the gnustep wreckage. Part 2: ProjectCenter

[Riccardo]

Hey,

welcome to the second part... You are already brave if you read the 
first, but I think the second is important too.

One of the leading aspects of GNUstep should be its development 
environment. If I were to use VI and write interfaces and makefiles by 
hand I can use command line or motif tools. GNUstep should be a bit more 
advanced here in the offering.
Gregory works hard on one part of the problem: Gorm! Maybe the most 
maintained application in the gnustep project.

Now I thought it is time to upgrade PRICE, my own app, to ProjectCenter 
0.4x since that is the future, the format changed and many improvements 
were publicized by Serg (hey! I hope you read this mail).

Unfortunately after several hours of trying I came to the conclusion: 
unusable. Really.

- upgrading the project makes quite a mess of the files, moves them on, 
translates the plists, misses old README files and assumes new ones are 
somewhere whey they don't exist... I am already worried on how I will 
have to commit CVS all this file and directory shuffling

- the interface itself is extremely buggy and unstable.
	- editing a file in the below pane works only the first time after 
opening. Once you have switched to the build or run pane there is no way 
back you can't get back to editing your files...
	- after a while I get a lot of exceptions and inconsistency 
warnings about grid and placement of invalid objects. Probably this is a 
consequence of triggering the above...

- preferences are not saved. Modifying the main interface file 
(xxx.gorm) in the project preference panel has no effect!  I need to 
edit manually the project file in an editor and change the plist value
- changing the MAKE executable preference takes effect only after saving 
and restarting PC. Not very handy.
Besides, why should be the location of the MAKE be a PROJECT preference 
and not a global PC pref?
I assume make stays at the same place on a computer while sharing a 
project among two computers makes the useless necessity to every time to 
modify the make location... absurd

- the new panel for the information in the info panel is strange. There 
are two entries for the license and license description.. filling them 
out makes them appear maybe in the wrong order in the panel?

xxxx
GPL
Released under...

maybe they just need to be swapped or the contents should be different 
(but then the hint values should be different)

and last but not least a big problem I could not find workarounds for. 
HOW can I specify the NSTypes for an application? This is very important 
or PRICE can't open a single file!!!

IN old times that was specified in the plist that was never touched 
(even if auto-generated). I tried copying the old nstypes in the new 
.plist PC generated, but PC first ignores them and at the next restart 
it regenerates the .plist with NSType (); empty. I wonder if there is a 
panel to insert them now? I didn't find it.


I would like to see those bugs squeezed to make PC usable again. 
Although many "features" are missing that one could like to see (like 
colored syntax) I'd really like to see important bugs or interface 
problems resolved so that at least I can develop again (and so, I hope 
many others) and deliver finally price 0.4.1 that is ready for Os-X 
since 2 months now.

How can I praise GNUstep and evangelize if I have trouble using it 
myself?

-R

PS: should these PC bugs be posted on savannah ? In any case I preferred 
to tell them here, maybe for some (like NSTypes) there exist a known 
workaround or maybe serg knows them already. If he maintains PC at all...