Re: Cocotron used for a real-world app

[Gregory John Casamento]

> I humbly disagree, Greg. Very obviously, there _are_ reasons why 
> people choose Cocotron over GNUstep. Just as obviously, these reasons 
> are not to find in the area of stability or completeness.

>
> Xcode integration is a big bonus for Mac heads, as one can be an true 
> expert in one development environment only. If you have to learn 
> another one, thats a duplication of a lot of kmowledge and most 
> people would consider this as a waste.
 
Yes, I agree with this.  While we are more complete API wise, we have not geared ourselves to appeal to the average Mac user who doesn't want to do work in anything but Xcode.

That, however, has never been GNUstep's aim.  GNUstep's purpose, like I said in my original reply, is to be a complete API and Development environment on top of any operating system. 

GNUstep has broader goals than Cocotron, but they don't currently include Xcode integration.   I'm wondering fi we can add that to GNUstep since it would, effectively, add the same appeal to our project.

> Looking at GNUstep installation ... this is 2008 and 999 of 1000 
> Computer users don't know how to set up a compilation environment. 
> So, installation from source won't cut it for anybody but developer 
> them selfs. Even most developers prefer ready-to-use packages these 
> days.

Quite true.   This is why we have a one step script for developers who want to install from source and packages that are ready made on most UNIX environments as well as Windows.   The Windows installer works very well now... so do the packages for Linux.  


> - GNUMail doesn't appear in Gnome's application menu.
>
> - Once one found out how to start the app (hefty googling to find /
> usr/bin/GNUMail), GNUMail appears totally disintegrated from the 
> remaining desktop.
>
> - I've yet to find out what's the use of this Dock-like icon at the 
> lower left. It appears and distracts.
>
> - Menus won't be recognised as such by most Linuxers. Yet another 
> learning curve.
>
> - Looking at the terminal (the only way to start the app), thousands 
> of warnings and errors appear. Much worse than what I've ever seen in 
> any other app and so many, GNUMail is actually noticeable slowed 
> down. It appears to complain about missing fonts.
>
> - There's no reasonable way to get an more up to date GNUstep 
> environment, as gnustep.org doesn't feature an apt repository. Those 
> project-specific package repos are very often seen these days, at big 
> projects like Wine, as well as at one-developer-projects like Gerris, 
> to take two examples.
>
> While GNUMail is just an example here, I see no hint how other apps 
> or even developing with GNUstep would be more fun. Compiling 
> everything from scratch, every week? Thanks, I want to concentrate on 
> my own tasks.
>
> There's only one thing you can point your finger at me: I should have 
> filed bugs.

I will file these myself.  Thanks.  I'll take any suggestions that will help improve the project.

> I very much hope you don't see Cocotron as an enemy. They did a lot 
> of work and did some of that work better than GNUstep.

No, not "an enemy", just a friendly rival.   What I find most disturbing is that they could have brought a lot of this functionality to GNUstep quite easily without duplicating much of our work (in some cases poorly).

Later, GC

Gregory Casamento -- Principal Consultant - OLC, Inc
# GNUstep Chief Maintainer

---

From: Markus Hitter <mah@jump-ing.de>
To: Gregory John Casamento <greg_casamento@yahoo.com>
Cc: TMC <viiieighte@gmail.com>; Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org; Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de>; Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@tiptree.demon.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 12:18:30 PM
Subject: Re: Cocotron used for a real-world app


Am 29.10.2008 um 14:45 schrieb Gregory John Casamento:

> There's no reason any company porting to Windows should ever choose 
> Cocotron over us.  We're more complete.

I humbly disagree, Greg. Very obviously, there _are_ reasons why 
people choose Cocotron over GNUstep. Just as obviously, these reasons 
are not to find in the area of stability or completeness.

Xcode integration is a big bonus for Mac heads, as one can be an true 
expert in one development environment only. If you have to learn 
another one, thats a duplication of a lot of kmowledge and most 
people would consider this as a waste.

Looking at GNUstep installation ... this is 2008 and 999 of 1000 
Computer users don't know how to set up a compilation environment. 
So, installation from source won't cut it for anybody but developer 
them selfs. Even most developers prefer ready-to-use packages these 
days.

There is a Live CD, there are apt and rpm packages, but ... the Live 
CD won't give me my favourite distro (Ubuntu). So I tried the GNUMail 
package in Ubuntu:

- GNUMail doesn't appear in Gnome's application menu.

- Once one found out how to start the app (hefty googling to find /
usr/bin/GNUMail), GNUMail appears totally disintegrated from the 
remaining desktop.

- I've yet to find out what's the use of this Dock-like icon at the 
lower left. It appears and distracts.

- Menus won't be recognised as such by most Linuxers. Yet another 
learning curve.

- Looking at the terminal (the only way to start the app), thousands 
of warnings and errors appear. Much worse than what I've ever seen in 
any other app and so many, GNUMail is actually noticeable slowed 
down. It appears to complain about missing fonts.

- There's no reasonable way to get an more up to date GNUstep 
environment, as gnustep.org doesn't feature an apt repository. Those 
project-specific package repos are very often seen these days, at big 
projects like Wine, as well as at one-developer-projects like Gerris, 
to take two examples.

While GNUMail is just an example here, I see no hint how other apps 
or even developing with GNUstep would be more fun. Compiling 
everything from scratch, every week? Thanks, I want to concentrate on 
my own tasks.

There's only one thing you can point your finger at me: I should have 
filed bugs.


I think these are enough samples for why many people choose native 
apps and development environments over GNUstep.


> I don't think we would have this problem.

I very much hope you don't see Cocotron as an enemy. They did a lot 
of work and did some of that work better than GNUstep.


MarKus


P.S.: Sorry for the venting, some GNUsteppers work hard.

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






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