Re: Look and Feel

[Nicolas Roard]

Le 19 févr. 05, à 21:09, Gregory John Casamento a écrit :

> > And I, bored of tons of words about (unexisting) desktops and very 
> > tired for
> > years of work on a (existing) application, give up.
>
> I don't think you should give up!  Please don't.  I believe that 
> GWorkspace
> should be the default desktop.  Like every app in GNUstep it's 
> improving daily
> and like every app, it's not perfect *yet*, but it's getting there.  I,
> personally, think that you're doing a great job on it.
>
> > GWorkspace is looking for a new maintainer.
>
> GWorkspace is currently the best option, I use it daily as my default 
> file
> browser.   I believe that the rest of these efforts are still trying 
> to catch
> up.

I quite agree -- GWorkspace have the merit to works well _now_, and 
provides a NeXT workspace to the user. I don't think it's a good idea 
to abandon it, even if I understand your feelings about the recent 
enthusiast messages about étoilé.

Personally, I'm not entirely fond of GWorkspace for different reasons 
(mainly technicals) and I'm more interested by étoilé in the long run. 
But I don't see why you want to leave your project like that. After 
all, a lot of people use GWorkspace, while étoilé doesn't give you a 
workspace for the moment, even if a lot of code had been committed and 
a specific file manager is on the way (quentin?).

I mean, we're not in a proprietary world -- alternatives can exist ! 
the existence of one project doesn't obliterate the other, particularly 
when the goals aren't the same. if you think that way, well, too bad, 
but hey..

I explained in a previous mail my own "vision" of how things can work 
together with the user having the possibility to choose its own 
desktop/filemanager/component/etc. That mechanism is something that I 
want to implement, but as everybody, I have my own share of existing 
projects to complete before. I think my proposal would permit an easy 
integration of any projects in a same  recognised "environment", which 
imho is a good thing for users.. But as always, talk is cheap, code 
isn't. I don't think people will code my proposal :-) -- I expect to do 
it, we'll see if that's interesting in the end.

In short.. I think it would be better to continue your project, but if 
you are upset because some people want to work on something else, 
well.. Everybody is free.

> I vote for GWorkspace to be the default desktop for GNUstep.

er... I'm not sure GWorkspace is a desktop -- it's a file manager. A 
"desktop" for me is more than a file manager -- it's here to provides 
common HIG, frameworks, etc.
But I would welcome a desktop effort based on GWorkspace, for sure 
(even if I'm not sure how much the goals of such a desktop would 
overlap with backbone's goal.. but well.. considering the lack of 
progress on backbone during the last year...).

I'm interested by avoiding as much as possible duplication of efforts; 
but étoilé (as we're talking about it) doesn't want to clone 
GWorkspace. So I'm a bit perplex by your decision, even if I can 
understand it's annoying to have people talking about a would-be 
desktop while you are working alone on GWorkspace for so long.

--
Nicolas Roard
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
 -Arthur C. Clarke