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GNUStep GUI

GORM 1.0 Release to Take on GNOME/KDE? 451

Posted by CmdrTaco from the uphill-battles dept.
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."
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GORM 1.0 Release to Take on GNOME/KDE? More

GORM 1.0 Release to Take on GNOME/KDE?

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  • Riiight. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coolGuyZak ( 844482 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:02AM (#13931526)
    with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects

    Riiight. 'Nuff Said.

    • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnarNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:18AM (#13931666) Homepage Journal
      Yeah - I don't know which is worse: 1) making such claims just for publicity (flamebait?) 2) or truly believing in it. In either case, the first screenshot [gnustep.org] you bump into will discredit their claim immediately. Compare it with anything trolltech has to offer with qt4 (or kde4's plasma efforts, koffice kids, etc.) and their development tools... I don't mention GNOME development tools because I'm not familiar with them, but I don't think they will be "obsoleted" either.

      • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by GreyWolf3000 ( 468618 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:28AM (#13931770) Journal
        I think it was meant as a joke.

        However, gnustep has been themed, and it can look pretty good. From a UI perspective, I really like how consistent and polished the interface is, even when it's in the default "prosaic" grey. And it's not only easy to learn, it's also easy to use. From a usability perspective, I think it's much more intelligently designed than Gnome or KDE.

        • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnarNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:43AM (#13931888) Homepage Journal
          I think it was meant as a joke.

          Then the guy must have a very good sense of irony ;) It is interesting to see how (at the moment) slashdot tries to decide whether it was a joke or not :)) I wonder which reading of this story will win out :) Currently I can't decide - but yeah, at first sight, it didn't occur to me that it was a joke :)

          I'm not a developer - but follow the development of various desktop closely (mainly KDE and enlightenment). I'm also a thinkerer, and I like to try out alternative desktops once in a while, including Afterstep, windowmaker, and the likes (that follow the same UI paradigm seen in gnustep) - and I noticed that there was very little or no development at all of these desktops in the past few (3-4) years. I have to admit that both wmaker and afterstep are different from other desktopts, but I won't apostrophize that difference as revolutionary. And I don't see where it would take (even with rapid development tools) the current desktop paradigms (or how it compares to future ones, like plasma). In short: I don't see the vision, the why this is soo cool aspect. You wrote: "From a usability perspective, I think it's much more intelligently designed than Gnome or KDE." - yeah, but whose usability? It is really really difficult to define an objective usability perspective. I don't dispute your claim, I just don't understand it :))

          • Re:Riiight. (Score:2, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            >>I'm also a thinkerer

            Does that mean you tinker around with thinking? :)

          • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @11:05AM (#13932654)
            Just my $0.2 here, but...

            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:3, Funny)

            by flacco ( 324089 )
            I'm also a thinkerer, and I like to try out alternative desktops once in a while,


            just a little more attention to your spellering and your grammarishness and you'll have the complete package.

        • Re:Riiight. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by wangmaster ( 760932 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:47AM (#13931930)
          I love it. I swear people take these things way too seriously. I get the feeling that the vast majority of people on slashdot are computer geeks with no social skills, hence the inability to get a joke.

          That said, the OPENSTEP/NEXTSTEP UI has largely been considered one of the most elegant and usable interfaces to have been created. It's extremely intuitive, and while the GNUSTEP work isn't there yet, the "completion" of Gorm.app is a very good sign, as the interface builder is the foundation to creating the wonderful UI of classic NeXT applications. NeXT spent a ton of money hiring some of the best UI designers in the world, and the UI shows it. People laud over OS X's ability to hide the Unix from the newbie user, but I don't think many of them know that this had existed since the '90s beginning with NEXTSTEP.

          Apple broke alot of the inherent intuitiveness of the NeXT UI when they moved to OS X, which isn't necessarly bad though, as intuitiveness != familiarity and their changes were mainly to make existing Mac OS users comfortable.

          I'm impressed that the GNUStep project is still able to have milestones like this.

          • Re:Riiight. (Score:3, Insightful)

            by /ASCII ( 86998 )
            I love it. I swear people take these things way too seriously. I get the feeling that the vast majority of people on slashdot are computer geeks with no social skills, hence the inability to get a joke.
            I thought it was pretty funny as well, but it is well known that irony doesn't travel well over the Internet, so the author probably should have phrased things differently.
      • My fault, that screenshot is rather old. :) The look has improved quite a bit since then. I'll have to upload an new one.

        GJC

      • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Informative)

        by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa&SPAM,yahoo,com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:42AM (#13931880) Journal
        the screenshots on that page are horrible. look at these for a batter idea:
        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]
      • "Their" clame? Are YOU on drugs? Just some "qa'lth" said it... BTW, not only is the appearance skin-deep (and apparently now they want to be faitfull to NextStep), but judging useability of programming tools by screenshot...I've lost my words here.
      • Indeed. And I'd like to know why it's "well designed", "and powerful object-oriented", too. I mean, just because mac os x managed to write the best desktop platform from openstep doesn't means qt and GTK aren't capable of the same.

      • Re:Riiight. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Archibald Buttle ( 536586 ) <steve_sims7@yah[ ]co.uk ['oo.' in gap]> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @10:30AM (#13932317)
        Yes folks.

        As we all know, how pretty your user interface looks is the best barometer of how easy it is to use, how simple it is to program for, how much leverage applications get from the underlying API, and how powerful applications written using the underlying toolkit will be.

        American readers should append the word "NOT" onto the end of the last paragraph.

        Gorm and GNUstep are mostly about the underlying API. It's possible to rapidly build incredibly powerful applications using Gorm - significantly faster than you can with the KDE or GNOME toolkits.

        • I beg to differ (Score:3, Insightful)

          by biendamon ( 723952 )
          The look and feel of the desktop are extremely important. They aren't the only factor a user should take into account, but to discount them completely is a mistake.

          If the default desktop is an eyesore, keeps its menus and options in strange places, and has a lot of confusing buttons that don't explain what they do or what they're for, it doesn't matter how powerful the environment is.

          Let me say it again: It doesn't matter how powerful the environment is.

          Because most users will balk at the environment I've j
  • with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects.

    WTF??? Not even Microsoft would dare make such blatant and patently false claims. I'm all for marketing but this is unadulterated bullshit and I don't even want to look at something that starts with BS like this!
    • Guess this was a joke. :-) However, is it possible to reimplement the Mac OS X APi based on GNUStep?

      • Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! (Score:5, Informative)

        by grahamlee ( 522375 ) <grahamNO@SPAMiamleeg.com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:17AM (#13931661) Homepage Journal
        Both OS X's Cocoa and GNUstep are based on the same API specification; "OpenStep" jointly written by NeXT Software and Sun Microsystems in the mid-1990s. Code which targets OpenStep will work on both Cocoa and GNUstep - however from thereon there are divergences...GNUstep has classes which Cocoa lacks and vice versa. It would be possible to reimplement the missing classes on the other system, just it hasn't been done.
      • GNUstep is exactly how we ported Oolite (an open source game for Mac OS X) to Linux and FreeBSD. There were a few small issues to contend with (and we eventually went from using NSOpenGLView for the graphics to SDL) but 99% of the code is identical on OS X and Linux.

        It's a pity that GNOME was written way back when instead of GNUstep being the free desktop of choice - had all that effort gone into GNUstep, it would have been pretty easy to target both Mac OS X and Linux/*BSD instead of having to write separa

    • Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by SavvyPlayer ( 774432 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:17AM (#13931664)
      GORM also obsoletes XTerm, Vista, Web 2.0, the Automobile and the Universe in general.
    • I haven't noticed that GnuStep guys said it. Just some individual named "qa'lth" did it...
    • What was so hard about picking up the intentional humor in that submission?

        Before I even opened the link I thought it was pretty clear that he was joking about that and seeing the screenshots only confirmed that.

  • That's confidence for you... (Score:3, Funny)

    by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:03AM (#13931533)
    and with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects.

    Nothing like a little optimism, eh? Quick question, what are you smoking and who's your dealer? I gotta get some of that stuff...

    • Re:That's confidence for you... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nothing like a little optimism, eh?
      Did you mean: opium
    • At least he's not smoking cracks for their own software...
      Err.. wait..

  • who cares (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:03AM (#13931539)
    How about decent and WORKING drag and drop?

    everyone is busy with eye candy and other useless add-ons and ignore basic operability and useability.

    • Re:who cares (Score:4, Informative)

      by grahamlee ( 522375 ) <grahamNO@SPAMiamleeg.com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:20AM (#13931696) Homepage Journal
      GNUstep has drag and drop, and doesn't have much eye candy.

    • Re:who cares (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Taladar ( 717494 )
      Drag and drop is a solution looking for a problem IMO (outside of graphic or 3D design apps where you move vertices, selections,... that is). Requiring the user to either rearrange windows or wait seconds until the taskbar realizes you didn't just place your cursor on the minimized window by accident is just retarded from an efficiency point and getting users to understand the concept is much more difficult than for any of the alternatives.

      • Re:who cares (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ScootyPuffJr ( 912925 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @10:23AM (#13932252)
        I disagree here. Drag and drop can be incredibly intuitive if it's implemented in a sensible way.

        I use drag and drop a lot when using Mac OS X simply because it works so well. Dragging files to the trash, dragging files to applications to open them, dragging images off web pages to save them etc.. it just comes naturally after a while (whereas digging through menus to find features like that has to be learnt every time). And with Exposé, you never need to rearrange windows.

        Just because Windows (and therefore Linux, as sadly the linux desktops have heavily copied windows as opposed to OS X) can't do drag and drop effectively doesn't mean it's inviable. It just means that it's been made inviable through poor design.
        • I use drag and drop a lot when using Mac OS X simply because it works so well. Dragging files to the trash, dragging files to applications to open them, dragging images off web pages to save them etc..

          Just because Windows (and therefore Linux, as sadly the linux desktops have heavily copied windows as opposed to OS X) can't do drag and drop effectively

          Odd, every one of the examples you mentioned works in MY Windows. Have you screwed yours up somehow or are you using some bizarre version? Perhaps you meant

          • 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

        • Re:who cares (Score:3, Informative)

          by cloudmaster ( 10662 )
          1) Linux desktops have almost all been around since before OS X, and could not have copied that interface.
          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 complic

      • Re:who cares (Score:3, Interesting)

        by genglish ( 528950 )
        That's like a Windows user saying the command prompt sucks because all they're used to is DOS. Any great idea can be implemented poorly.

      • DnD (Score:3, Interesting)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )
        These problems could be addressed in Linux/X11. The way to do it is to redefine middle-mouse-click as "drop the most recent selection". This just happens to match what xterm/etc do and that many people mistakenly call the cut & paste X function. Because of this X programs are much more likely to be able to get this enhancement because they tend not to have use the middle mouse for anything else.

        Because you can rearrange, open/close, and otherwise manipulate windows between the selection and the "drop",

  • Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:5, Informative)

    by stivi ( 534158 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:06AM (#13931569) Homepage
    Gorm is also a RAD application that allows one to create user interfaces and various application object models in very intuitive way, benefiting from highly dynamic features of the Objective-C language and runtime. Flash videos can be seen here [blogspot.com]. More information can be found on this blog [slashdot.org]. Interesting is, that the application could never be done in C++, check out why [blogspot.com].
    • I say: nonsense. Everything that can be programmed can be programmed in C++. Or C. Heck, even in Perl.

      I know Objective-C (I do my modelling in Cocoa), and I know how the dynamic bit works, but to say that it cannot be done in C++ is BS in principle. It cannot be done in the same way, but it surely can be done.
      • I think that anything can be done in asm!

        Heck, actually everything is done in asm!
      • I think the point he is trying to make (after RTFL - the relevant link) is that while you can impliment equivalent functionality in any language, you will take a performance hit because other languages are not optimized to handle some of the items he mentions (class indexing etc...)

        That is a tenuous argument at best; nonetheless without knowing the OpenStep standard there might be some validity to it - particularly if the standard specifies such functionality as is native to Objective-C.

        Having never used Ob
      • I say: nonsense. Everything that can be programmed can be programmed in C++. Or C. Heck, even in Perl.

        So, can you point to some operating system kernel written in Perl?

    • Re:Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Interesting is, that the application could never be done in C++, check out why [blogspot.com].

      That's crap, and if I had a blogger account I'd tell him where to go.

      4) Dynamic binding: so you make a baseclass with all the common interfaces you'll need. If that's not good enough, C++ does support dynamic downcasting with run-time typing information.
      1) Categories: I'm not 100% sure what he means but these sound like C#'s attributes. So build this kind of mechanism into your baseclass.
      3) Protocols - WTF? If that
    • And soon (via converter) it will be compatible with .nib files, meaning very easy poerting of Cocoa apps (or you could save to XML in Interface Builder...)

    • Re:Graphical Object Relationship Modeller (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11.gmail@com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:38AM (#13931849) Homepage Journal
      Saying that it couldn't be done in C++ sounds like flamebait. A much better (and true) claim would be that Objective-C is the right tool for the job, and C++ absolutely the wrong tool for the job in this instance.
    • Thanks for the flash video link. I thought I would never have said that, but I did.

      Reminds me of the days when I used WindowMaker. WindowMaker was also a GNUStep project, and a damn good window manager at the time.

      I welcome a more "UNIXy" desktop environment vs KDE or Gnome. To me, those are way too much like the Microsoft Windows interface. Personally, I don't like any of them. Honestly, all GUIs nowadays seem really dated when compared to OS X. Yeah, yeah, call me a fanboy or zealot, but for the loo

  • GuuuuuuuuhhhHHH!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:07AM (#13931576)
    I GOOOOOOOORRRRMMM!!!!!! GORM SMASH!!!!! KDE EAT!!!! SMASH GNOME!!!! GUUUUUhhhHHH!!!! GrrrRRRRR!!!! I GOOOOOOOORRRRRMMMMM!!!!




    alternatively:

    Gorm nuts!
    Corn nuts!!
    Gorm nuts!
    Coooorn nuts!!
    Gooorm nuts!!!
    Cooooooooorn!!!!!!
    Gooooooooooorrm!!!!!

  • Knock em dead GORM! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gihan_ripper ( 785510 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:07AM (#13931577) Homepage
    Maybe GORM will make GNOME and KDE obsolete, but first their server will have to withstand a righteous Slashdotting!

  • Half a marketing jobbie (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Elfod ( 567688 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:08AM (#13931582)
    Having set the expectation with references to OSX, why don't they have any drop dead gorgeous screenshots instead of one very dated looking one? I had high hopes that got dashed with WTF?

  • -1 Flamebait (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ticklejw ( 453382 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:08AM (#13931583) Homepage
    So why can't we moderate articles too?

  • Maybe... No. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ageless ( 10680 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:08AM (#13931585) Homepage
    I'll be the first to admit that Interface Builder (in OS X at least) is an incredible, life changing piece of software. If you've never written a GUI using Cocoa with Interface Builder you can't even imagine how easy it can be.

    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.

    • Re:Maybe... No. (Score:3, Informative)

      by bullitB ( 447519 )
      You've still got to write that whole boring desktop thing.

      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. :)

  • Over the top (Score:3, Funny)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:10AM (#13931599)
    Before hyping up your toolkit and predicting the death of all other OSS desktops, it's generally best to make sure your toolkit doesn't look like crap in all the screenshots.
  • It sounds very 'tinny'...

  • Lighten up (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ur@eus ( 148802 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:12AM (#13931621) Homepage
    They GNUStep guy announcing this was just trying to have some fun, why the hell to people get some riled up by the obsoleting GNOME and KDE statement, have people completely lost their sense of humour? Congratulations to the GNUStep team on their Gorm 1.0 release! nuff said

    • Re:Lighten up (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by seanellis ( 302682 )
      Even I could see the tongue in cheek from here.

      I thought that we on Slashdot are supposed to intellgent beings, not the kind of L33T D00DZ who have to have obvious humor put in <joke></joke> tags, with a liberal helping of :-) ;-) after everything and topped off with a LOL!!1!11!!

      But look like I'm wrong (joke, LOL!ll111!11, :-), rimshot, etc. Sigh.)

    • Re:Lighten up (Score:4, Insightful)

      by molnarcs ( 675885 ) <csabamolnarNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:29AM (#13931784) Homepage Journal
      "They GNUStep guy announcing this was just trying to have some fun, why the hell to people get some riled up"

      Because, incidentally, this is also a good way to create publicity for your pet project. Some would argue that this is page hit "whoring". Not that it is not a legitimate way of creating interest, but I understand those who have issues with this kind of "humor". In all honesty, you have to attribute a very good sense of irony (self-parody?) to the author to take the "joke" - and I don't know him enough to do just that. I don't exclude the possibility that what he said was in jest, but I understand those who get "riled up".

    • Here here!

      One slight jab at the precious Gnome or KDE and you're bound to get over-reactions from people who don't understand what GNUstep and Gorm are all about.

      GNUstep is all about the API folks. It's a dynamic object oriented API. Alien concepts to GNOME and KDE folks who are used to their static C/C++ APIs. It lets very cool things be possible, as can be seen in the demonstration videos for Gorm.

      The downers are it's a bit of a different paradigm, and effective use of the API requires a dynamic OO lan

  • open step vs cocoa (Score:4, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa&SPAM,yahoo,com> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:13AM (#13931626) Journal
    I think three things will really help GNUstep. the first it the ability to read nib files. If GORM can load a OSX nib file, it will allows people to port the thousands of OSX apps they have made to GNUstep. Second, if they chnaged their target to Cocoa (link it to a version of OSX and release new versions with each release to add features).
    The third and final thing is the appearance. GNUstep will never be popular looking thw way it does now. The default look looks too much like 1994 and unfortunately, many people will judge it based on that.

    OSX + linux cross platform development would be a HUGE boost to linux.
  • Don't be too quick to judge, guys.

    From what I see, it looks every bit as eye-pleasing as OS/2!

    /sarcasm

    • as eye-pleasing as OS/2

      No, nobody can possibly make that claim. OS/2 was the max, the ultra, the pinnacle of perfection that no other OS can ever match. People who didn't like it just weren't 31337 enough to understand it.

      Oh, wait. The shrooms wore off!

  • GNUstep is another choice, not a replacement. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:16AM (#13931655)
    Hhhmmmmm.

    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.

  • Looks like I'll have to stay... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dkf ( 304284 ) <donal.k.fellows@manchester.ac.uk> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:23AM (#13931715) Homepage
    GORMless

  • Gorm Videos Demonstrations (Score:5, Informative)

    by roard ( 661272 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:23AM (#13931718) Homepage
    I recorded a few videos (flash..) demonstrating Gorm [xdev.org] ...

    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).

  • The rumors of KDE/Gnome's demise.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mille Mots ( 865955 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:23AM (#13931723)
    Gutsy statement, but I regret to inform Gorm's developers that Gnome and KDE went the way of the dodo as soon as I woke up from my 'desktop wars' fueled dreamstate and realized all I need is a way to launch Firefox, Evolution and maybe VMWare from time to time. Blackbox does that for me, with minimal overhead (at least compared to KDE and Gnome) and without getting in my way. I'd go find out if Gorm is as lightweight as Blackbox, but the site is aleady /.-ed. Somehow I doubt that it is, though, what with talk of 'Object Oriented Desktop' and making Gnome and KDE obsolete. :\

    Why waste time trying to make my desktop work and act like Windows(tm)(r)(C)(and possible 666) when all I really want is to get my work done without all the bling?

    --
    A random sig
    Dynamic
    Saying nothing

  • Gormless (Score:2, Funny)

    by fuyu-no-neko ( 839858 )
    with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects.

    I was about to call that a gormless prediction, but then I realised that that was the whole point... -.-

  • 1.0 already!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by b100dian ( 771163 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:29AM (#13931778) Homepage Journal
    Since when free software software begins its releases with 1.0??!
  • I don't understand. From what I see, this doesn't give you much over using the old Athena libraries (visually) or using TK (as in Tcl/TK or Perl/TK). How is this an improvement over using KDE/Qt or Gnome

  • In other news ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @09:37AM (#13931841) Journal
    The VIM development team just announced that emacs is obsolete.
  • The OpenStep Standard [gnustep.org]. And the object oriented C [toodarkpark.org]. And how Interface Builder [linuks.mine.nu] looked on OPENSTEP. And the live CD [gnustep.org] with the older version (soon to be updated).
  • All Kirk needs to do is lash together some bamboo filled with coal, sulfur and saltpeter so he can fire diamond chunks and he can kill it!

    --
    Evan

  • And the Hurd makes GNU/Linux obsolescent.

    Why don't these developers want to take over the world by first taking over their "competition"? Like making GORM run on GNOME/KDE? Even GNOME and KDE apps run on each other when their libraries are installed. If GORM really is that good, it should interoperate, and suck up all the oxygen to emerge as the best. That's the kind of innovation hothouse open source allows.

  • Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)

    by dos_dude ( 521098 )
    I, for one, welcome our new flamebaiting overlords.

  • Um, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @10:11AM (#13932142) Homepage
    The problem with reading press releases for so long is that I have lost the ability to tell when someone is being serious or just trying to be sarcastic.

    It used to be a simple thing. If something is presented in a fairly straightforward, just the facts manner it was probably serious. If it makes ridiculous claims about how it will make all of its competitors obsolete, cure seventeen fatal diseases and then get you a beer while walking your dog then you could be pretty certain that it was meant to be a joke.

    I used to even be able to laugh at the joke press releases, knowing that they were nothing more than way-over-the-top satire of the dumbest PR pieces in the world. Now... I have to look carefully to make sure that I'm not actually reading the object of that satire instead.

    Thank you, PR flacks of the Internet, for lowering the bar so far that we need a shovel just to see the dent that it left.

  • Tongue firmly planted in cheek... (Score:5, Informative)

    by borgheron ( 172546 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @10:17AM (#13932186) Homepage Journal
    All,

    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

  • Let's cut through some of the crud here... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Art Tatum ( 6890 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2005 @01:45PM (#13934191)

    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.

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