Re: I wrote about the new GSDE package on the Register

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

OpenStep not NeXTSTEP :) :)

On 2023-07-10 13:49:16 +0000 Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com> wrote:

> We've gone around the NeXTstep-vs-MacOS thing before. I don't know if
> you remember.
>
> *In this case*, no, I have to disagree.
>
> GSDE seems to me to very clearly and definitely be trying to recreate
> NeXTstep, *not* Mac OS X.
>
> I like that. I approve of that.

I can nitpick at this. GSDE is free to recerate the "NeXT look" and I 
like that, it is in this regard a cousin of NeXTSPACE conceptually.
However, GNUstep itself is not about NeXTSTEP but about OpenStep!

OpenStep is the API we mostly recreated, not the NeXT one, although we 
retained in the style the NeXT look. The NeXT API was different and 
more primitive.
We also moved forward, implementing parts in a varying  degree of 
MacOS/macOS.

> In context, trying to spell out that GNUstep is aiming at something
> else would only be confusing.
>
> Secondly, Apple itself no longer uses the term Cocoa and that itself
> is obsolete terminology, so I don't think it's a useful comparison or
> term. I think the reverse is true. It's unhelpful and unclear and
> confusing.

Apple changed a lod of things. However, the closest evolution of 
OpenStep is Cocoa itself: Foundation and AppKit.
We don't implement "the rest", or only parts of it... be it 
ApplicationServices and all its tentacles, SwiftUI or whatever Apple 
decides to come up with to corrupt things.

I think we should less and less refer to Apple and Mac - because we 
more and more differ from it, even if we continue to add APIs from it, 
as perversly it sounds.

I like to think we are a bit like those project trying to salve things 
before "brokenness". Think of the total crap of current GTK without 
client-side decorations and custom UI and menus. Think of GNOME and 
KDE forks (Trinity= to preserve some more classic UI.

> I don't have a better answer right now, sadly, but in the context of a
> desktop environment, no, I think making a comparison to an obsolete
> and discontinued Apple internal API spec would be considerably *less*
> helpful.

I agree. Defining GNUstep is a little complicated, but you describe 
the GSDE project.

However, we know people like to jump to conclusions island just too 
quickly.


> I do not have a proposal but I think the name Coca went away a full
> decade ago and you need something more useful to replace it.

I don't think there currently is, I'd leave it there, trying to take a 
little bit of distance from Apple.

Cheers,
Riccardo

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