Re: GNUstep theming (was Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard)

[Markus Hitter]

Am 27.11.2007 um 18:16 schrieb Dr Tomaž Slivnik:

> However, even if some (or a lot of) people are saying that GnuStep  
> must change its look and "move forward", that does not make it  
> either the right technical decision or the right business decision.

IMHO, the only technical decision here is wether GNUstep should be  
themeable/skinable or not. Which theme/skin to provide by default is  
a question for designers.

> Furthermore it does not mean that changing the appearance of  
> GNUstep will result in more people using GNUstep. Where is your  
> business case for that - what evidence do you have that this will  
> happen?

To the end user, a good look is more important than anything. Even  
professionals aren't immune to fashion. Look at the iPod, look at how  
often it was sold as a "backup device".


> The reason, in my opinion, that GNUstep is not taking off is  
> blindingly obvious and much more mundane: the damn thing is  
> IMPOSSIBLE to install.

First of all, which OS are you talking about? Obviously Mac OS X, but  
which of it's flavours?

> I'd built up all the prerequisites 5-way fat (ppc/ppc7450/ppc64/ 
> i386/x86_64) only to realize that if I want to build GnuStep itself  
> 5-way fat, I have to build 5 different versions of GCC and build  
> everything else again with Gnu runtime ... and then rebuild GnuStep  
> again. It's several more weeks' worth of work!

This is probably the reason why you next to never see 5-way fat  
executables. There isn't much point in having so many architectures  
as GNUstep isn't meant to do hours of number crunching.

Did you try the apple-apple-apple combo? This should you give you a  
GNUstep environment with the minimum effort.

> First thing, DarwinPorts failed to install at all because it didn't  
> like something in my /usr/local.

No doubt, Mac OS X is moving more and more away from being a Unix.

>  But even with a completely clean machine, DarwinPorts failed, like  
> this:
>
> > Error: The following dependencies failed to build: ArtResources  
> > gnustep-core gnustep-back gnustep-gui gnustep-base gnutls  
> > libgcrypt libgpg-error gettext libtasn1 lzo opencdk readline  
> > ncurses ncursesw libpng libungif tiff jpeg libart_lgpl GMastermind  
> > GMines GNUMail Etoile [...]

Looks like seriously messed up dependencies.


BTW., why are you using Mac OS X instead of a much cheaper Linux- 
based PC?


Markus

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Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/