing. While I really like KDE and to a lesser degree GNOME on my local desktop, I have found that they seem to be quite slow over anything slower than the highest speed network. WindowMaker, on the other hand seems snappy even under a 56K connection. The only WM I have found to be any faster is twm (which I use to export individual applications to a web browser when I don't need any window manager.) Can anyone tell me why WindowMaker is so fast over a low bandwidth connection. Is it just the simple color scheme, or is there something more to it.
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:2)
Like many NeXTSTEP idiosyncracies (scrollbars on the left, close box on the top right, 17" minimum screen, black hole / recycler icon instead of trash can, etc.) the NeXT menu is touted for its "benefits" -- but was actually not designed for that reason but instead to avoid lawsuits from Apple. As part of his severance agreement, Steve Jobs agreed to a number stipulations from Apple about the then-unnamed NeXT computer. One was, humorously enough, that the NeXT cube had to be more powerful than any of Apple's present offerings (which it was, with a 25 MHz 68030 processor, soon changed to 68040).
Although there are lots of nice features about the NeXT menu bar design, and I personally love it, it nonetheless has three flaws which override all of its niceties and make it distinctly inferior to the Mac menu bar.
Many NeXT users, like Windows users, avoid problem #2 by chosing menus click-by-click, rather than dragging through the menu tree. Mac users are not, of course, forced to do this. The catch-22 for the NeXT GUI is, however, that most experienced NeXT users avoid problems #1 and #3 by moving the menu nearly off the screen and using the right mouse button to pop up the menu at the mouse position -- the problem with this is that when using the popped-up menu, you must drag to choose menu items, hence problem #2 rears its devastating head again. Right-mouse-menu-choosing is very slow.
As a longtime NeXTSTEP developer and experienced GUI hacker, I love the NeXT interface. But let's call a duck a duck: the NeXT menu really really sucks in some places.
Re:Nextstep Hype (Score:1)
Which NeXTstep apps did you use?
Ever take advantage of DisplayPostScript to extend in real time a drawing application? I do this all the time, and it makes my 10 year old NeXT Cube a much nicer tool for graphic design, typography and page layout than the G4 I have at work.
Or, how about adding a new language's spell-checking to every application by installing one library? Or
Ever pause to look up a word or quotation in Webster.app or Oxford.app?
Ever hear of a game called ``Doom''? It was written in NeXTstep and then ported to DOS.
Or what about the ``world wide web''? The first point and click web browser was worldwideweb.app for NeXTstep, on which platform the web and http were created.
NeXTstep is great because it's elegant, consistent, harnesses Unix for mere mortals, and makes using a computer a pleasure and not a chor.
William, willadams@aol.com whose slashdot login isn't working at the moment.
Re:DPS vs DPDF (Score:1)
I thought of this because when I'm writing in (La)TeX, I usually have a gv window displaying the file I'm editing. It seems like it ought to be a small step to move from having three windows (emacs, gv, xterm to run for file; do latex $i; dvips $i;done). What's to prevent mixing the emacs part and the gv part.
Rendering the document would be free, since pdf viewing code exists already, and dps is supposed to just let you put ps on a screen. So all that you need is a way to enter text in the file in a WYSIWYG way, and process it easily into PDF or PS.
The processing could be through a tex backend, or something, so you just need to be able to enter the text. How easy would it be to tweak gv to make entering text possible, as a sort of proof of concept?
Re:Ah yes! (Score:2)
KDE's panel is very similar to CDE's (this is not by mistake). CDE *does* have the ability to customize it a bit better by hacking scripts (you can have multiple rows of icons and customize their size, for instance), but overall, KDE offers more "point-and-click" functionality right out of the box.
Re:Another (L)GPLed project that will never finish (Score:2)
Objective C != OpenStep.
Objective C is a programming language that adds OO style programming to C but with a philosophy closer to Smalltalk than to C++ (i.e. Java also has a Smalltalk-like philosophy but with C++ syntax), thus Objective C has got great merits on its own.
OpenStep use Objective C, so it integrates well with OpenStep, but you can use it without OpenStep.
By the way, Next made the Objective C front end for GCC, and first tried to release it in binary only (they thought that releasing the
I have also heard that Apple has got a compiler in which you can mix Objective C and C++, must be pretty cool.
I haven't used it personally so it is things I have heard about it in various tutorials/explanations/... When I get the time I definitively must check it (I'm checking Guile right now).
Anyway, for more informations see this [pacbell.net].
Re:DPS vs DPDF (Score:1)
TeX implementations (was Re:DPS vs DPDF) (Score:1)
Alan Hoenig, author of _TeX Unbound_ speaks highly of NeXTstep and the power of Display PostScript in his book and in articles in TugBoat (newsletter of the TeX User's Group, www.tug.org)
The problem with the
Hopefully, InstantTeX or some successor to it and TeXView will be available for GNUstep and will then make it trivial to provide
William
Re:Ah yes! (Score:2)
Not where it matters, namely the drawers. All of the CDE panel's icons have arrows for the drawers above them, with the ability to add new items to the drawer via drag and drop, and the ability to put one of the drawer items on the main panel. It's extremely intuitive, and KDE isn't quite the same (possibly no worse, but I didn't feel it was as straightforward). Secondly, unless they've changed this recently, every time I click on the netscape icon in KDE, it attempts to launch a new netscape process (and whines about lockfiles, etc). To say nothing of detecting preferred browsers or launching an alternate one. Sound simply didn't work at all in Solaris KDE.
The most damning thing of all is that KDE does not understand multiheading. Getting it going on the second monitor tended to make it conflict with itself and do very ugly things.
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:1)
> 1. It violates Fitt's Law
Nope - it lets the user violate Fitt's law if they want to. The standard positioning of the menu in the top-left corner of the screen gives the menu the same advantages as the mac menu-bar
> 2. Apple's submenu-dragging algorithm is vastly
> superior to XWindows, Windows or NeXTSTEP. On
> the NeXT, in order to drag onto a submenu, you
> must move your mouse carefully to the right, out
> of the submenu parent's menu area. Don't move
> the mouse too far up or down! Or you'll have
> chosen another parent menu option and the
> submenu will disappear.
Nope - this is untrue - you can click and drag directly to the submenu item you want. Another parent menu option is chosen only if you stop on it!
> 3. The NeXT's menu design might seem to take up
> "less space" than the Mac menu design, but in
> reality it is significantly more obstructive.
> Like most GUIs, the NeXT GUI is built around
> large rectangular windows. On the Mac, the menu
> leaves a workspace below which is still
> rectangular, whereas the NeXT menu leaves
> a workspace in the shape of Utah (horizontally
> flipped). As a result most NeXT users tend to
> leave the entire desktop area directly below the
> menu unused.
Nope - most NeXT users fill the area under the top-level menu with panels, torn-off submenus or windows. Perhaps if people were using 14 inch displays then the space under the top-level menu would be inconveniently small - but NeXT users work with 17 inch and upwards and a decent resolution.
In short - the MacOS menu-bar is a design for small, low-res (old) displays, the NeXT menu system is a design for larger higher resolution (current/future) displays.
Re:Tools will pop up VERY SOON (Score:1)
Thanks!
Re:GNUstep clarification: Support GNUstep! (Score:1)
IIRC, the GNUstep team has endorced a very pretty and functional window manager as their ``Official Window Manager,'' WindowMaker.
Jeff
Re:Nextstep Hype (Score:1)
On my first real post-collegiate job, I was fortunate enough to inherit and expand a mixed SunOS/NEXTSTEP network. As I have progressed through small, medium, and large enterprise networks, the lessons and elegance of managing NEXTSTEP hosts and servers have never left me.
Call me a bigot if you will, but I and most of those who have ever used NS intimately (and I don't mean slathered in baby oil) tend to use superlitives when referring to what NeXT wrought. Best, most beautiful, seamless, brilliant.
Object inheritance, extensibility, and network tranparence added so much functionality. Appls like CREATE!, Tailor, NeXtMail.app, and the Lighthouse apps had functionality and interpplication communication like nothing you have ever seen elsewhere. Services were available to all apps, and new services were immediately modifiable for an individual of a 5000-node domain.
Use NetInfo in a 4-tier hierarchical nertwork of 6000 hosts across three continents in realtime and then try to manage a hierarchical NIS+ network. Case closed. I have drag-and-dropped entire mid-level subdomains, readdressed in bulk all of the hosts, shipped the machines, and the all worked when plugged in and powered up. Servers, replicas, hosts, NFS volumes, printers, services, and cute little NeXTMail user.tiffs. I may or may not do SysAdmin for a very large entity that invented many open protocols that we all use, and I assert that NetInfo and it's related apps & tools were the pinnacle of Systems Administration. Oh, yeah, it can serve Samba and YP for the rest of your network, too.
It is truly a case of "don't knock it 'till you've tried it." UNIX purists will sneer at mach as "not a true UN*X kernel," but the nuts & bolts implementation says, as all NeXTies know, "it just works."
I have OpenStep 4.2 running on SPARC, M68K, and i386 at home. I can't wait for GnuStep to be ready! Good job to all in the Project. Show the world what truths we have known since 1988.
Mike
Re:Tools will pop up VERY SOON (Score:1)
Re:Ah yes! (Score:1)
John
Re:Nextstep Hype (Score:1)
John
Re:That's great... (Score:1)
Re:About the *step interface... (Score:1)
And further, the decision to do the menu like that was most certainly not a willing design decision based on the assumption that the way they were doing it was better. True, but irrelevant to the poor design of the rectangular menu bar.
Just for grins I've compiled a quick look at other operating systems that use something like this: