Micheal, I couldn't have said it much better myself.
GNUstep's current look is good enough for some, but it's not inspiring new membership. I, personally, like the current look myself, but I realize that many people are looking for something more modern. This is why theming is so important. I would say that apps are of equal significance in this equation. GC On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 9:01 AM, Michael Thaler <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > >> 1. Marketing to get people to give us a look. > > To see what? A user interface that most people consider looking really dated? > > Here are some numbers from the 2006 Linux Deskop Survey: > > http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi- > bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613 > > BlackBox 1.6 % > GNOME 35.1 % > Enlightenment 3.8 % > Fluxbox 3.9 % > IceWM 3.2 % > KDE 37.7 % > WindowMaker 2.2 % > Xfce 9.8 % > Other (please email us) > > I could not find any results for 2008 or 2009 but I doubt that the market > share > of WindowMaker increased. Don't you think that a huge majority of Linux users > prefer a more modern looking desktop environment with some eye-candy and will > be just dissapointed if the see gnustep in its current state? > > I don't really like too much eye-candy personally. The first thing I did at > work was to change Windows Vista from Aero to Classic mode because I prefer > Windows Classic (Windows 2000?) look compared to Aero. On the other hand, I > think Snow Leopard looks quite good and I also think KDE4 and Gnome look sort > of ok. > > But the NEXTSTEP look is too old-fashened even for me (I don't care if it is a > masterpiece. I don't want to put a picture of it in a frame on the wall, I > want to use it as a desktop environment). I really like ObjC and the > openstep/gnustep/Cocoa APIs. But everytime I sit down to develop something > using gnustep, the old-fashened Look & Feel kills my motivation because I > think nobody will use it anyway and I decide to use Qt/KDE instead (I am > actually a former KDE developer). > >> 2. Eye-candy to draw people in and get them to try things out >> (changing the default theme won't do that ... we need to have a group >> of three or four good themes to appeal to different people) > > For me, the fundametal question is what direction gnustep wants to take. Does > gnustep want to appeal to former NeXTSTEP/Openstep users? Or does gnustep want > to be a MacOS X for Linux and other OSS operating systems? In the former case > I am not really interested in gnustep. Openstep/gnustep might provide a nice > API, maybe it is even a bit nicer then Qt, but I don't really see gnustep > being adopted widely if it just tries to provide an Openstep-like API with a > Nextstep-like inteface. If gnustep aims to provide APIs and a desktop > environement similar to MacOS X I would be very interested. But I don't think > gnustep can do both. Either it will continue to try something similar to > Openstep or it will change direction and try to be something similar to MacOS > X. A simple theme will not be enough to make a gnustep desktop really look > cute and appealing. > >> 3. Enough good quality stuff so that people don't try once and then >> give up. > > For this to happen, gnustep needs more developers. In my opinion the only way > that this can happen is if more people start to use gnustep. Apparently > gnustep did not attract a lot of users / developers for the last 15 years. So > maybe it is time to change direction? > > Greetings, > Michael > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss-gnustep mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep > -- Gregory Casamento Open Logic Corporation, Principal Consultant ## GNUstep Chief Maintainer yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa (240)274-9630 (Cell), (301)362-9640 (Home) _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
