Re: Clash of the Titans, GNUstep alongside GNOME

[Nicolas Roard]

On 11/26/05, Rogelio M. Serrano Jr. <rogelio@smsglobal.net> wrote:
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> On 2005-11-26 14:22:25 +0800 Thom Cherryhomes
> <thom.cherryhomes@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >
> > it is worth noting that YES, a colour change would go part of the way
> > to avoid the clash, but it doesn't solve some of the
> > (1) the BIG APPICON THAT DOESN'T FIT ANYWHERE
>
> Of course its not intended to live in a taskbar nor is it aware of
> taskbars. Its meant to be big so you see it. a lot of small icons in
> taskbar can become confusing. Same as the windows taskbar with 20
> small icons. I just cant find what im looking for.

The point is, it's perfectly fine if you're running WindowMaker, but it
should disappear in *any* other situation / window managers / desktop

For example, I'm using a "gnustep" desktop, but at the moment I use
Metacity + GWorkspace + GWorkspace shelf. Damn, huge stupid icons
clashing with my "OPENSTEP 4" setup.. :-)

Of course that's the same problem if you want to run a GNUstep app
(say, GNUMail) within KDE or GNOME.

Basically, the appicon should disappear with other windowmanagers.

> > (2) the BIG vertical menu that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst
> > the horizontal menu bars
>
> That menu is intended to be just that a vertical menu and its not
> meant to fit in any other menu scheme. Its supposed to popup wherever
> you right click and just roll down to the proper menu item. I find
> that much better than doing a precision strike on the tiny icons on
> the top menubar in gnome. Or any other horizontal menubar.

He's not attacking the vertical menu per se, so no need to "defend" it.
Thomas is just pointing the obvious non-integration of GNUstep apps running
in other desktops, and he lists the different clashing points.

> > (3) the fact that the widgets look much less refined and sleek than
> > their gnome counterparts (before you say anything, I will make the
> > point that ClearLooks is _NOW_ The default packaged look with GNOME
> > 2.12.)
> >
>
> Thats exactly the way its intended to look.

Not even completely certain (the gamma, yadi yada) .. :-)

> Well that can be improved
> actually. I think some people are experimenting with those. Im more
> concerned of other things right now. Maybe after
> gnustep-on-cairo-on-modular-xorg-on-standalone-gl is already stable on
> uclibc.

well, no need to establish a hierarchy.. other people works on it, if you
prefer working on uclibc, that's perfect..

> The two just cant exist together. Your idea of a good desktop is not
> gnustep. Its better if you stick to the gnome design and it doesnt
> matter if its written in c, c++, or objc or whatever language or
> combination of languages.

Uh... I don't think Thomas is saying "hey, let's clone GNOME!",
he's just saying that trying to run a GNUstep app within GNOME looks
pretty bad, for the different reasons he highlights. Now, that's something
we should work on, for different reasons:

- first, people trying GNUstep apps will likely do it first in their
usual environment;
if GNUstep apps play well with it, it can be an incentive for them to
really try
a GNUstep desktop (if they don't play well, it'll be more "hm, not
really interesting, move on, nothing to see")

- second, even you are probably running other X11 apps (mozilla,
firefox.. ?) within your GNUstep desktop; better integration will
help.. and if we provide *good* apps (imho what we should try to
harvest, that's another thing that bring users ;-) it's likely that a
sizeable fraction of people will want to run them alongside their
normal desktop, and won't want to switch completely to WindowMaker --
eg just for run GNUMail, even if GNUMail is excellent... and more
GNUstep apps used overall will improve our situation, even if they
aren't run "within a gnustep desktop"

- third, we *NEED* the integration anyway, because I don't think you can
actually achieve anything on GNUstep/Windows if those integration
problems aren't
fixed -- it will be difficult to convaince all Windows users to switch
to a GNUstep desktop, don't you think ? And fixing those on Windows
(ie providing the right
options / hooks) will help (or will solve) the possible integration
problems with KDE/GNOME.

> My idea of a good desktop follows along the nextstep design and thats
> it. Did Steve Jobs intend nextstep to be a good citizen of other
> desktops? I dont think so. I dont know about openstep but it seems
> that its not a good citizen of other desktops too. Maybe thats why
> next was never able to make a sustainable business on it.

The problem is that you're 1) focusing on NeXTSTEP 2) focusing on
having a NeXTSTEP-like desktop 3) not caring about the crossplatform
features of GNUstep.

Yet, many people would like some improvement over a NeXTSTEP-like desktop
(but of course, having a NeXTSTEP-like desktop will be a good step..
well, we're not very far if you're using only GNUstep apps in
WindowMaker..), and *many* people are
interested by the crossplatform features of GNUstep. And that spells
integration within other desktop as a necessary point.

No harm beeing a little conservative (particularly in the case of
NeXTSTEP where it's so good), but no harm either on trying to be a
little more open to problems reports..

Cheers,

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