Re: What function sets up the GNUstep environment?

[Fred Kiefer]

Not sure, whether we are all looking for the same thing here. The question is 
which of the gui functionality would your server application use?

Greg is asking for Postscript output. We already have a very primitive way for 
that in the gsc classes so something would be there already. But for a better 
quality and for example PDF output we should rather use cairo. So if there is 
the need for real functionality from the backend we could use cairo just with 
the image surface drawing, that is without any X11 references. But for that you 
would have to build your own version of that library.

Similar things for fonts, if you want to use fonts in a meaningful way you will 
have to rely on a library.

The no-op backed that I was talking about would be simple to implement, but 
also quite useless. The more functionality you expect here, the more complex it 
will get.

Fred



> Am 03.11.2020 um 21:52 schrieb Gustavo Tavares <mucholove@fastmail.com>:
> 
> 
> This is exactly what I need and was looking at doing just that. I did some 
> no-op classes but I have very little experience with there system to do so 
> immediately.
> 
> It doesn’t look like a lot of files but I might be wrong. There are a lot of 
> subtle interactions that I have already bumped into.
> 
> For example, right now, I’m still working through the call to +[NSProcessInfo 
> initalizeWithArguments:count:environment:] (I think I have the name right but 
> I didn’t look it up on my phone.
> 
> Calling this didn’t solve my problem immediately.
> 
> As for testing it’s pretty wonderful. I already have some tests running by 
> enclosing them in a framework (Marcel WeiHer does this in MPWTest)
> 
> The use case as a server backend is compelling too because you can save and 
> interact with User preferences for Font, Color, Theme, etc on the backend 
> just as you would on a frontend.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2020, at 4:19 PM, Gregory Casamento wrote:
>> This is a really interesting notion.   Would the no-op backend (I think we 
>> need a better name) be able to print, or output postscript?  Would it be 
>> possible to use it for testing GUI in some way?
>> 
>> GC
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Nov 3, 2020 at 12:06 PM Fred Kiefer <fredkiefer@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Your problem got me thinking. Would it help you if we offered a „no-op“ 
>> backend for GNUstep? That is a backend where both the window and the drawing 
>> system would be implemented as no-operations.
>> 
>> We could try to get this done as a special GNUstep back configuration. Most 
>> likely we could cheat here by reusing the gsc classes as a real drawing 
>> backend, which of course would not draw but raise subclassResponsibility:. 
>> That means we only need code for the window/event part and a lot of 
>> configuration to switch all the extra libraries off.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Fred 
>>