Re: GNUstep on Windows, "desktop" bundles...

[Alex Perez]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Larry Cow wrote:

> Alex Perez a écrit :
> 
> >Someone offered to build on the base installer, it might even have been 
> >larry cow---I will check my mail archives and find who it was.
> >  
> >
> I think it was me, but not before about a month. And I think we need to 
> write some things down before facing the beast. Like: what should be 
> servicized (gdomap, gdnc and gpbs, for now), where do we install things 
> (c:/gnustep by default?), how do we interact with the start menu (a 
> default action for .app "files" would be a nice thing), and so on.
gdomap definately needs to be servicized if it is going to be used (alexms 
patch removes this requirement) because it requires administrative privs 
to bind to ports. gpbs and gdnc should not be because they are per-user.

IMHO GNUstep should be installed into C:\Program Files\GNUstep. People do 
not install it there because of the whole "space issue" but that space 
issue is rendered irrelevant because NTFS retains the old 8-char 
filenames. With this in mind, installing to C:\Progra~1\GNUstep is 
perfectly safe.

> Maybe this should be added on the wiki and brought to wider discussion 
> (though I thinkmost gnustepers read this list)?
Good idea. Want to start one?

> 
> >IMHO there should probably just be one installer, with some radios for 
> >developer/runtime and also base/gui, unless there is a size issue.
> >  
> >
> Unless the thing gets too big, that's probably better.
Yes, nvidia and ATI have proven time and time again that simplicity of 
downloads are generally more important than size these days.
> 
> >Yes I think it's an excellent idea in concept but it's one of hose things 
> >you can really mess up if you don't do it properly. A desktop 
> >bundle that did something akin to GTK-WIMP might be helpful to us (in fact 
> >we could probably liberally borrow win32 code from this project for this 
> >bundle).
> >  
> >
> That's an idea, but it won't be much useful until we got some real 
> theming support into GNUstep. I think nobody want's a "special win32" 
> version of -gui, do we?

I suppose it depends on what you mean by "Special". Can you be more 
specific?

> >Best thing would just be just to have GNUstep apps use windows default 
> >colors under windows, like GTK-WIMP does.
> >  
> >
> Yup. That shouldn't be the hardest part, and could improve the 
> experience a lot.
> 
> >Under windows, horizontal-in-window is the paradigm, so I think we should 
> >stick to it long-term if possible. Even NeXT did this.
> >  
> >
> Still we should provide a way to use a "fully next-like" environment 
> under windows, if the user wants. But the "integrated" version should be 
> the default.

I agree completely, but it probably shouldn't be the default.

> >well recently it seems somewhat broken again, but I am sure we can borrow 
> >gtk win32 pasteboard code.
> >  
> >
> And what will become of gpbs? If we could live with one less service to 
> run... :)

yes exactly. the problem is that the pasteboard paradigms might not match 
up completely. Actually I think the windows pasteboard and gnustep 
pasteboard paradigm are more in line with each other than the X 
pasteboard paradigm is with the OpenStep one is.

> > >A whole other issue entirely. IMHO we should apply alexm's 
> >no-gdomap-required patch so it's on by default under windows. gdomap 
> >should maybe be run as a service under Win2k/XP since thats the closest 
> >thing to a daemon that we have and if we dont do it that way then you 
> >wouldn't be able to run a gnustep app as a non-administrative user, which 
> >is bad bad bad.
> >  
> >
> gdomap should surely be run as a service. Actually, I wonder if 
> supporting win9x isn't useless, since it's about to be dropped, and 
> since things will be far easier on NT stuff.
> 
> Yeah, I know, my father uses Win98 too, but I'm sure he won't use 
> GNUstep anyt
I dont think we've ever supported win98. Win98 is not worth the effort, 
and you probably agree.