Yes, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t look good on any of the themes I’ve found. I’d try making my own theme if I could find documentation…
But it does not address the bigger issue of artifacts. And it creates the issue of menu confusion. I always look to the top corner of my screen - no searching for menus. Then I would have to look for them on only certain gnustep apps. Not a great interface.
I’m mainly interested in creating apps for Linux/FreeBSD. I’m not certain my screen lock program would even work on either Mac or Windows. The same with other desktop oriented apps, such as a shortcut editor. I haven’t used a Mac or Windows in 12 years since I left Microsoft.
I agree that abandoning Cocoa seems wrong.
But these bugs have been there for a decade without getting fixed, and what I’m starting to think is that this is just a linux issue.
Until recently I had expected to hear that gnustep was dead.
The web site is half dead links, it was offline for a while,
and freshports shows that there is no longer a maintainer for FreeBSD.
The version on the Linux repos is considered dead because it’s the old 1.9, so you have to build it manually to get the current version.
Maybe it only makes sense for Linux devs to use gtk. Or maybe they just continue not using gnustep and I’m just the odd one out.
On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 10:07 PM Daniel Boyd <danieljboyd@icloud.com> wrote:Bruce,Have you trieddefaults write NSGlobalDomain NSMenuInterfaceStyle NSWindows95InterfaceStyleThat will put the menus at the top of each window.Abandoning cocoa doesn’t make much sense. What I think is absolutely a good idea would be someone adopting the gtk theme and giving it some love.Sent from my iPhoneOn Dec 16, 2023, at 15:28, bruce <darkoverlordofdata@gmail.com> wrote:Here are some examples
Notice how the scroll bar splits as well. It also happens in prepackaged binary SystemPreferences.app:
You can also see how the menu collides with a linux style global menu. This is on helloSystem. On GhostBSD-xfce, the scroll list artifacts are less pronounced, looking more like heavy underlines, but the menu collision still happens. Menu theme doesn’t align with the desktop. It’s jarring. What is more jarring is the ‘blip’ I get, a small rectangle that pops up momentarily, suspiciously the same size as the big icon, and then disappears when the main window appears. Xfce is the only desktop environment this ‘blip’ does not happen on.
On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 8:10 PM Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:Bruce,I admit I looked at the mailing list and did see where you have made comments both recently and a couple of years back regarding certain things of interest. My apologies that you didn't get the response that you felt you needed on some of these issues...On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 2:34 PM bruce <darkoverlordofdata@gmail.com> wrote:Gregory, respectfully, I’ve been trying gnustep for the last decade, waiting for it to be ready, and getting frustrated. During that time I’ve had 5 different computers, and used about 10 linux distros, and the place I find gnustep working tolerably is on freebsd-xfce. Not too many artifacts, themes are working, but it still doesn’t integrate to the desktop - that’s a design issue , and I’m not asking you to change that, just consider an alternative.
I use GNUstep on Debian Linux at home (I have since Debian 9) and Ubuntu 16-22 at work as well as Windows at work. All are tolerable work environments. I use the Ubuntu and Windows instances mostly for Keysight. On the windows side we use the Windows theme and it has never been a problem for any of the clients that Keysight has using the Eggplant software. Windows makes up approximately 90+% of their user-base.The artifact problems I refer to have been there all along, and I’ve talked on several forums to other users that run into them too. If no one on the project has ever noticed these issues, I don’t know what to say.
I am familiar with some of the issues you mention. There are ways to get around them. If you would like to discuss that I suggest you ask about which ones specifically. I may go back and answer some of your previous emails.I bring up the archaic menu and there are 2 camps - one says use WindowMaker, and the other longs for something more modern - so i’m suggesting that you can kill 2 birds with one stone by using CoreGTK.framework
Well. Here is the thing. You may be under the misconception that GNUstep is intended as a Desktop Environment. It isn't or, at least, it hasn't been. GNUstep's major focus over these many years has been to be as cross-platform as humanly possible. Arguably it has achieved that... GNUstep currently runs on any POSIX-compliant OS, as well as Windows on both MSYS2 and MSVC.The issue is that the project has left worrying about the "Desktop" to other projects... (examples of this are Etoile -- defunct, GSDE, NEXTSPACE, etc). As such GNUstep is perceived as being "reluctant" to change the default theme from the one many people claim is "Ugly". I find that ironic given that many OSs modeled their look AFTER NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (Windows 95 being the most prominent of these, as well as AmigaOS 2+).One of the things that has been discussed recently has been the creation of a "Reference Distribution" on Linux and, possibly, other *BSD platforms to allow us to better demonstrate what GNUstep is capable of doing.What I can tell you will never happen is throwing out gnustep-gui in favor of a replacement. Let's consider your suggestion of CoreGTK. If we moved to that we would no longer have compatibility with macOS, also we would not be able to use libs-xcode to build projects from macOS on GNUstep platforms. Additionally, the framework you suggest lacks many of the widgets we already have so, while on the surface, it might seem like a good move it is simply not a viable solution. So, any notion of replacement is not one that we will consider under any circumstances.NOW, all of that being said... it is perfectly acceptable and possible for you to port that framework to work with GNUstep. You don't have to use gnustep-gui if you don't wish to. That would be fairly awesome. There is nothing that says you can't use any framework you wish in conjunction with GNUstep. The more the merrier. :)Yours Sincerely, GCOn Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 6:14 PM Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Bruce,On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 10:34 AM bruce <darkoverlordofdata@gmail.com> wrote:I love gnustep objective-c and Foundation. But the UI is pretty ugly. Theming fixes it cosmetically, but it doesn’t fix the real issues. The menu and main icon don’t really fit on any modern desktop. And the GUI itself is buggy, and leaves artifacts strewn all over the window.
I am not sure what you mean by this. Instead of making general statements like the above filing bug reports on github (https://github.com/gnustep) would be more useful as they would provide more context to the actual issues you are referring to and also help us address the problem you seem to be seeing. I have been lead for many years and use GNUstep every day, including with LARGE customers...Please see https://eggplant.io (Keysight) they have 1000s of clients and their product is using GNUstep's master branch.Additionally, there are some very attractive themes for GNUstep... namely...<gnustep-narcissus.png>And...<nesedah.png>As well as the Windows theme... (on windows of course)...<WinSavePanel_Full.jpg>So tbh, I’ve been investigating GtkSharp, since dotnet8.0 is now available on linux, and is in ‘beta’ on freebsd. While investigating that, I discovered gtkcore, a gtk binding for gnustep. It has some minor issues, but not the magnitude of the issues with cocoa, and gtk is well known territory.
Gtk is not my favorite toolkit, I would prefer a working cocoa, or even qt. But the freebsd desktop uses it in xfce, and with gnustep cocoa so unusable, I’m thinking that gtkcore is now the only way ahead to develop gui applications with gnustep. Or, I suppose you could fix cocoa - but that gets so much push back I’ve given up hope.The best way to cooperate with the community is to file bugs and give useful feedback -- which you have NOT done here. Simply saying "it doesn't work" or "it's ugly" is not going to help because people need SPECIFIC feedback to make things better.PS. The Gtk and Windows themes both use NATIVE widgets from those environments.--Bruce Davidson--Yours Sincerely, GCGregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patronhttps://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c - OpenHub standings--Bruce Davidson--Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patronhttps://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c - OpenHub standings--Bruce Davidson--Bruce Davidson
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
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