Greg and others (everybody is invited to join the discussion!),
Am 02.09.2023 um 17:21 schrieb Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com>:
Hey Greg,
I’ve seen your tweet:
well done!
Thanks.
But then again I had a discussion in very well frequented german IT-forum today, where I got this answer:
It translates to:
What's wrong with them using a modern theme? I'm not a fan of changing things all the time, but we have more than 16 colors and using a gradient here and there in the UI can significantly enhance controls without overly colorful design.
When I see the screenshots of the project, the whole thing again looks like someone is building something that has to work at 640x480 with 16 colors, although I can imagine that the principles behind it would still/again make sense today. Something in the direction of Windows 7 or Breeze optics would really not hurt.
I think one of the reasons we need a "reference" distro or, at the very least, our own packages is that it would be much easier to theme things in a way that would appeal to more users.
I’d say: first things first. And thereby I mean, we should first tackle the most obvious and easiest to fix thing: that is our website!
My proposal:
The look so far is o.k. for me, we should address the content:
- add a bullet list at the very top:
- We are a cross platform implementation (Linux, BSDs, Windows) of Cocoa, formerly OpenStep (link the Cocoa and OpenStep specs here too) - We are up to date (link to latest release and GitHub) - We are themable - We have software (link to software index)
everything as link/anchor to a section further down the page where we explain it in more detail but not to extensive, about five to eight sentences per section should be enough. If there is more to explain link a subpage, like https://gnustep.github.io/experience/Theming.html in that section.
We don’t need a myriad of subpages. Keep it as minimal as possible.
I answered that GNUstep already has themes, but when searching for https://gnustep.github.io/experience/Theming.html I found out that this page is nowhere linked from the front page, so I knew it exists but I had to google it. All in all our web presence (while looking somewhat sleek) is in a kinda sorry state: It doesn’t get those messages around:
- We are not Window Maker and Window Maker alone is not GNUstep - We are a cross platform implementation (Linux, BSDs, Windows) of Cocoa, formerly OpenStep - We are up to date (here Greg knows best which features of which macOS version are supported) - We are themable (adding some screenshots of modern themes on the frontpage would be great)
That page does a poor job at showcasing any theme which is much more than just color changes over our defaults, we need to do better on this page. "Classic Windows" and similar themes are NOT exciting or appealing.
Yeah, we need some up to date screenshots for that page! And not just the classic theme … :-))) additionally:
Even better it would be if we had our own reference implementation of a desktop environment, but I see this is wishful thinking, as we lack the manpower to do so (no offense to women by the way ;-)).
Personpower? (joking) but yes... I would love to help with this, but the issue is there just aren't enough hours in the day.
But as of now we come over as we would be a „software museum“ not as something contemporary. Sorry, I had to say this, but when I bring GNUstep on the table in discussions I regularly get laughed at: „Are you serious? This stuff is from the last century!“
I've made the point over and over again that we aren't a museum project. You will often find that popular consensus frequently beats out reason in a lot of people's minds. They regurgitate what they hear. This is why we need to give a very strong first impression.
As I said: Our Website is the key to this. This would include to finally get a SSL-certificate from https://letsencrypt.org/ since the link https://gnustep.org/ is still not working (just http://gnustep.org/ ). But who am I to demand things here, I can only ask friendly … :)
Lars
Rant over.
Kind regards,
Lars
Maybe you should write a blog post about this or at least tweet it. The IT-world needs to know and it doesn’t. It still thinks GNUstep is just Window Maker and old fashioned looking. Had this discussion just two days ago. Again.
Kind regards,
Lars
As you guys know, Algoriddim makes use of GNUstep on Windows. It has just been released in beta:
It looks pretty awesome!! GC
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