Re: Package building

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Sergii,


sorry for the long time to reply, I lost this mail


On 11/23/19 11:38 PM, Sergii Stoian wrote:
> > I'm working exactly on that, since day one with GNUstep and it has been a very 
> > long time now.
> We can discuss how to join our efforts privately. What do you think?


Of course! I don't mind writing in public either, but in separate 
threads and in the appropriate mailing list (here, or maybe GAP, 
depending on the topic!)


> > Actually, given the latest developments of macOS and Windows 10 which are 
> > transforming a Desktop in a horrible sort of mega-tablet UI with eye-hurting 
> > graphics, GNUstep DE would be kind a shelter, sadly still incomplete and 
> > patchy... and not completely useful, although it did improve in the many years.
> What do you mean by “incomplete and patchy”?
> What do you means by “not completely useful”? NEXTSPACE quite useful for me 
> even from development master branch. Or do you mean GNUstep libraries?


I don't mean NEXTSPACE, but the Environment I get when sticking together 
GNUstep, GAP and a couple of more things. "My" GNUstep Desktop, but the 
same that could be available in any Distribution, if it were complete.

Some are GNUstep library bugs, but most are shortcomings or bugs in the 
respective applications, which make the whole usage less pleasant.

Some random thoughts:

- GWorkspace is roughly acceptable

- GNUMail is still buggy... I worked hard, but some stuff is left out. 
Sometimes it hangs in network. sometimes it does not format things 
correctly, etc. Then it has also "limitations": way of handling 
addresses, address books. I'd like a more flexible way of handling 
attachments too (not just inline, but more traditional)

- ProjectCenter is quite stable now, although it has bugs when adding 
and removing files sometimes, I fixed it crashing in many situations. 
Albeit improved in warnings and error parsing from the compiler, it 
still misses proper parsing! The Editor is still limited. My next work 
will making the detached window editor useful, for example.

- GORM misses undo and positioning and editing of objects is more 
cumbersome even compared to old Interface Builder versions of XCode 2 and 3.

- SystemPreferences misses some OS dependent panels (e.g.xrender and 
wireless configuration) which are hard to write given the plethora of 
Linux and BSD setups

- GSPdf has some bugs with zooming and panning... I wonder if it 
handling correctly caching too, I need to investigate

- Terminal still has some subtle bugs in selection and scrolling

- Zipper could use a better integration with Finder/GWorkspace, the 
creation of archives is very rough!


and so on.... nothing of this looks terrible, but if you add these 
things together, not just Mac or Windows are more useful, but we fall 
behind XFCE. Maybe you are much better in NEXTSPACE, I did not check.

Since I use "vintage" Macs, I use many of these apps on Mac too: they 
are a way of getting "current" stuff on an old OS: that is the nice of 
Open Source! But even there they show most of these shortcomings. I try 
to fix them there too, so that I can discern between an App limitation 
and a specific GNUstep bug.

Riccardo