Re: GNUstep roadmap (was Re: [Suggestion] GNUstep-test for quality control)

[Patrick Coskren]

On Thursday, October 23, 2003, at 03:07 PM, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:

> > Btw, I'm not even interested in the Windows port at all. I don't need 
> > it. I need GS, GDL and GSW. But in order to bring GS out of its 
> > shadow life…
>
> So you think that having GS on Windows would just shift GS to the 
> bright side?

<delurk>
Hi, just wanted to add a data point, another tally for the API on 
Windows camp.  The potential that interests me about GNUstep isn't at 
all the environment, or even the API per se.  It's the ability to write 
an app from scratch that would be relatively easy to have on Windows 
and Mac and Unix (some tweaking would be expected).  In the lab I work 
in, that's a nice feat.  (Being able to use Objective-C is a *big* 
benefit, too.)

Right now, nobody really does it.  Java's too slow, and GTK only works 
on Windows and Unix, (although I know there's work going on).  GS has 
huge potential there.   I couldn't care less about a user environment.  
If I want a good user experience, I'll pony up for OS X and be done 
with it.  GNUstep will never be able to out-Apple Apple.

If I thought the GNUstep Windows AppKit tools were close enough to 
working, I'd give it a go, knowing I'd have to fix problems in the 
code, and just fold them back to you guys.  So Windows would be a 
pretty bright side for me.  Since others are surely in the same boat, 
it might bring in a sizable pool of programmers.

As it is, it sounds like I'll just be able to use GCC and Foundation 
Kit for my core code, but write the interface in Cocoa or GTK depending 
on platform, maintain two codebases and try to keep the graphics layer 
as thin as possible.  It's a bummer, but I'm *delighted* that 
Foundation Kit works on Windows.  (Big hats-off to the guys who did 
that.)

> there are programmers in the Linux world who cannot afford to buy a 
> Mac but would love to - so GNUstep could be the alternative.

Considering that people upgrade their computers every few years anyway, 
I don't really see this as a huge market.

> Well, they did not succeed selling enough versions of OPENSTEP Mach or 
> OPENSTEP Enterprises, also they did not attract enough 
> programmers/companies to use their APIs, so they failed in this 
> respect, no?!

It was popular in some circles.  And I thought NeXT was doing all right 
when Apple bought them, weren't they?  The decision to retire OPENSTEP 
was political, due to the fact that Apple's needs were different than 
NeXT's.

<relurk>

-Patrick