Re: Look and Feel

[Jesse Ross]

> Face it people, the only way to have any drastic change is by
> replacing the OpenStep hig (used as current GNUstep hig) with another
> hig base on the new design.

I don't think a new theme would necessarily call for a new HIG. My first
concept had a few features that don't correlate exactly to the NeXT
interface, but those could all be worked on to provide a more 1-to-1
relationship. I'm also currently reading through the OpenStep User
Interface Guidelines, and can take that knowledge and feed it back into
new UI concepts.

> Now my point is, if you cannot stand the current -gui, why don't you
> guys just fork it,

Ugh... I hope that doesn't happen... seems like a horrible waste of
resources. Theming is a much better route to go at this time. I think that
what Jason is suggesting is not that the NeXT interface disappear from the
technology, but that on distributions and in screenshots we show the new
theme by default. That would be the new look for GNUstep... but people
would still have the option of shutting the theme off for performance
reasons or aesthetic reasons or whatever. Of course, the decision of
whether to include Camaelon and the theme should ultimately be left up to
the distro maintainers.

> or even better, focus on serious application development, which is a far
> more important issue?

Great idea -- let's get some more apps!

> Is it better if we can discuss this again when we have enough
> applications, so the user that we already attracted them by the new
> theme, won't turn back after they found there is no application for
> them?

This is kind of a chicken and egg thing. I think a new interface could
attract new developers. In turn they would likely build more apps. We
would no doubt lose some, as there would no doubt be some who do exactly
what you said above. We might also attract some people interested in
programming, and through the great development tools and wealth of
Objective-C info around because of Mac OS X, with a little training, we
might get some new developers that way.


J.