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RE: OpenOffice.org on OS X and GNUstep


From: Andy Satori
Subject: RE: OpenOffice.org on OS X and GNUstep
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 08:08:40 -0500

 This is fairly accurate, and in the case of GNUStep, it's an achilles heel,
because Apple is actively pushing those developer's to rework the User
interface in Cocoa, but they aren't saying rewrite the logic.  At this point
much of the Windows code you are talking about is C++, some built around MFC
or ATL, but most of the  logic is pure C++.  It will require some work to
make cross platform if it isn't alreay, but that's not a big deal.  With
ObjectiveC++ it's trivial to consume that logic with a new UI, and as such
the UI works fairly well. That's the rub.  Objective C++ isn't well support
on the non-Apple toolchain yet, so efforts like WebCore will continue to
languish on GNUStep.  

Making matters worse is that GNUStep is installable on Windows, but
ProjectCenter won't build on that install.  GORM will, but what use is that
without PRojectCenter ?.  These issues continue to plague GNUStep.  None of
them are unresolvable, given enough resource, but therein lies the problem.

The trick is to get some of those Windows developer's along with the Linux
developers and  the Mac developer's to embrace GNUStep as a workable
toolkit, which right now as a Windows and Mac dev who has a linux box as a
server, it's not.  I keep working with it on a casual level, hoping that the
situation will improve enough where I feel that I can contribute, but it's
simply not there yet.

Andy


-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-gnustep-bounces+dru=satori-assoc.com@gnu.org
[mailto:discuss-gnustep-bounces+dru=satori-assoc.com@gnu.org] On Behalf Of
Markus Hitter
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 12:47 AM
To: Adrian Robert
Cc: discuss-gnustep@gnu.org; Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf
Subject: Re: OpenOffice.org on OS X and GNUstep



FWIW, I can pretty much support this opinion. If you listen to Apple mailing
lists, there are many developers out there coding primarily on Windows and
wanting a similar API on Mac OS X as well. They obviously feel more
comfortable with Carbon as Carbon shares roots with the Windows API. Some of
them even report they have no influence on the Windows code they have to
port to the Mac; the quality of the Mac API is counted by the number of
lines they need to get it running.

Apple, with the advent of Tiger, marked all the QuickDraw functions (the
classical Carbon graphics model) as deprecated. But if they ditch Carbon any
time soon, they could easily loose half of all the applications available.

Their answer to the situation seems to be CoreFoundation. A low level
framework with mostly Cocoa in mind, but accessible through a plain C API.


What does this mean for GNUstep? Well the hack-until-it-builds-and-
debug-until-it-seems-to-work type of application development appears to be
wide spread. A lot of developers firmly hold grip on their existing, huge
code bases. They prefer low level hacks over revising or even rewriting
logic. IMHO, GNUstep can't do much about this, but to continue making the
development of well thought code design even easier and quicker. Some steps
towards fewer diffs to Cocoa development surely wouldn't hurt.


Again, only $0.02,
Markus

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/






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