Re: GNUstep on MS Windows

[Helge Hess]

On 05.12.2003, at 00:46, Rogelio M.Serrano Jr. wrote:
> On 2003-12-05 07:30:02 +0800 Alex Perez <aperez@student.santarosa.edu> 
> wrote:
> > > Do we really to turn GNUstep into something like the mozilla suite?
> > This is not what's being proposed. Any in any event, Rogelio, any 
> > windows-specific work done in terms of overriding drawing of widgets 
> > and such should live in the win32 backend code.
> I agree. GNUstep on windows will look like GNUstep on linux right?

Please no, that would be awkward. Windows is Windows and not GNUstep.

> GNUstep must be cross-platform. But do we want it to look like native 
> apps
> such that you dont know it is GNUstep?

Define cross-platform. I can see at least three very different 
definitions of that:
a) cross-CPU, like NeXTstep for i386, SPARC, HP and m68k
b) cross-OS, like X11 on Windows, Linux and MacOSX
c) cross-UI, like SWT using gtk+ on Linux and Win-UI on Windows

I think the a) approach of NeXTstep was *very* impressive, especially 
in the context of fat binaries. Very cool and pretty easy to replicate 
with Linux.

b) make it easy to run applications developed on a "foreign" system on 
the native host. OPENSTEP/NT is also in this category. While this 
somewhat openes up the market for those "foreign" apps, in pratice this 
s*** big time for the user who wants something which integrates well 
into his environment. OOo on MacOSX is a good example for this.

c) this is *really* hard to do. I still wonder whether it is possible 
at all. So far I think that Mozilla XUL technology is the correct 
approach, but with the wrong implementation, see below.

> Im sorry for the assumptions but my impression from the email that 
> started this thread
> is that GNUstep must look like windows on windows.

If it wants to be successful, it must look like Windows on Windows. 
This is why Eclipse is hot on Windows while Java Swing is crap.

> The Mozilla suite works that way.

That is only half of the truth. Mozilla, like Java Swing or 
OPENSTEP/NT, does render the widgets itself, which s***s - although the 
Mozilla implementation is pretty good (also due to support for 
architecture specific XUL resources).
XUL does provide the abstraction to let the backend render widgets 
using the native widget systems and I find it *extremely* unfortunate 
that Mozilla doesn't use that in practice (neither on Windows nor on 
MacOSX).

> I thought that GNUstep should look the same on all platforms.

Well, see above, depends on what you mean by platforms. A GNUstep which 
looks like GNUstep on Windows is pretty much useless.

> We dont want it to look like QNX on QNX do we?

Yes we certainly want to.


IMHO GNUstep/AppKit on Windows is pretty useless. OpenStep is the wrong 
technology to do option c) above. It can do a) and b), but a) doesn't 
solve the Windows issue and b) provides little value.

regards,
  Helge
--
OpenGroupware.org       http://www.opengroupware.org/