Re: GUI without X11 / Artist Help

[Uli Kusterer]

In article <mailman.1761.1108134203.2841.discuss-gnustep@gnu.org>,
 Riccardo <multix@ngi.it> wrote:

> Hmm,
> 
> On Tuesday, February 8, 2005, at 08:09 PM, <jesse@jesseross.com> wrote:
> 
> > I totally agree -- the look of the widgets and dock is very dated, and
> > they all feel very "large". I think this is one of the things that the
> > design team needs to determine specs for and then work on implementing a
> > default modern look.
> 
> I must disagree. When I design side-to-side Aqua and GNUstep, gnustep's 
> controls are very compact. The compare favorably also to Motif most of 
> the time.

 I agree here. GNUstep definitely feels smaller than OS X, and 
personally, I think with screens getting more pixels, stuff has become 
too small already in most other OSs. IMHO, screen contents should become 
larger. That way, we get more *resolution* (i.e. pixels-per-inch), while 
items on the screen still stay large enough to see even for people who 
aren't as young as me and many other programmers.

 But GNUstep's current GUI is large enough. I wouldn't make it smaller, 
but most of the GUI works fine.

> I get the feeling they are quite compact indeed, compare them to 
> gtk-crap.
> Tabs are compact for example, while most of others implementations are 
> wide. Also the buttons and the text controls are very compact... and 
> that is the most of it.

 While most of GNUstep looks large enough for me (from an aesthetic 
point of view), tabs are actually too small. There's just not enough 
margin, especially in the tabs themselves. If you look at a good book, 
or a good magazine, you'll notice that there's always some empty space 
around things to make it more easy to e.g. read text. That's what 
GNUstep is still missing, IMHO.

 Also, it'd be good to have some fixed metrics for certain kinds of 
buttons, i.e. to encourage a uniform look between apps. Take MacOS X: 
When a window has a margin between its contents and the window border, 
it's usually 12 pixels, space between items that sit next to the other 
is usually around 6, etc. Such simple measures can already make 
everything look much more consistent. Same with icon sizes and toolbar 
buttons. They should have certain standardized sizes to make apps look 
more similar.

Just my $0.02,
-- Uli
http://www.zathras.de