GNUstep Project Gets New Chief Maintainer

stivi writes "Gregory Casamento has recently accepted the position of GNUstep Maintainer. Adam Fedor, former GNUstep leader writes: 'After over 15 years of being the Chief Maintainer for GNUstep, I've found I have too many other responsibilities to devote as much time to GNUstep as is necessary. I still plan on contributing to GNUstep in the future in a lower capacity.' Gregory has been a prolific developer for GNUstep for the past seven years and is currently the maintainer for Gorm (the graphical interface designer) and the GUI library. I think he will make a great choice to lead GNUstep in the future. New plans for change have been set up already. Thank you Adam for the past, congratulations Gregory to the future."

Direction

Hopefully we see GNUStep get some definitive direction to show the world that it's still alive. Most people think it's a legacy development tool kit which at one time was meant to replicate OpenStep, but is now dead, though that is not the case, but they need to let the world know they are alive. Also, they either need place nicer with the rest of the Linux/Unix desktops(Gnome or KDE) or either acknowledge that they are indeed their own little enviroment(the site still tries to pass it off as development libraries and tools)

Re:Direction

There is at least one effort [etoile-project.org] in the direction of a desktop environment. Theming is provided by the Camaelon [etoile-project.org] bundle.

On the toolkit/tools side of things, the major hurdles are:

• app icon (perhaps could be integrated with/translated to the f.d.o. systray standard)
  
• the work it takes to set up GNUstep just to launch an app (e.g., setting up paths -- thankfully handled transparently in my Gentoo setup)
  
• incompatibility between GNUstep services and dbus, etc. etc.
  
• non-standard build system (still easy enough to making into ebuilds/RPMs/etc.) and monolithic libraries

Sidestep [gna.org] is an experiment in addressing these issues.

Ok I read TFA

And... I think this dude is a complete moron. He types (on the page and in his blog) all this "business" speak gibberish which, in the end, means nothing. He says that he thinks KDE and Gnome are "amateurish" but doesn't bother to explain his reasoning behind the assertion. To me, this implies that he doesn't actually have a reason behind the assertion and that the whole silly blog is propaganda. I find his "business speak" patronising, transparent and meaningless. It may work for Microsoft, but propaganda does not work for the audience he is (supposed) to be targetting.

Re:Ok I read TFA

"He says that he thinks KDE and Gnome are "amateurish" but doesn't bother to explain his reasoning behind the assertion."

He does to some degree. He clearly states that neither look like they started with a clean vision of what the desktop environment should be and have simply "evolved" to what you see now. He also states that the code base which makes up most of Gnome is a nightmare. I can't speak about KDE too much since I don't use it (strikes me too much as Windows, which I don't particularly like).

GNUStep looks something like the Sun OpenWindows desktop used to... Icons and apps minimize to the desktop, not the the taskbar area.

Either way, I just hope that it will finally be easy to customize the behavior of windows... For example:

I want my Xterm window to maximize to the vertical height of the screen without changing width when I double-click the title bar. How would you tell a non-programmer to accomplish that in Gnome or KDE? Will it be easier in GNUStep?

(and I am sure the Gnome answer is to navigate some XML file to find the variable Window.click.title.bar.some.other.arbitrary.and.me aningless.string.that.you.will.not.know.unless.you .coded.it and change the default value from 1 to 3. Excellent usability there)

The *big* problem with GNUStep...

was (and is), that few people realised how great the original NeXTStep environment - which GNUStep attempts to clone - was.

I was already around as a CS major at the time NeXTStep basically failed in the marketplace due to a) asinine marketing/pricing on the part of NeXT Inc. and b) the fact that everytime we showed the NeXTStep environment to fellow CS students and CS faculty, you would mostly get blank stares, and a few polite remarks. But no more.

Few "got it" how easy this was to use - concepts like the seperation of the user interface specification from the core logic of a program simply did not register with people weaned on TurboVision ("one line per code for each UI element"), and Apple has (probably rightfully so) more or less given up on educating people on how great the current successor to NeXTStep (Cocoa) is.

Nowadays, people code for OS X because OS X is seen as a hip system with a small but viable installed base, and the fact that the dev tools are extremely nice is just an added bonus.

So if GNUStep is just an Open Source version of something that is obsolete, why care at all?

Well, because the likes of KDE could have had it so much easier if they had used something like GNUStep (the structure of which is pretty revolutionary), instead of toolkits like QT, which were developed to be just a "better Win32" API.

Make no mistake, QT/KDE et al. turned out to *be* a better Win32/Foundation class environment, but I guess that most folks who were ever proficient in developing for the NeXT environment will agree, that a widely used and enhanced GNUStep would have been even more productive than that.

And still could be someday - after all, Linux desktops are such a melting pot of different toolkits and environments, that perhaps some "killer GNUStep apps" (graphics apps, like an Illustrator clone would be a good start) could get people to notice GNUStep again.

One can always dream... :-)

Just my $0.2E-32

A.

Re:The *big* problem with GNUStep...

So if GNUStep is just an Open Source version of something that is obsolete, why care at all?

Well, if you care whether Linux is going to make a dent in Microsoft's market share, you should care very much about GNUStep. For my part, I'll just keep using the Mac, so GNUStep is mostly a matter of nostalgia.

-jcr

Please explain if you know...

what is useful about GNUstep? I read throw the Wikipedia article on it, and I got the impression that it is yet another GUI toolkit. So I am curious as to what makes it more useful in which situations: ie. where does it shine?

Where to begin?

In 1985, Steve Jobs left Apple to found a new computer company. His company attracted many very talented individuals. They created the NeXT computer, a very advanced, very beautiful computer running a Unix-like operating system eventually called NeXTStep, which eventually became OSX.

I use NeXTStep as proof that Microsoft has set the computer industry back 12 years. NeXTStep used display postscript on both the video display, and for printing. It was fully-preemptive, with a clean, POSIX-compliant system interface. The application framework was extremely advanced, and extremely easy to code for. Using Objective-C as the programming language of choice, NeXTStep had some very advanced programs for the time, such as Lotus Improv, the spreadsheet MS-Excel wishes to become when it grows up.

As it is, MS-Windows still lags behind NeXTStep by a good amount, especially in terms of ease-of-development, ease-of-use, and aesthetics.

Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT.

Anyway, when it became apparent that NeXT was not going to survive, they released a bunch of specifications that together made up the technical documentation for OpenStep, based on NeXTStep. The idea was that OS vendors could implement OpenStep APIs, and application vendors could target a single API for multiple OSs.

GnuStep is an implementation of the OpenStep API, and other programs to recreate the NeXT environment on any Unix-like operating system. Applications written for GnuStep can be recompiled to target OS X with little-to-no work.

Basically, when people say Linux needs an easy-to-use, easy-to-develop-for application environment and desktop, they are talking about GnuStep, whether they know it or not. It's not as flashy as GNOME or KDE, but it's much cleaner, easier to develop for, easier to use, and much more consistent. Where both GNOME and KDE try to be similar to MS-Windows, GnuStep tries to be like NeXTStep, the best application development and user desktop ever created.

Re:Where to begin?

Tony said:
>Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web on a NeXT.

Other interesting programs which began on NeXTstep:

  - FreeHand v4 (essentially a port to Windows and the Mac of Altsys Virtuoso v2)
  - Doom
  - Lotus Improv
  - Stone Design's Create
  - sBook

An interesting opensource app w/ NeXTstep roots:

  - http://www.cenon.info/ [cenon.info]

William

Re:Where to begin?

Microsoft is certainly one offender, and certainly the largest, but let's not forget our dear friend, X11. Pre-Irix-4.0 SGI ran NeWS, which was also display postscript based. Nexts ran NextStep, VAXStations VWS, all relatively light, efficient, and functional, and everywhere I went the same whine arose, "we can't use this, it doesn't run X11!" So, Nexts weren't purchased, even though given the software and performance, they weren't out of line versus Sun 3/60, Apollo, etc, and SGI had to port everything to X in order to survive. We took a performance hit on every machine that had to run X versus the previous window-manager, had to add megs of expensive (early 1990s) memory just to not hear the disks whine, and generally gained very little in return for adopting this, ahem, standard. Then, if you wanted to see real death by toolkit, running Motif on a Vaxstation 3100/38 that had run smoothly under previous versions of X alone was a good example. We had a program that *somebody* insisted had to be Motif only, and the performance was so apalling we spent ~$15K on an Indy, just to be able to work. That VAX was perfectly fine (and would have still been useful if the programs the lab used had an X11-only, VWS, or even Tek-4107 interface), but it had to be retired due to a bloated toolkit.

The Knight with the Chicken is going to be very busy in the computer industry one of these days.

Maybe they can fix ....

Their annoying usage of a top level conf dir ~/GNUStep (or whatever it is). No other app I've seen does such garbage, dot-dirs all ftw.

What GNUStep needs is...

Sexiness. It isn't at the moment.

It needs users to go "wow I want that" and for developers to go "wow I want to do that". Take a lesson from Apple and Microsoft here, make it look and sound good.
 

Re:gnustep

If they get serious about more complete source compatibility with Cocoa, it could go a long way to attracting Mac developers to Linux if they can accomplish ports of many Cocoa apps with simple recompiles.

Re:gnustep

Those interested in GNUstep as a poor man's Yellow Box may be interested in a younger, more focused project: Cocotron [cocotron.org]. It seeks to clone Foundation and Appkit, and to provide tools to cross compile for other platforms with Xcode. It's a little Windows centric, but support for Linux, Solaris, and others seems to be in the works.

Re:you

in the same manner that i would spit at a crazy person waving a sign as i drive past them, yes.

Re:gnustep

People who value a nice, open development environment and the integrated and synergistic environment which such creates. Consider a typical work-flow in NeXTstep:

  - write an article in TeXview.app
  - select a word, hit = and get a definition / thesaurus entry while writing it
  - create a drawing in Altsys Virtuoso which needs an equation in a label
  - copy the proper equation out of your .tex file from the TeXview.app window
  - paste in the equation into Altsys Virtuoso
  - invoke the Service TeX eq -> eps in Altsys Virtuoso and get a .eps of the typeset equation (you can send the source to a background layer for reference (what I usually do) or delete it.
  - select the address of the journal receiving the article
  - invoke Poste.app to bring up a window from you you can print an envelope to mail it for submission

The environment affords similar integration w/ Mail.app as well if desired.

The commercial developer Nova Mind, http://www.nova-mind.com/ [nova-mind.com] uses it to get a Windows version of their Mac OS X software.

And for those who say just use Mac OS X (I do at work):

(from: http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=4190&cid=63590 [macslash.org])

    - monolithic main menu bar w/ wasted blank space between the menus and the (optional) information / settings menus for Airport &c.

    - verbose Mac-style shortcut descriptions w/ arcane symbols instead of concise NeXT-style shortcuts (in NeXTstep, Save is indicated by ``s'' and Save as by ``S'', no Command symbol (it's assumed---Control only as a modifier is reserved for personal shortcuts / Unix-use), Shift by case)

    - Print, Hide, Services and Quit are no longer top-level menus where they made more sense and were quicker to get at.

    - scroll bars on wrong side (this can't be fixed by theming 'cause Carbon apps are responsible for deciding where scroll bars are placed :( having them on the left means a window is more useful when partially dragged off-screen and results in less-frequent need to resize a window

    - no Webster.app (this has since been addressed w/ 10.4), Digital Librarian / Shakespeare or Oxford's Book of Quotations --- in NeXTstep this meant one was guaranteed to have Command = _not_ used in an app so it'd be available for looking things up in Websters

    - Pantone colour library --- used to be this was licensed w/ the system, now each graphic app which needs it has to pay a license, and one _doesn't_ get them in one's office apps (major negative for adhering to corporate identity programs where such is specced)

    - vertical menu

    - pop-up main menu --- this is wonderfully fast / efficient / elegant. For me, ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuoso is pretty much a gesture, right-click, down a bit, then straight over and release

    - repositionable sub-menus --- no need for inscrutable button bars, and one can make a given command easy to get to as needed (when doing lots of envelopes I tear off the poste.app Services menu, put it in the bottom left corner, then an envelope is merely a selection, mouse move to bottom left, click, shift right to the print menu (also aligned on the bottom edge for this) click away. (takes longer to say / type than to do)

William
(who really should save all that and put it on a web page or something instead of typing it up each time --- check my rants at http://groups.google.com/ [google.com] in comp.sys.next.advocacy to see if I forgot anything...)

Apple for one...

Well, to be more accurate, they cared about NeXT enough to base OSX off of it. GNUstep is the most API-compatible option that can run on alternative platforms. Of course, its not because of the API that it is so interesting as a desktop platform, and developers and users have come to appreciate it in OSX.

The two main open desktop projects (GNOME and KDE) heavily mimick the user interface paradigm established by MS. GNUstep is a good complement with the NeXT (also OSX) user interface paradigm (separate menu, management of windows individually and by application, applications registering services for more complex/powerful gui actions than what is done by drag/drop, copy/paste, etc).

GNUstep/NeXT/OSX services are the only appropriate equivalent of command line pipes in GUI land, which makes it a highly logical fit for those who understand the beauty and power of pipes in *nix. For example, in Gnome/KDE if an application wants spell check, they need to implement it themselves or at least take in a library and hook things around it. In GNUstep, any text application I can highlight something, click services/spell check if I have a spell check app installed, and it will happen. People complained for a long time about browsers not having spellcheck, but with services implemented and used browsers would have had it for free. It's kinda like piping the output from some command into aspell. All kinds of interesting things have been done with services, and someone implementing something new and different ends up enhancing all the desktop software that is appropriate for it without extra effort.

I have used GNUstep many a time to see how they are going, and if the environment were more complete (i.e. a GNUstep web browser, and IM client, office software) I would use it as my desktop full time. I remember before gcc had objc++ and before gnustep & gorm had nib support, that those two barriers going away was expected to allow all kinds of wonderful porting from OSX (i.e. the OSX Firefox code, one of their IM clients, whatever else). I haven't seen any word on efforts since those developments. I would love to contribute, but my plate is too full.

The downside is that in GNUstep more so than KDE/Gnome, non-native applications are really jarring, without separate menu and not interfacing with services. WindowMaker does a good job grouping windows by application for application hiding, but it isn't enough. Also GNUstep is capable of doing a lot, but fonts, for example, are a pain in the ass (at last check with the decent backend with anti-aliasing you had to package fonts in .nfonts). Also GNUstep could probably accomodate more of the freedesktop specification than they currently do, however I do recognize that freedesktop specifications pretty much have the MS way of doing things in mind and therefore some things aren't appropriate for GNUstep. Also, GNUstep doesn't have a perfect window manager to use with it. WindowMaker is very good, but doesn't render menus/dock in a way that is guaranteed to be visually consistant with GNUstep. WindowMaker is probably the best effort to focus on moving forward, but there is work to be done.

If you work it, GNUstep is a lot further along than most people realize, but the fact you have to work hard to get a complete environment discourages new users. And even when all is said and done, things are a bit rough around the edges in spots...

Re:gnustep

The game Oolite (see my sig) was ONLY portable to Linux because of GNUstep. If there was no GNUstep, Oolite would be Macintosh only.

It's a shame that GNOME and KDE have become the mainstream desktops - if GNUstep had become dominant instead, we'd have had easy compatibility with Cocoa in Linux.

GNUstep Base is also a very handy Objective-C class library, and is pretty much completely compatible with Mac OS X Cocoa.