Re: Look and Feel

[Jesse Ross]

> > I'm thinking of what a user first sees when they launch a GNUstep 
> > based environment, be it Backbone or Etoile, or Garma  or the LiveCD 
> > or what-have-you.
>
> But you see, Jesse, you're making it more simple than it actually is. 
> Etoile can have a different /default/ theme than the one that ships 
> with the GNUstep-GUI source package itself. So your statement doesn't 
> make much sense in light of that. I fully expect Etoile to do this, as 
> a matter of fact. You really should be concentrating your efforts 
> here, IMHO.

Maybe a better way to look at it is this, it might explain my dilemma 
better:

GNUstep is a toolkit. A toolkit doesn't necessarily imply an interface.

I'm a designer. I want to help the project using my set of skills.

However, I can't design an interface for a toolkit. Luckily, desktops 
using GNUstep have adopted the interface of NeXTSTEP. I say to myself 
(and a few Slashdotters say it too when the LiveCD announcement is 
made), "man, that thing looks like it was designed in the 80s". So I 
figure I can help with that.

The icon project seems like a good start, and it seems to be happening 
throughout GNUstep proper. I had been working on designs for an 
interface I wanted to create, the GNUstep interface seemed lacking, so 
I made some tweaks and posted it. Since icon handling seems to be 
something that is happening throughout the entire project, I thought 
the windowing interface would follow the same pattern.

The windowing interface seems to be a different beast, though, with 
people wanting a cleaner separation of it and the toolkit, than was the 
situation with the icons.

Maybe I'm crazy and made some assumptions I shouldn't have. Sorry if I 
offended anyone. I want to help design icons, and I want to help design 
a really nice theme that a bunch of people adopt and like. Maybe I can 
even provide some ideas into additions to the new Dock.app and 
Wmaker.app, if the developers want my feedback. I'll also try to help 
with promotional materials where I can.

I had hoped to help deliver a GNUstep-based OS, branded with the 
GNUstep name and logo, with a default interface that I helped design 
and with some of my own icons, and then have people say, "Wow, this 
looks really nice, I think I'll try it out". That was what I wanted to 
contribute to the project, but maybe it makes more sense to help out 
one of the individual desktop initiatives instead.


J.