For your reference, records indicate that Doug Simons <[email protected]> wrote:
That was a great account of your experience. My perspective on these points: > Our challenges working with GNUstep fall mainly in these areas: > (1) - Bugs -- things are sometimes buggy compared to Cocoa (no surprise, = > given the relative resources of GNUstep and Apple!) > (2) - Code Limitations -- the frameworks are always playing catch-up = > with Cocoa, of course, so we have to either add the missing pieces or be = > limited in what classes we can use In general, I would say addressing these issues should be the absolute core purpose of the GNUstep project. Missing pieces need to be filled in and errors corrected. A secondary purpose along the same lines *should* be to make code available in the other direction. GNUstep would see some huge gains in visibility if there was a concerted effort to make *Apple* the one who is shown to be missing some key features/frameworks. But I don’t know of any GNUstep code that is helpfully packaged up for iOS/Mac developers. > (3) - Nib Files -- this is a tricky compatibility area > (4) - Infrastructure -- the build environment is particularly = > challenging As a developer, I’m willing to let some things slide. It’s not ideal to have to re-do interface files or create makefiles (worst case), but the solution to focus on really comes down to which direction you’re looking for people to go. I mean, I *hate* that Xcode has swallowed IB and stuck it in a single-window experience. Rather than pulling Apple .xib files into GNUstep, I might be more interested in doing *all* my interface tweaking on the GNUstep side from the get-go. I have no idea if that appeals to anyone else, but it is just another way that re-thinking what GNUstep offers could have a dramatic impact on how useful it is to developers. > (5) - User Experience -- the user interface is less polished than we = > would like, in both appearance and usability This is probably the biggest deal when it comes to selling the product, but the smallest deal when it comes to coding. Improvements here are the types of things that everyone gets “for free” thanks to the OO underpinnings. > (6) - Community -- working with the community is sometimes a challenge I maintain that it’s mainly because no solid message is being communicated to participants. Some direction needs to be set so that everyone knows where things are going. -- "Also . . . I can kill you with my brain." River Tam, Trash, Firefly _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
