2009/10/9 Riccardo Mottola
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Hey,
I think you have many good points there. However, GNUstep is a wide project and targets many different users.
Many things you want do not clash with other goals, they only divert manpower. But keep in consideration that in an opensource project people do whatever they deem interesting or useful, there isn't a central planning.
Sure, you're right! I'm start thinking that fork of gui+back for some period of time is not such silly thing...
1. Maturity of GNUstep code for developers (functionality, docs, stability)
2. GUI appearance
3. Portability
4. Applications
Gregory, behind all things you've mentioned I see a goal that can be expressed by the
following phrase: "World (all stuff outside of GNUstep) acceptance of GNUstep as alternative
developer framework that will help creating of alternative desktop environment."
This statement is true, though, do you agree? The problem is that it is reductive, but I think it is true. GNUstep is perhaps more.
Sure, I agree! Considering the statement above making 'modern' themes, integrating apps into foreign DE is not the first thing we should focus on.
Do you really think that improving website, theme (argh!) lead us to rise of user attention
to GNUstep? I don't think so. I see a lot of people comparing GNUstep with GNOME/KDE ("What's
I think so. We may argue about theming, but a good, informative and usable website is really useful!
3. Stop trying to work everywhere. Let's make it working good at one place, then go to another. Let's
speak frankly - we can't compete with Qt. Despite the existing of DO, Objective-C and other great things.
I disagree here. Being portable is a big asset and we can do that!
Sure it's great asset for mature project. The problem is in spreading the efforts of developers, code becomes hard to read... and code is not become more mature then before.
5. Finish gnustep-gui as it is. Problem areas are: text subsystem, fonts, graphics to name a few.
Agreed...
6. Create working destop environment for developers at least. Some day I realized that I'm working
inside mess of not interacting things. My plan is:
- Create Login application
working on that, check GAP
- Create Preferences
what's wrong with SystemPreferences? Recently also GWorkspace's indexing panel got fixed.
Probably I just don't like it... But it's personal, never mind.
- Create Workspace Manager (Workspace + WindowMaker), excellent integration of GNUstep with it (focus,
app management, dock interaction).
That's fine, but I'd put it lower priority. I care that we need to work well with other windowmanagers too. The best I see medium term is to enable/disable duplicate components and create a gnsutep-based configuration tool
Don't get me wrong but I don't care about support of other window managers until Window Maker support is weak.
- Create Terminal application based on Alex Malmberg application.
it can be improved indeed. It works well, but I miss some features. ON the todo list.
- Create Mail application (GNUmail can be used as starting point).
This is a sensible point. GNUmail is unmaintained sadly. Also in some sense it is "too much" having features here and there, while it lacks certain things i'd like.
- Finish ProjectCenter (anyway it's my responsibility).
Oh I hope that! I want to be able to maintain most projects in GAP with PC. You knwo I am a long-time PC user. Before even you started maintaining it...
7. Make it clean, fast and simple as NS/OS. Personally I'm tired of bloated desktop environments (KDE/GNOME).
I want improved (at reasonable degree) OPENSTEP.
Totally agreed! Even Mac is not clean anymore. I'd like something along mac 10.2/10.3 in terms of features, but with a more consistent, less shiny interface, more NeXTstep...
I can understand people who want new modern look. But then we need designers for that. Look at the Project Center icons - they're just ugly! Keith Ohlfs is a professional designer and I'm afraid we can't create something like that. So just let's use it!
It's not a plan targeting on world domination. It's plan to make comfortable development environment as I see it.
And if it will be comfortable to me it can be useful to somebody else.
Sure, it needs to be somethign useful and clean. I don't want to aim at GNOME or KDE; but something along the line of Xfce.
Summarizing this long email: we should focus on achievable goals by narrowing down portability and loosing
competition with MacOS for now. Let's agree on strong, clean, simple vision of project future and users will
come.
Agreed. We need both users and developers.
But I can also tell you that most development in the past 2 years was good. GNUstep improved (much more than it broke). But a bit "too little" unfortunately in some areas and thus they are unfinished...
I've never said that all of the GNUstep components are bad. -base and -make just great! There are always some bugs but in general I like them. The most, if not all, problem areas are concentrated in GUI and backend. And these part are what users contact with. So let's not start with visual re-engineering but finish what already exist (correct look, correct feel, speed of UI and so on).