Re: GNUstep <-> Cocoa compatibility

[Chris Hanson]

On Dec 30, 2003, at 6:43 AM, Artem Baguinski wrote:
> > Keep in mind that I don't have access to an Apple MacOSX computer!
>
> me neither. and i'm trying to avoid it as much as possible - that's why
> i'm here :)

This is unrealistic if you're actually going to be shipping Mac OS X 
software.  You will *need* Macs for the development and testing of this 
software.  Even if you can somehow manage to not have them, you cannot 
develop good Mac software without using a Mac.

> > This depends on what you want to do. If you just take the GNUstep code
> > and suply a new NIB file for MacOSX not many problems should be
>
> hmm, GUIs of applications i write are usually either simple enough to 
> be coded
> "manually" instead of being designed in an IB/GORM or aims to be 
> dynamic
> and complex enough to be generated on fly from underlying data model
> instead of being designed ...

This is almost never how it's done on Mac OS X with Cocoa.  Almost all 
Cocoa interfaces are created using Interface Builder.

> does this make job of porting my [hynothetical] GNUstep application to
> cocoa easier?

Potentially since there would be no interface resources to convert.  
However, the interface metrics between GNUstep and Mac OS X are very 
different, and the human interface guidelines are also very different.  
(E.g. where the buttons in an alert are placed and what they should be 
called, and also whether an alert should be independent or attached to 
a window as a sheet...)

I can't recommend Renaissance strongly enough for this kind of project, 
even if you're coding the human interface directly.  It has layout 
managers, which can mitigate the differences between the interface 
metrics on the two platforms.

> i rather want the following: develop an application in GNU environment
> until i'm satisfied with it, checkout it from cvs onto MacOSX machine
> and build it to run on MacOS.

This is unrealistic.  It may be technically possible but it is not the 
way to develop good software on either platform.

  -- Chris

--
Chris Hanson <cmh@bdistributed.com>
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