Re: Look and Feel

[Jesse Ross]

> I understand your reasons, but to be quite honest if GNUstep direction
> is to be another "me too!" desktop that mimics good and bad decisions
> from the other desktops (and GNOME, KDE and Windows are basically the
> same flavour with a different colour) just to save the masses from
> having to deal with something a bit less usual, then the effort that has
> been put in creating something not only tecnically superior but with a
> string empashis on usability and distinctiveness (even if that
> distinctiveness is NeXT like) would have been in vain.

Completely, completely agree. GNUstep's heritage is in NeXT, not Mac OS X,
even if GNUstep and Mac OS X are pretty much brothers now. I think Apple
has a lot of good ideas, and I'm certainly a big fan of OS X. I also know
that finding what makes something unique is of the utmost importance to
branding and creating an identity. How many attacks has Windows gotten for
ripping off the Mac interface? And how many attacks have KDE and GNOME
gotten for ripping off Windows? When you're simply looking over your
neighbor's fence to figure out their next move (so you can steal it), very
little happens in the way of innovation.

> I'm saying this because I'm begining to fear that the idea is to make
> GNUstep look like GNOME/KDE/WIndows/MacOSX. I've already seen what not
> having the guts to innovate gives to desktops, one ends up using
> Windows,but with another name, badly named apps and an anime background.
>

I hope that my screenshot doesn't make people think too much of the Mac
interface. There are some similarities, but I would prefer the interface
feel simply "modern", and if compared against WinXP and OS X, would feel
like it was designed in a similar era, using similar design principles.

>
> Between a GNOME/KDE look alike I would prefer to stay eternally with the
> exact NeXT looks. For me the real chalenge is to take the NeXT feel and
> give it a modern expression. Many NeXT concepts have been abandoned in
> other desktops either because of ignorance or because "users won't
> expect it". This is something that we should cling to, something that
> will make the desktop unique, intuitive and unique.
>

Exactly.


J.