Re: Clash of the Titans, GNUstep alongside GNOME

[Nicolas Roard]

On 11/26/05, Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@brainstorm.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On 26 Nov 2005, at 15:27, Nicolas Roard wrote:
> > Basically, the appicon should disappear with other windowmanagers.
>
> I think you should have the OPTION of having the app icon disappear
> (actually, I thought you already did ... but perhaps it's gone or
> doesn't work reliably).  I don't believe it should do it by
> default ... the icon is too useful for that.

Yes, I agree, that should be an option.
I also thought the app icon was supposed to not be here now [with other wm],
but apparently there's nothing for that in NSApplication.m ..

> I also think it would be nice to have an app which would manage
> appicons (sort of like a dock ... a panel containing the appicons of
> all running gnustep apps and allowing you to organize/manage them
> when running in a gnustep-hostile window manager).

Yes, that would be great, indeed. Though on X11 it would probably be good
to simply play well with the local panel ? apart for apps like TimeMon, where
such a dock would be great.

> I don't know if you have used the windows backend recently, but it
> now pops up an alert panel the first time you use an app, which asks
> whether you want to use GNUstep/NeXTstep style window borders and
> appicons or native window borders and the taskbar.  This then sets
> user defaults accordingly (and doesn't ask again unless you remove
> the user defaults).  It also inserts something in the standard info
> panel to let you call up this option again if you change your mind.

Oh, that's pretty cool, indeed ! and no, it's been months since I tried the
window backend :-/
Now if it could also match the color scheme.. because with the "right" colors,
frankly, GNUstep apps blend rather well under windows:
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/gnustep-windows.png
(old sshot)

> To my mind, this is a thoroughly good thing ... and should probably
> be done by the X backends too.
> It keeps the standard default look and feel.
> It lets you easily change to work with the 'native' environment
> it doesn't keep intruding once you have set things up
> It's easy to change your mind later

Yes, it's a good approach.

> but I suspect people are worried and overreact to the
> suggestions of changing things ... of course we DON'T want to change
> things to remove all that's good about the NEXT designed GUI, but
> that's what it often sounds like when people start complaining about
> lack of 'integration' with a 'native' interface.

Well, yes, of course I'm not advocating to get rid of the features :-)
-- just that it should be configurable easily, so we can provide
better integration.

> This is why I'm concerned that we should -
> 1. keep the current interface as default
> 2. provide themes for the other interfaces
> 3. make switching VERY easy
> 4. try to make things interoperate as well as possible even when we
> are not using themes to make things match.

Yes. There's actually three levels for good integration though:
- the look -- that will be managed via gsdrawfunctions, not really a problem
- the feel -- more difficult; under windows you want menu-in-windows, etc
- integration with system services like pasteboard, etc

I'm not sure how we can manage #2 and #3 ... one possibility would be to have
so-called "desktop bundles" that modify classes to properly integrate... and/or
have specific gorms for the platform..

--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
  -Arthur C. Clarke