Re: What should and should not go in?

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 24 Jan 2004, at 05:25, Gregory John Casamento wrote:

> All,
>
> I am wondering where all of the fuss about "this was not in OpenStep 
> and
> therefore shouldn't go in" is coming from, as I've been hearing this a 
> lot
> lately.

It's not coming from the GNUstep developers anyway ... I have not 
noticed
any GNUstep developer say that all MacOS-X extensions should be kept
out of GNUstep.  Even Alexanders objections to NSToolBar (which are
specific to that class) might well be swayed if someone contributed 
good,
clean, simple. mantainable code.

>  OpenStep is a standard that was created in 1994, a decade ago, that
> standard is dated to say the least.  So, why would we want to tie 
> ourselves to
> this especially when MOSX represents an extension of it?

I believe our policy statement has (for a long, long time) said that we 
are
(and will remain) OpenStep compatible AND that we track changes in 
MacOS-X
to remain compatible with that.   To me, that's pretty clear.
The website also used to say that where the two are incompatible we will
find workarounds and superior solutions :-)

What we need is to clearly define the types of things we 
should/shouldn't
> include in GNUstep.  Using the recent NSToolbar spat as an example, I,
> personally, believe that we should put it in, despite any technical 
> objections,
> simply because it's used by a number of applications under MOSX and, 
> with it's
> inclusion, we'll attract those who've used it.   Now, I'm not saying 
> that there
> are tens of thousands of developers who want to use NSToolbar.  No.  
> I'm
> asserting that the more we stray from MOSX, the more we loose potential
> developers and users.

Yes.

Where MacOS-X classes are missing, it's because nobody has contributed
a good implementation yet, not because there is any hidden policy to 
keep
them out.