Re: GNUstep Window Manager (was RE: Idea)

[Helge Hess]

Nicola Pero wrote:
> > I just tried the latest snapshot (core + examples).
> Hi Helge, I must say I appreciate a lot this constructive attitude. :-) 

Did you expect something else ? ;-)

It's definitly not my goal to offend any GNUstep UI developer (even if
it might sound like that) - my comments are meant seriously.

> Yes - these are the mentioned X problems.

Needs to be fixed. It's completly unusable because of this. I've never
seen such behaviour in any X application before.

> With Window Maker all this stuff works, with other window managers it's
> more difficult.  One problem is also that if your window manager policy is
> not click-to-focus, then it gets even more difficult to make the OPENSTEP
> API work with your X window manager policy.  

I use click-to-focus.

> Edit.app is a very old app not maintained any more.  Try Ink.app instead.

Ok, this is better. Copy&Paste doesn't work (strange pasting behaviour,
completly broken).

Why don't you remove 'old' test apps ?

> > In Finger.app this happens when clicking the stop-button (bug in
> > gstep-base NSTask ?):
> The bug is more likely in Finger.app itself.  It's harmless anyway.

Yep, just wanted to note. Does Finger not use NSTask ???

> I'm sorry - this is my fault :-) - I promised I would rearrange the
> examples module so that it's clear which are the interesting apps to try,
> and which are the old ones we don't support anymore.  I'll try rearranging
> it tonight.

Sorry, on one side you complain that we don't take a look at the stuff
and on the other side the available examples are outdated or
not-working.
So what do you expect from a developer, should he read to check the
source to see how great gstep-gui is ???

BTW: another thing which I dislike is that so much daemons need to be
started and that they default to be started as root. It would be great
if this would be a bit more 'intelligent', eg they should be started if
not running and terminated if no app uses them anymore.

> > Further, if no DISPLAY variable is set, any GS UI program segfaults.
> 
> If you elaborate more on this, we will be very grateful, and fix it.

---snip---
gnustep@marvin:~/src/examples-20010108/gui/Ink > unset DISPLAY
gnustep@marvin:~/src/examples-20010108/gui/Ink > openapp Ink.app
/LOCAL/home/gnustep/GNUstep-20010108/System/Tools/openapp: line 203:
15349 Segmentation fault     
$full_appname/$GNUSTEP_HOST_CPU/$GNUSTEP_HOST_OS/$LIBRARY_COMBO/$appname
"$@"
---snap---

> I don't dare suggesting any application since it seems every application -
> except stuff like the gimp and kword - is an `absolutely trivial'
> application.  Of course, I don't have the time to write something like the
> gimp just to show to people that they can use the library.

This is basically my opinion. I would like to see a Diagram.app :-), or
as a starting point the Draw2.app from MacOSX (isn't even the source
available for Draw ?). Those are not as difficult as kword and gimp, but
certainly have no trivial UI.

Maybe you also want to extend Finger, eg so that ping's output isn't
just put into a textfield but into a tableview.

> Anyway, if you are just interested to see the `basic widgets' working, you
> may try GSTest.

Unfortunatly I can't: the menu vanishes if I try to select something ...

Greetings
  Helge