Re: Plans for ahead

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Svetlana,

Svetlana A. Tkachenko wrote:
> (Another thing that came to my mind was a proper free desktop
> distribution that focuses on packaging GNUStep stuff and not programs
> written for other UI toolkits (this is very rare for any Linux
> distributions to discourage users from running programs written for
> another desktop) but that's subject for a separate discussion...)

i think such a distribution would be more a philosophical attempt that 
would end up showing the utter incompleteness of a GNUstep environment. 
Most Linux distribution favour a certain Toolkit or environment (shall 
it be GTK or even GNOME) but since non of them offers a real complete 
application palette that goes from web browsing to image application to 
office to whatever, or, if they do, maybe the better program is the 
"other one", no one goes down this route.

E.g. maybe you want KDE. You have the default stuff. For Office KOffice 
or Open/Libre Office? and browsing? There still KDE has good choices. 
But then for image stuff you would resort to GIMP and Inkscape.

Perhaps the best card deck is covered by GNOME/GTK, since even if not 
"gnome" other GTK application blend nicely in. So for example You can 
have Xfce, then Firefox, GIMP and Inkscape blend quite well in. No real 
native Office suite, but for the end-user OpenOffice will fit in.

On GNUstep, because of its distinctive design, an application like 
OpenOffice sticks out immediately.

Perhaps we could do with some "ports" similar to the Mac ones, to have a 
more integrated look. It could be perhaps done for Firefox/Seamonkey and 
OpenOffice. With our menu subsystem, app bundles and some integration it 
would be nice.

Without, it would be a bad advertisement, like the original "GNUstep 
LiveCD" ended up to be.

Riccardo