Re: GNUstep on Windows, "desktop" bundles...

[Andreas Hoeschler]

> Ideally, I think we'd like to have a "GNUstep developer" install and a 
> "GNUstep runtime" install (for people who just want to use GNUstep..)

This would be a killer. Whoever has the expertise to create such beasts 
please take the time. Our attempts to even get GNUstep compiled on 
Windows weren't very successful. We under circumstances would be 
willing to pay for this to happen. Is there already a general policy 
for handling such cases? Say we were willing to pay XXX.XX EUR for 
getting a given GNUstep feature (e.g. the above mentioned installers 
for windows) realized. How would we find the right guy for the job and 
how could payment be done? I am thinking of a web portal were entities 
(companies,...) could register jobs (e.g. create a windows installer 
for GNUstep) and other entities apply for performing the task for a 
given amount. The result of this work of course would be put under GPL.

> Which also bring the second point of this mail... even with a good and 
> easy to use installer, and even with a gui theme matching  the Windows 
> GUI, GNUstep apps won't blend easily, because too many things are done 
> as if GNUstep was it's own OS rather than a cross-platform development 
> environment. In order to have gui applications blending easily, we 
> need to have things like menu in windows, use of the local file panel, 
> tracking of the color scheme, etc. And that's probably the same thing 
> if we want to run GNUstep apps under KDE/GNOME. Alex Malmberg once 
> raised the possibility of having "desktop" bundles, that is, isolate 
> all the specific code to "blend" in a particular desktop 
> (Windows,KDE,GNOME,Backbone,Garma,XFCE,CDE,ROX,etc.) in separate 
> bundles -- a clean solution. Do people agree on that idea ? and what 
> kind of things do we need to abstract ?
>
> What I can list is :
> - color schemes
> - menu policy (vertical, horizontal, in windows, etc.)
> - theme
> - open/save panels


Please no. I hate the windows open/save panels. They are inefficient as 
hell. The user should at least have the choice whether to use the 
native or the GNUstep ones.

Regards,

  Andreas