Re: Extremely poor quality of GNUStep applications

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hello,

let's keep a professional tone. This is the general gnustep list and we 
are free to discuss many topics about gnustep, but just ranting about 
"stuff not working" is absolutely not useful, it will turn away 
developers instead of motivating them to fix the bugs and it will turn 
away users when reading the thread thinking that gnustep doesn't work.

> <..>
>
> I randomly chose 6 applications of my interest and tested run all of 
> them. Result: only GWorkspace did not fail fatally. By fatally I mean 
> it doesn't deliver the basic use of the software. If a painting 
> software cannot show paint brush, for example, it's a fatal failure.

I think your "choice" of application was unfortunate.  GNUstep is an old 
project and many application has been developed. As it often happens 
with open source, some software gets abandoned, is no longer maintained. 
All programs you programs you mention except GWorkspace are not released 
by gnustep.org itself.
So please, be calm with your allegations. I use GNUstep since many years 
but I even never heard of most of your applications!

Would you accuse the GNOME theme if a certain X application written for 
gnome 1.x doesn't work well with the latest GNOME version?

The GAP team selected several application and salvaged them from 
"bitrotting" by keeping them working with the latest gnustep and also 
with the changing compiler, OS and library versions. Even without 
developing new features, we have all hands busy doing this! Sadly it is 
a tedious work that is little rewarded, isn't much fun but remains 
fundamental. Most persons take it as granted, which it is not.

That is also the reason why the GAP team currently evaluates a new 
addition carefully - if no new developers or maintainers apply.

If the applications you mention are still maintained, most probably the 
developer is subscribed to this list and may fix the problem.

>          GWorkspace 0.8.8
>
>        * People say this is like Finder in Mac OS, thus I expect to be
>          able to browse and launch applications from GWorkspace. But
>          it's really difficult to find applications. In the end I
>          realized it's eaiser to add '/usr/local/GNUStep/Local' and
>          '/usr/local/GNUStep/System' to the upper panel (perhaps
>          shortcut panel), because there are applications scattered
>          around Tools or Applications folder of these folders. Isn't
>          there a simple way to get a list of all applications like in
>          every other system (Mac OS, Gnome and Windows)? How does
>          everyone else do?

If you install with prefix = / (which is the recommended way to have the 
most complete experience) you will end up with a Macintosh or 
OpenStep/NeXT style layout, namely:

/Local/Applications
/System/Applications

Most stuff will reside in Local anyway.

So accessing it is like using Mac. You may add a shortcut in the upper 
panel indeed, exactly in the same place where you did that in the 
10.0-10.2 Finder.

You may also want to add some applications to the Dock or the Tabbed Shelf.
>        * In general, it works with a lot other problems but no fatal 
> ones.
If you find fatal errors, please describe a way to reproduce them and we 
shall try to fix them. The upciming release should be even more stable 
and portable.

>          GNUStep Slideshow 0.3.5
>
>        * Core dump on launching.

I don't know this application, you might want to try other image display 
programs. Perhaps LaternaMagica from GAP suits your need, at least I 
know it works on current GNUstep because I'm its maintainer.

> Any single fatal failure like described above would make real 'end 
> user' immediately turn away from the system. The general application 
> quality is way below what FOSS community has been offering in the last 
> decade.
This allegation is general and based on a quite strange sampling of 
applications.

> The application quality is at the level of FOSS desktop products 10 
> years ago, thus I expect the community behavior is like 10 years ago. 
> Thus I think I should expect replies saying "don't sit there and talk, 
> if you know so much why don't you help? others are helping!" So here 
> is my respond to that reply: I believe showing test result is 
> contributing, "complaining with detail" is contributing and by 
> checking progress once a few years I am doing not bad as a user, 
> besides I cannot contribute like a developer, it's difficult for me to 
> write a Hello World.

Sending well-documented bugs to maintainers is the best way to fix 
crashes if you can't patch them yourself. Ranting in the public every 
couple of months is not. Of course this works only for maintained 
applications.

Thank you,
   Riccardo