Re: GNUstep Window Manager (was RE: Idea)

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

> > >  * <destructivist> gnustep is basically useless.  Since most  
people in
> > >    the real world are using gtk or qt, we should as well turn  
gnustep
> > >    into an objective-c wrapper for gtk <or qt>.
> >
> > GNUstep *is* basically useless as of today if you want to write good, 
> > fast, stable UI based solutions!
> <silence>
>
> Ahm.
> 'basically useless' ?
> <puzzled>
> Are we talking about the same library ?

Yes. Perhaps the word was a bit too strong, I admit. You know that I  
have written some apps using gnustep-gui myself, they proof that we  
ar on the right track, but that we are not yet at a level where you  
can have *complex* UI apps. I am not talking about the basic widgets  
here, I am talking about the possibility to write custom NSView based  
stuff and so forth. Thus if you want to write simple, small apps,  
gnustep-gui does the job, if you want to write Diagram, Quantrix or  
whatever like apps, you will notice that gnustep-gui is just not yet  
there! I have written a multidimensional spreadsheet app a while ago  
on OPENSTEP which I have tried to port to GNUstep, it was just not  
possible!
Further, when I compare the results of GSBench (on a 400MHz PII with  
an ultra fast graphics card) to those of NXBench (25MHz m68k) I get  
just scared...;-)

To make it short, I doubt that gnustep-gui can be used to write apps  
like gimp, kword or such, this is what I mean when saying it is  
'unusable', thus the term is probably a bit misleading.

> Whenever I had the desire to write a gui application, I could.
> A complete gui demo/suite with loadable bundles, a complete front  
end to
> ping/finger/traceroute, a calculator, a utility to set the keyboard 
> modifiers of gnustep, a complete board table game, a utility to  
slow down
> my system.

Those are all simple apps in terms of UI (only basic widgets are used).

> I also began to write other much bigger stuff, which was never  
made public
> because I couldn't find the time to finish it - a complete gui property 
> list editor with undo/redo (never made public because it's only half 
> finished), a gnustep freeciv client.

Why not release it? If it works, its great, others will see that one  
can do such projects. If it is not yet finished, perhaps somebody  
else will find time to help?

> Do you think the library will ever be enough refined to be 'useful' for 
> you ?

Yes. Like Richard I believe in the superior, GNUstep based  
solution/desktop (I don't remember his exact words) after all. But I  
am just realistic enough to see where we are right now. But as it  
seems, unlike for you, for me it is not enough to have simple UI  
frontends for tools like finger or ping in order to say 'it's  
perfectly usable'.

> And tell me - what would make gnustep gui less 'useless', a part from a 
> full featured high performing postscript based rich text editor with 
> rulers font panels color panels laying out stuff on multiple pages, all 
> encapsulated as a couple of NSText* classes in the library.

Performance (and stability) is probably the most important issue  
besides a working text system. And again, I do not talk about the  
drawing speed for basic widgets here! Thus I really would like to  
look into libart to solve that problem, perhaps I can find some more  
spare time somewhere...

> Oh yeah - I'm not saying this would not be useful and nice - but I'm 
> really wondering when I see people telling me that since we don't have 
> that yet, then the library is 'basically useless'.

As I mentioned above, you probably misunderstood me. For small apps,  
it's fine (apart from X related problems).  But for more complex  
stuff it is IMHO not yet ready. Proof me wrong!!!

Going back to work...;-)

cheers, Phil


--
Philippe C.D. Robert | Senior Developer
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