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GNUstep vs. The Cocotron for Mac to Windows porting
From: |
Dr. Rolf Jansen |
Subject: |
GNUstep vs. The Cocotron for Mac to Windows porting |
Date: |
Sun, 13 Dec 2015 10:46:01 -0200 |
I am a Mac developer and in the past I successfully used The Cocotron to port,
build and distribute one of my bigger GUI application projects for Windows.
This one is feature complete now, and I am now looking forward to port one of
my next big projects to Windows. I am considering to use GNUstep for this,
however, I got some questions:
1. Look & Feel
I want my applications look & feel native on Windows, and I am demanding on
that. I read, that the WinUXTheme is still under development, and my question
is now what exactly does this mean. Do most of the GUI elements work and look
nice? Or, perhaps, do only the buttons look nice and the other stuff looks and
feels somehow? What is missing? Does it crash any now and then? For my other
application, I submitted some contributions to The Cocotron in order to letting
it behave and look good on Windows.
2. Interface Builder compatibility
Can I use my .xib-files (Deployment target OS X 10.6) without any changes for
building Windows applications? With The Cocotron I can.
3. Shared Code Base
My other GUI application got apprx. 25000 lines of custom Objective-C and C
code, and it is a shared code base for both platforms Mac OS X and Windows.
With a little bit of coding discipline, I was able to keep the number of
platform specific #ifdef segments low (perhaps 5 small snippets). Can I expect
the same with GNUstep for my still to be ported application (apprx. 50000
lines, other purpose, same coding style).
4. PDF readiness
My application requires reading and flawless display of PDF files, as well as
generation of PDF files from its view contents, some of which may become really
huge. Does this work with GNUstep on Windows?
5. RTF views and editing
Does GNUstep provide complete RTF compatibility, editing and display. Here The
Cocotron is lacking, and the application to be ported to Windows does rely
heavily on perfect RTF text formatting capabilities. So actually, my concerns
may be rephrased to, whether it would be more work for me to implement the
missing RTF capabilities into The Cocotron, compared to implement something
into GNUstep if not to work around any other shortcomings in GNUstep.
6. License question
I read that it is best to ship my application with the GNUstep frameworks in
separate .dll files, so end users may replace the frameworks by their
customized ones. Is this correct? In addition, I must not prohibit reverse
engineering of my application interface to GNUstep. As a matter of fact, my
EULA's do not mention anything about reverse engineering, would this be OK, or
do I need to positively permit reverse engineering?
If I need to change something within GNUstep, then my intention is to commit my
changes upstream, and ideally the GNUstep frameworks shipped with my
application would be based on the upstream code at the given point in time.
This is how, I handled it with The Cocotron. May I expect the same with
GNUstep? Do I need to provide the sources in a separate place anyway, or may I
simply add a link to the GNUstep SVN repository on a prominent place (e.g. the
About panel) of my application?
Anything else to obey with?
Many thanks for any kind replies.
Best regards
Dr. Rolf Jansen
- GNUstep vs. The Cocotron for Mac to Windows porting,
Dr. Rolf Jansen <=