Re: Getting to 1.0 for gui

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 10 Nov 2007, at 15:08, Gregory John Casamento wrote:

> All,
>
> I'd like to have a discussion and come to a consensus on what  
> everyone feels would comprise a 1.0 gui release.

Two things ...

A. glitch free/reliable operation
B. a decent degree of interoperability with gnome and kde in  
particular, but also ms-windows

Technically the issues here are ...

1. solve focus problems and similar window manager related glitches  
so that apps operate smoothly and reliably with all popular window  
managers and all focus management models.
2, make sure cut-and-past and drag-and-drop operations work well with  
gnome/kde/ms-windows
3. theming ... allow users the option of making a gnustep app look  
like something else

NB. I really do mean 'a decent degree', not 'perfect'  
compatibility ... if we make GNUstep behave exactly like a gnome or  
kde or ms-windows app then we lose our identity (and some of our  
advantages), so we should not attempt (and should resist calls) to  
make the behavior identical, but we should have apps that communicate  
well with, and don't look completely out of place when seen with the  
'native' apps.

If we want to attract people to develop apps for GNUstep, we need  
these features so that they are confident they can deploy the apps to  
a wide audience ... this is the starting point.  Once developers know  
that people will be able to use their apps, we can start to convince  
them of the power and ease of use of the frameworks.  On the other  
hand, if developers don't think people will use the apps, they won't  
write them no matter how easy to use our APIs and tools are.