open letter about development proposals

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hello to all,

I'm going to try to write down a lot of things in this "open letter" and I
have not much time to write it so I hope you can understand the main
concepts anyway.

I have been following the gnustep community now for some time and find it a
nice community and I find gnustep itself an interesting project. Lately I am
also often in the IRC channel where there are many developers ore more
"evoluted" users which are full of ideas.

There was a discussion about the lack of interesting applications for
gnustep, I have here a bunch of ideas in several of which I'd like to
involve myself too. I have little next/cocoa programimng experience but I
programmed several years of C and Java so it is also a stimulus to learn
further.

One general rule I'd like top give about the projects: be as portable as
possible (who reads my emails knows my plethora of platforms and I like the
freedom that this gives) and so depend on as little as possible on other
libraries and if, make the sure they are portable and that integration and
installation is easy.
Many of these ideas would be also useful under osX and a prot to coca would
be interesting. Maybe a back-port to Next/Openstep could be interesting but
I don't have those platforms.

As far as I know:
    - a PDF viewer
    - an FTP client
    - an IRC client
    - a 2d vector graphics drawing app

already exist in a more or less advanced stage so I hope work continues on
them.

I propose then randomly these ideas:

    1. a graphical installer/uninstaller. This maybe with the option to
compile the stuff on the fly from the source or choose from binary versions.
The uninstaller part would put us ahead of Apple. (BTW: who has used Next
and OpenStep: how is the situation there?)
    2. a just a little more evoluted word editor than Ink. In the sense of a
WordPad from windows or of a KWrite or such: just a little control about
margins, page size, tables. Would be handy.
    3. a spreadsheet done the right way! with basic graphing of course
    4. a stand-alone browser. Optimized and with an ergonomic interface. I
would think a mixture of OmniWeb and Safari
    5. a download manager, in the sense of GetRight, Speed-Download and
those, I propose basing it on CURL.
    6. a 3d editing modeler which could interface to PoV-ray and Renderman.
I have here many ideas about the interface and about some features.
    7. an HTML editor. Text oriented but with useful functions, like fast
insertion, table and frame managment, image insertion and syntax
highlighting and standards checking. (someone ever used the old versions of
hotmetal?) If we have a web browser based on an HTML-kit adding a previewe
would be handy
    8. an image and photograph editor (read further below)

Some of these application already exist, some not. Some are really "big"
projects, but I think they would add interest to gnustep and attract users.
I think there is no shame reimplementing applications: many mailers exists,
but I nevertheless like GNUmail, the same goes for filemanagers. After all a
good, well thought interface a' la NeXT is a good thing. I am thinking about
clean, usable interfaces. Not for dummies all colors and buttons, something
more professional but anyway well thought and clear.

I am already developing:
    - a scientific calculator.
    - an image filtering program. Here I have the emphasis on numerical
processing for now and the project lags behind, but I hope that the
"modules" (each one has a filter core and an interface/controller) can be
reused easily. I don't know exactly how well it works, since those are my
first steps in Gnunstep (play of words).
    - a small graphical interface to a web-browser, like BeOS's poorman or
MacOS's NetPresenz. I am working on the core since two years and an
interface would be interesting.
    - a DXF to PoV-ray 3d file format converter. I have a core which is
probably buggy somewhere in the smoothing engine (without smoothing it works
fine). An interface would be fine.

Besides the projetcs I am working on already, I would have a particular
interest in 5, 6, 8.

I hope to have attracted the interest of some developers! I already have
some ideas about some of these projects, I'd love to do some brainstorming
and to put down some sketches. I have been provided with some webspace on
which I could put the drafts public. I don't have enough gnustep knowledge
to start, but I hope that collaborating with others will stimulate it.

So feel free to contact me! I hope you will do so!
I will be away on vacation starting from tomorrow and I will take  my time
to think constrictively about my proposals and hope that afterwwards ideas
can be joined.

Greetins,
    Riccardo

PS:  I had not a single feedback about my RPN calculator, I don't even know
if it compiles successfully on other computers... this is sad.
Now I hope to get gorm-0.3 to work ASAP so I can close some gaps in the
interface towards the MacOS-X version.