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| From: | Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf |
| Subject: | Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard |
| Date: | Fri, 9 Nov 2007 10:23:18 +0100 |
Am 30.10.2007 um 02:20 schrieb Gregory John Casamento:
Fred,The previous email wasn't meant to address anything outside of how ObjC 2.0 directly impacts GNUstep. Nor was it meant to cast an optimistic or, indeed, pessimistic slant on things. Neither is this one, for that matter. That being said, you and I have discussed the these very issues last time we spoke. We need to figure out how to solve them.The development applications and libraries in GNUstep are complete for the most part. All of the important classes are there and, with Gorm and Project Center, all of the important functionality is there. I think that part of what we're seeing is due to that. The perception is that there is not much left to do on the core libraries themselves.Here are the challenges that I see (in order of priority): ++++1) Applications... We need a comprehensive suite of applications for GNUstep. Something that, when someone uses them they have an integrated experience. We currently don't have that.
Well, I am trying to play my part in there, I am currently porting an OPENSTEP/Rhapsody sound editor (Resound) first to OS X and later to GNUstep. Progress is slow, I am currently facing some obstacles which I don't know how to resolve yet (I got a header problem on OS 4.2 and troubles to remove the dependency from the ancient NeXT SoundKit on OS X - no SoundKit there - but the /somewhat/ similar MusicKit from Leigh Smith exists)
2) GUI... Apologies to anyone who's in love with the old interface and you know who you are, it's extremely dated. Etoile is helping with that, but many people, when they try GNUstep.. they try the core project and they see the old NeXTSTEP-ish GUI. This GUI is not as attractive as some of the current GUIs out there. We need to make it so. A pretty gui can be very compelling to both users AND developers.3) Repository... I think we need to simplify a number of things with respect the repository. It is currently hard for people to check GNUstep out because of the structure it was given in SVN. You can't simply follow the instructions on the GNA website to make it work but you need to checking from "devmodules." We should be able to put something into the repository which will let people check out in a more "normal" fashion.
- an easy installation and setup process for GNUstep is essential in my opinion. It must be easy for the curious "chance customer" to get an experience of GNUstep. It doesn't matter if this is achieved by an simpler installation process or by providing GNUstep in a binary form, for instance as a Live CD image. Maybe we should get our act together and use some "synergies" (as in marketing speak ;-)). For instance link projects related to GNUStep like Étoilé from the GNUstep website more prominently (also with a hint that you can get a Live CD there).
4) Thinking differently... In my experience GNUstep is often perceived as doing things "differently" or "weirdly" because we don't follow the current "standards". Usually, these standards are set by people who are using C++ or C based libraries which are no where near as dynamic as what GNUstep has to offer. Honestly, call me an idealist, byt I think that the way we do things is often better both in execution and design. From how our make system works to Gorm to how the backend works. GNUstep is a better system than GNOME or KDE in it's design. However.. all of that being said... when we do things differently, it might be useful for us to determine if there is a way to bridge the gap.
I'd say "act differently" (from what we are acting now) I think we need to make GNUstep more visible (to both users and developers):
- fight the common misconceptions about GNUstep (like: "GNUstep? I use WindowMaker too!") with a short slogan that explains the most in just two words: "code differently". Add this as a tagline to our website and use it on merchandising stuff (like t-shirts):
"GNUstep - code differently" (maybe even something ObjCish: [GNUstep code: @"differently"];)
- emphasize more on our relation to Cocoa. In a blog from a guy who took part in GSoC I read that he was desperately looking for a project that uses Cocoa and he was lucky when he found Camino (a Cocoa/Mozilla based Webbrowser). Obviously he did not know about the relation between GNUstep and Cocoa.
To attract more developers we might need to remove possible obstacles for others to get involved. What would that be? To my mind come here the installation hurdles, difficult first steps for new developers and maybe even the need to sign the copyright over to FSF might shy some people away.
- the easy access is important here to (like already said above)- but also the code as such should be as easy accessible as possible like you already mentioned - maybe we need tutors that help newbees on their first steps in developing for or with GNUstep (well this might be difficult because it is very time consuming) - I don't know if that helps - but what about bounties? I guess we can make some money from merchandising stuff (which in turn also makes us more visible) and put that as a bounty for parts of GNUstep which are important but not currently worked on. Hey, maybe some companies which use GNUstep are willing to put out a bounty. We should ask them (there is no shame in this - even wikipedia asks for support).
We've already taken steps towards addressing #4 earlier this way with Nicola's changes with gnustep-make-2.0 (for which kudos are long overdue... he did an excellent job.. thank you Nicola) since they allow for installing GNUstep in different layouts... including one that is FHS compliant, but we need more.Also... we should emphasize *publically* what we've done more than we do. In the past two years we have been ahead of Apple twice or more in a number of things:1) 64 bit support on Intel. GNUstep had this way before Apple did!2) AppKit on openmoko -- while the iPhone debuts with a pitiful API... we have a full AppKit available! 3) Support for multiple model formats! last I checked Apple only supports .nib files for Cocoa/Carbon (and the second is being dropped).These are not "optimism" but statements of fact. It's too late to say anything about the first one, but it's certainly not too late to talk about 2 and 3.We have a lot of challenges ahead of us. Please tell me your thoughts on these points. Later, GJC -- Gregory Casamento -- OLC, Inc # GNUstep Chief Maintainer ----- Original Message ---- From: Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> To: Gregory John Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com> Cc: GNUstep Developers <gnustep-dev@gnu.org> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 8:09:32 PM Subject: Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard This is a very optimistic view of things, which I cannot share for the whole of GNUstep at the moment. My feeling is the race is over and we lost. Apple has just released a shining new version of there system and GNUstep is rather stagnant. Weare no longer attracting old or new developers and it doesn't look likethis is going to change. Have a look at the Changelog files from the last half year and you will understand what I mean. Not even the paid coders from GSoC made any difference. We urgently need to change the way GNUstep appears to the outside world, or we will become as obsolete as now seem. Personally I am thinkingabout reducing my involvement with GNUstep. It still is fun to hack way on GNUstep, but trying to get the library out of its current stagnationphase would require a bigger effort, which I cannot see at the moment. Cheers, Fred Gregory John Casamento wrote:All, As many of you are probably aware, Apple released Leopard today. Leopard contains a number of enhancements which are important to us,one of which is Objective-C 2.0.Objective-C 2.0 ===== Odds are the existing developers will still write for versions of Mac OS 10.4 and below in order to have the widest possible range of customers, but eventually Objective-C 2.0 *will* become thestandard. As morecompatible for the forseeable future, but I believe we need to start talkingand more people upgrade this will become the case sooner rather than later. The core libraries of GNUstep should remain ObjC "1.0"to the people in the GCC project to determineInterfaceBuilder to support multiple languages including Ruby. The recursivehow we can help with the implementation of a gnu runtime that works with the new version of the language. Interface Builder enhancements ===== The other feature which is interesting in it is the ability ofdescent parser I wrote for Gorm currently only handles Objective-Cheaders. Additionally, Gorm's internal data structures are decoupled fromthe type of archive that is being saved or read, nib, or gorm. When I added the nib support I rewrote nib/gorm support in both gui and in Gorm to support an architecture that allows classes which read/writedifferent types of gui files to register themselves so that they would beconsidered when a gui model is loaded.I am planning on moving Gorm to a more bundle/plugin orientedarchitecture in the future. This has a number of implications:Gorm will be able to: 1) parse multiple languages 2) generate multiple languages (for class files) 3) read/write any type of gui model for which it has a pluginavailable* gorm * nib * gmodel... etc_______________________________________________ Gnustep-dev mailing list Gnustep-dev@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
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