Re: GNUstep on MS Windows

[Björn Giesler]

Hi,

about this look and feel thing, a couple of observations: 

1. I distinctly remember seeing a NeXT demo at CeBit Hannover (don't recall the 
year) where an OpenStep program was built on black hardware and then transmuted 
from NeXT to Win look and feel and back, all while the program was running on 
the same NeXT machine. So that strongly suggests THEY emulated widgets and 
didn't use native ones. And why should they use native widgets? Alex, you state 
that the fact that "[GNUstep draws it's onw Widgets] [...] needs to change", 
but don't give a reason. Please elaborate.

2. Using native widgets is conceptually hard, if not impossible. GNUstep's 
approach to drawing, resizing, event handling, copy/paste, drag/drop, etc. is 
sufficiently unique to not integrate very well at all with other toolkits. In 
any case, the wrapper code required would be huge or at least very intricate 
and very difficult to get right.

3. Emulating widgets is easy for 99% of the already existing ones! You just 
draw them differently. For composite widgets (open/save/print panels), 
different nib files are used. Where's the problem with that? It's a lot of 
work, but it's not conceptually hard to do.

4. While it's certainly VERY desirable to have GNUstep/Windows apps that aren't 
recognizable as such (except by their features), it's not an immediately 
pressing task. I, personally, wouldn't care much if GNUMail looks strange on 
Windows if I can access the same mail/address book repositories with it. We've 
even read some opinions by people who'd prefer the GNUstep look even on Windows.

The largest problem I see with using the native look and feel for a certain 
platform is the menu. OTOH, the current menu could just be smacked horizontally 
into each window, maybe reordering a few well-known entries and putting every 
non-submenu toplevel entry into the file menu. That would be "good enough" for 
most applications. Most would require specialized windows nibs anyway.

Personally, I would definitely suggest: 

1. Yes, there should be GNUstep on Windows. As I said, I'm volunteering to help.
2. Get the current look and feel running ASAP. 
3. After that runs, emulate the Windows look and feel.

Regards,
Björn

PS I just observed that the GS text system automatically does ligatures, such 
as fi etc. This is AWESOME! OTOH, I wish it wouldn't do it in this mail, since 
I'm using a monospaced font :-)