Re: Embedded GNUstep - new rumours about embedded MacOS X and call for support

[Fred Kiefer]

Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> 
> On 20 Dec 2006, at 15:47, hns@computer.org wrote:
> 
>> The status of mySTEP is already quite good: most Foundation and many
>> AppKit classes are working well on all Sharp Zaurus models and on Acer
>> n30 with Letux Linux  - and there are already two Linux based
>> Smartphones we want to port to next year and a third one is a good
>> candidate. Some recent developments are native/binary NIB loading,
>> @interface-compatibility of all classes to MacOS X 10.4, support for
>> shaped windows (e.g. rounded corners), a simplified WebKit, NSIndexSet,
>> NSIndexPath, basic PDF printing, and (not yet working) a complete
>> rewrite of the DO system to fully support NSMessagePort and
>> NSSocketPort, and too many others to list here.
>>
>> Compared to GNUstep, QuantumSTEP is a stand-alone system including
>> application suite and window manager. It provides all that is required
>> for personal information management, mobile mail, web browsing, input
>> managers etc. on a handheld device. And sometimes it includes even the
>> X11 server (which is not readily available for a Zaurus). So it is more
>> like a mySTEP based "GPE".
>>
>> Making mySTEP a smooth, reliable and finally useful system is something
>> different and therefore, if you are interested in supporting this
>> project, please start to look into the source code, submit patches,
>> contact me by mail - or during the planned presentation at FOSDEM 2007.
> 
> Might I suggest unforking  ... ie merging your work into GNUstep with
> the aim
> of eventually repositioning QuantumSTEP to use GNUstep.
> 

I strongly agree with Richard there and I will be working on this in the
next few weeks. The area where mySSTEP and GNUstep could share code most
easily is gui as here we don't use any external libraries (ok tiff and a
few others, but both libraries use the same), this gets done a lot more
in base and back and I see that there may be problems merging the code.

What I am planing to do is go through all of GNUstep gui and add the
missing methods and classes for MacOS 10.4 compatibility. In that
process comparing code between mySTEP and GNUstep adding parts to
GNUstep that are more advanced in mySTEP. I already started to work on
NSDocument, picked randomly as I was working on the undo mechanism
before. Here it shows that the hardest part is the comparison of the
code as both libraries use totally different coding standards. I might
have to use lint on mySTEP before comparing. Any other ideas are
welcome. For NSDocument there were only little additions in mySTEP, but
it turns out that Apple has added loads of new methods, which I now have
to add to GNUstep.

Richard, for this I would need the declaration of a version MacOS 10.4,
how does this look like? I only found GS_API_MACOSX. I thing, we should
have symbol similar to the ones Apple is using and have them on the same
detail level.

Cheers,
Fred