Re: FOSDEM Arrangements

[Stef Bidi]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:42 PM, David Chisnall  wrote:

>
> > Otherwise I'd be interested to hear talks about:
> > - CoreBase and CoreGraphics/Opal in GNUstep
>
> I think Stef, Gregory, and Eric are the best people to talk about this, and
> I'm not sure if any of them are going to be there (Gregory and Eric aren't,
> not sure about Stef - Stef, I actually have no idea which continent you're
> on...).
>

I'm in the US.  I'd like to make it out there one year but, as you can
imagine, it would be a real vacation for me.

A quick status of CoreBase would be that it's on hold until further notice.
Most of my time gets eaten up by grad school.  And since I decided to work
on NSLocale, the little time I do find is put into that, which has driven me
to start work on NSCalendar and updating NSNumberFormatter and
NSDateFormatter.

Stef
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Re: Obj-C, Handling the sound attribute of a button - SOLVED but on Windows

[Stef Bidi]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Csanyi Pal  wrote:

> > Are you sure you're getting a NSSound object and not nil?
>
> I'm not sure.
>

 If you don't have the libsndfile and libao bundles built (see below) you
will be getting nil.


> > Both libao and libsndfile work on Windows, but I'm not sure if GNUstep
> > ships with them.
> > Check your Bundles/ directory, if they're not there, that is the
> > problem.  If either of those bundles were not built, you should be
> > getting nil.
>
>
> If the Bundles/ directory is as on my Windows system:
>
> C:\GNUstep\GNUstep\System\Library\Bundles
>
> then there isn't any libao and libsndfile files out there.
>
> From where can I install these bundles for Windows?
>

The bundles are called AudioOutput.nssound and Sndfile.nssound.  As for how
to get them installed on Windows, I'm not sure, I've never used GNUstep on
Windows.

Please keep in mind I never tested this implementation on Windows, so I'm
not sure it even works.  Like I mentioned before, I think you're the guinea
pig for the new NSSound code.

Stef
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Re: Obj-C, Handling the sound attribute of a button - SOLVED but on Windows

[Stef Bidi]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Csanyi Pal  wrote:

> However, the
>
> [DPBin play];
>
> command doesn't play any sound on Windows XP operating system. What is
> the solution for this on Windows?
>

Are you sure you're getting a NSSound object and not nil?  Both libao and
libsndfile work on Windows, but I'm not sure if GNUstep ships with them.
Check your Bundles/ directory, if they're not there, that is the problem.
If either of those bundles were not built, you should be getting nil.

Stef
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Re: Sound attribute of a button - app doesn't play the sound

[Stef Bidi]

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Csanyi Pal  wrote:

> Maybe the problem is that that the sound file is in OGG format?
>

Recent versions of libsndfile support ogg/vorbis and the build shipped with
Debian seem to support it as well (at least it requires libogg and
libvorbis).  I've never used Renaissance and I'm not sure how it handles the
sound tag, so I'm not sure I can help you here.  You have all the
requirements to create and playback a NSSound.  At this point, you're going
to have to wait for someone that knows how Renaissance works, because I have
no idea what the sound tag does.

To tell you the truth, I think you're the first person to really test sound
playback since I reimplemented it over a year ago.  It's nice to see someone
is taking advantage of it (or in this case, not so much).  Thanks.

Stef
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Re: Sound attribute of a button - app doesn't play the sound

[Stef Bidi]

I'm assuming this feature uses NSSound to play sound, so the problem would
most likely be there.  Do you have libsndfile and libao installed on your
system?  If you do have those two libraries, make sure GNUstep built and
installed the Sndfile.nssound and AudioOutput.nssound bundles... they should
be installed in the Bundles/ dir.

Stef

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Csanyi Pal  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I added the sound attribute for a button in my GNUstep Renaissance
> application in the .gsmarkup file:
>
>  sound="GombHangja_Magas.ogg" id="CPb0sr"
> nextKeyView="#CPb0?" />
>
> but when compiled and run the app, I can't heare the sound of that
> button. Why?
>
> --
> Regards, Paul Chany
> http://www.debian.org
> http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu
> http://csanyi-pal.info
>
>
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Re: Hungarian o and u double accute doesn't display correctly

[Stef Bidi]

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 1:34 PM, Csanyi Pal  wrote:

> However, when I run my application from xterm window, then I can see
> warnings:
> 2010-09-09 20:17:42.091 LPT_Interface[7583] The font specified for
> NSLabelFont, Helvetica, can't be found.
>
> Helvetica is the default art backend font.  It's usually installed with the
art backend as a nfont.  If I remember correctly, nfonts aren't used in the
cairo backend.  My guess, is that if no font is specified, GNUstep will
default to Helvetica, a font not installed with the cairo backend.  If I'm
not mistaken cairo uses fontconfig, so all your system fonts are available.


> But, on Debian GNU/Linux Squeeze system, the command 'aptitude search
> helvetica' gives no results.
>
> I was run the comand 'defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSFont DejaVuSans'
> but I can see that that this command does not affect the NSLabelFont
> variable.
>
> Moreover, I was run these commands once again:
> defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSFont DejaVuSans
> defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSLabelFont DejaVuSans
>
> but still get warnings, like:
> 2010-09-09 20:24:35.769 LPT_Interface[7681] The font specified for
> NSMenuFont, Helvetica, can't be found.
>
> 2010-09-09 20:24:35.771 LPT_Interface[7681] The font specified for
> NSBoldFont, Helvetica-Bold, can't be found.
>
> 2010-09-09 20:24:35.774 LPT_Interface[7681] The font specified for
> NSFont, DejaVuSans, can't be found.
>
> 2010-09-09 20:24:35.803 LPT_Interface[7681] The font specified for
> NSLabelFont, DejaVuSans, can't be found.
>
A much, much easier way of specifying fonts is using the SystemPreferences
application.  I'd suggest grabbing it.  There's a module for fonts and it's
really easy to use.
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Re: Podcasts for GNUste

[Stef Bidi]

Sounds like a great idea.  There used to be at least 1 that I remember on
the website, but I can't seem to find it now.  Would probably be a good idea
to update that tutorial... it taught ProjectCenter and GORM, and it's how I
first learned to even work with GNUstep.  I would say some usability
tutorials/videos would also be nice, something that teaches how to change
defaults using SystemPreferences, GNUstep under something NOT WindowMaker,
themes, etc.

Would be nice if at least some of the videos were hosted by GNUstep in an
open format (Ogg/Theora, or maybe the new WebM).  I don't always have a PC
with Flash installed, so YouTube doesn't always work.

Stef

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Gregory Casamento  wrote:

> Hey guys.  I've been think about doing a number of videos to
> illustrate how to do certain things using GNUstep and posting them on
> YouTube.
>
> I think it will be useful to make a series of these so that potential
> developers have a hands on manual that shows them how and what to do
> in order to work with GNUstep.
>
> Work is heavy lately, but I'm planning on fixing a number of
> outstanding bugs and, time permitting, make at least one video. :)
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts?
>
> G
>
> --
> Gregory Casamento - GNUstep Lead/Principal Consultant, OLC, Inc.
> yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa
> (240)274-9630 (Cell)
>
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Re: List dead?

[Stef Bidi]

Not that I know of.  Checked my old e-mails and it looks like the latest one
(that I could find, at least) was from David C. on Apr 27.

Stefan
On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 12:50 PM, h...@computer.org  wrote:

> Hi all,
> is the GNUstep discussion list dead? The last posting was from 9th
> march.
>
> Nikolaus
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Re: GSoC application

[Stef Bidi]

I noticed you removed the NSMXL stuff from there, but, as far as I can tell,
those classes are not implemented.  Looking through NSXMLElement and
NSXMLDocument all the -init* (at least the important ones) methods just call
[self notImpemented].
On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Gregory Casamento  wrote:

> I have made some further updates to the wiki.   Please take a look.
> I've added detail for most of the tasks in the General Improvements
> section and level of difficulty as well as a list of required skills.
> This will aid students in their selection of tasks.
>
> Please take a look and add level of difficulty and required skills for
> each task as well as a breakdown of subtasks for each one, if
> possible.
>
> GC
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Re: Best book for learning ObjC?

[Stef Bidi]

I learn plain old C by reading Kochan's "Programming in C".  He also have a
"Programming in Objective-C 2.0" (ObjC 2.0 seems to be where GNUstep is
going, so I don't see why you can start with that), which is probably what
you want to go with.  Etoile's David Chisnall (hope I didn't misspell that)
recently wrote a Cocoa book as well, I'll let him go in more detail.

Good luck
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Re: Best way to install cutting edge GnuStep distribution

[Stef Bidi]

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 5:07 PM, "Dr Slivnik Tomaž MA (Cantab) PhD (Cantab)
FTICA"  wrote:

> What is the best/quickest/easiest/smoothest way to get a cutting edge
> GnuStep distribution running on my machine?
>
> I have Debian 5.0.3 running in a virtual machine with all the GnuStep
> packages installed but they seem rather old. Does it matter if I manually
> build my own GnuStep installation on top of this? I'm guessing doing so will
> interfere with the Debian package management system and break things down
> the line.
>

Installing GNUstep from source is really easy, but you're right here, if you
install the Debian packages and from source you'll have conflicts (this is
true for any package, though).  There's been some chatter recently about a
new release, so if you want the latest and greatest it might be a good idea
to wait for the new release or build from SVN.  On the GNUstep homepage
you'll see a link to "Startup" 0.23.0, this is an easy package that will
install all the GNUstep base libraries.  From there you only have to build
the applicatons (most are as easy as "make install", no configure scripts).


> Are there more current pre-built packages for another platform I can easily
> install in a VM?
>

I have some Slacware build script up on www.slackbuilds.org, but these
scripts are for 12.2.  When 13.0 was released I didn't have a box with
Slackware installed to update those packages.  And now that I do, I'm
waiting for the next release to update the scripts.  If you want to wait
until then, I plan on getting it together soon after the core libraries are
released to update the scripts.  These scripts generate a package for
installation, and makes it easy to upgrade and manage packages.

Does GnuStep run on MINIX (or, as I am guessing, there is the same issue of
> no support for threads and shared memory which break Gnome and KDE running
> there)?
>

I'd guess GNUstep would have the same problems, but you might still want to
check!  One of the developers here has built it on GNU/Hurd and neither
Gnome nor KDE run on Hurd.  I'm really not sure of the technical issues,
though.
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Re: A few problem with latest SVN stuff

[Stef Bidi]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Riccardo Mottola  wrote:

> Anyway, this is what in GWorkspace:
>> * GWorkspace's dock doesn't "save" what applications have been docked
>> across
>> restarts.  That is, if I dock a bunch of applications, then log off using
>> the "Logout" menu item, then restart the session I'll be presented with an
>> empty dock, again.
>>
>>
> Do you refer to the Dock or the Tabbed Shelf?


The dock.

In SystemPreferences:
>> * The "Apply" button on the themes preferences doesn't actually work.  If
>> I
>> hit apply, SystemPreferences' theme will change, however the default will
>> not be written, which means no other application actually gets the new
>> theme.  If I restart SystemPreferences I'll be presented with the old
>> theme.
>>
>>
> Works for me!


Hmm...  I can't help but wonder what's going on here then, cause everything
else (set hide dot files, etc) works as expected except for picking new
themes.

* This is just one thing I noticed, isn't GSX11HandlesWindowDecoration
>> depricated?  SystemPreferences still has it that way.
>>
>>
> Yes... Isn't that correct? It works for me... except on Windows
>

I thought it got changed to something along the lines:
GSBackendHandlesWindowDecoration, or something like that, don't quote me on
it.  Fred should be able to say exactly what it is.

Stefan
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A few problem with latest SVN stuff

[Stef Bidi]

I've been trying to use as many GNUstep applications as possible on a little
test install that I have going on here and am running into a few problems.
 These are just the problems with GWorkspace, and I don't know if it's
something I'm going or if they are bugs (everything used to work) and
WindowMaker.  I've installed everything from SVN yesterday (Sat Nov 7), so
the code is fairly up to date.  I'm also using the xlib backend (if that
helps).

Anyway, this is what in GWorkspace:
* GWorkspace's dock doesn't "save" what applications have been docked across
restarts.  That is, if I dock a bunch of applications, then log off using
the "Logout" menu item, then restart the session I'll be presented with an
empty dock, again.
* The "Run" panel's ("Tools"->"Run...") text field does not allow me to edit
it, which means I can't actually enter the applications I want run.

In SystemPreferences:
* The "Apply" button on the themes preferences doesn't actually work.  If I
hit apply, SystemPreferences' theme will change, however the default will
not be written, which means no other application actually gets the new
theme.  If I restart SystemPreferences I'll be presented with the old theme.
* This is just one thing I noticed, isn't GSX11HandlesWindowDecoration
depricated?  SystemPreferences still has it that way.

In general:
* I set GSX11HandlesWindowDecoration to NO (have GNUstep draw the borders)
and moving windows are extremely slow.  I'm on a 500MHz PC, so it's really
noticable.  If I let WindowMaker decorate the window moving it around is
really smooth, but when GNUstep is decorating them it's painfully slow.  If
I move the mouse fast enough (to one end or another of the screen) the
window lags behind.  I'll make a note here that I remember this also being
an issue when I was on a 2.5GHz PC, just not as noticable there.

Let me know if I need to clarify anything or if I should file a bug report.

Stefan
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Re: 100 days until FOSDEM

[Stef Bidi]

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf <
lars.sonchocky-helld...@hamburg.de> wrote:

> So to increase our chances to get a dev-room I am asking: does somebody
> know other projects we could invite for a collaboration? Is somebody in
> contact with those people?
>

I guess if Riccardo is going that means GAP will probably be represented as
well.
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Re: how to compile a .m

[Stef Bidi]

You'll need a GNUmakefile.  Check this link for a tutorial:
http://www.gnustep.it/nicola/Tutorials/WritingMakefiles/

For your simple example I would say:

include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make

TOOL_NAME = test
test_OBJC_FILES = hello.m

include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make

Don't forget to source GNUstep.sh before running make (will define
GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES).

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 6:30 PM, Jean-Loïc Mauduy  wrote:

> Hi everyone!
>
> I am new to GNUstep and Objective C and some things seem difficult to
> understand for me...I hope you can help me. Precision : I'm on Windows.
>
> After installing the thing, I tried a simple hello world, so I put this
> code in a hello.h :
>
> #import 
>
> int main( int argc, const char *argv[] ) {
> printf( "hello world\n" );
> return 0;
> }
>
> and now, how do I compile?
>
> I'm a little bit lost...
> Thank you for your help.
>
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Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Stef Bidi]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 8:01 AM, Michael Thaler <
michael.tha...@physik.tu-muenchen.de> 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).
>

I just completely disagree with your arguments here.  So what if you like
"eye-candy"?  Riccardo and Richard like the grey NeXT look, and using the
mailing list as the sample space I would say it's divided roughly 60/40 for
the NeXT look over the so called "eye-candy".

Have anyone here using GTK or Qt applications ever actually built these from
scratch?  I would assume no, because the idea of "an easy install" always
comes up.  I've personally next built Qt, but have done GTK.  Simple put,
it's hell!  You have 15 dependencies you need to satisfy before GTK even
configures without an error, and another 10 dependencies to get decent
support for everything you want (
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/x/gtk2.html everything in
"Required" + their dependencies).  Then, after you're all done with that you
still end up with a "dull and grey" look... so you go out and install the
clearlooks theme engine.  How is that any easier than building GNUstep?  I
can truthly say, it's not.  I still say we need distribution support, which
the little that we do have we seem to be loosing.  How do we get their
support?  Marketing will become much easier if all we need to say is "do
apt-get install gnustep-core gworkspace" instead of "grab the sources from
svn and compile".

To be honest, I don't like WindowMaker.  don't like using and think those
icons are a waste of my precious screen space.  What I'll generally try to
do is use nothing but GNUstep applications with no window manager (since
GNUstep supports it, even though it has issues).

On top of all that, GNUstep has a serious identity crisis.  It's such a far
departure from the usual Gnome/KDE/Windows desktop metaphore.  So you end up
with the problem that most people expect you provide at least a half working
desktop in order to feel comfortable, but that's not GNUstep's goal, it's
just a development environment.  You can see that littered all over
Michael's post, he's trying to compare GNUstep with KDE and Gnome instead of
with Qt and GTK (+ GLib and GDK).  Etoile is definitly working to bridge
that gap, but even so it's not easy to get it.  I personally do not build
all of Etoile because it's just simply too much work.  I would not use Gnome
if I had to build it everytime either.

 > 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

Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Stef Bidi]

Forgot to reply to all!

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Nicola Pero <
nicola.p...@meta-innovation.com> wrote:

>
> > It would undoubtedly be good to have some packager-specific
> > documentation, but obviously the target readership is a very small
> > group 
>
> We *do* have packager documentation, in
>
>  core/make/README.Packaging
>
> Feel free to add a short section about what was discussed here. :-)
>

I saw Richard committed something there.  This is really the first time I've
ever heard of GlobalDomain.plist, and will not forget it.


>  >> - How does this allow a packager to install and remove defaults as
> >> part of package installation / uninstallation?  Presumably you can
> >> use plmerge to install them (again, is this documented anywhere?),
> >> but how do you uninstall them?
>
> I agree with Richard's later suggestion that the package system might deal
> with that
> by having a directory where each package installs a .plist upon
> installation, and removes
> it upon deinstallation.  At the end of each package
> installation/deinstallation, the
> package scripts could do a plmerge so that all the currently existing
> .plists in the
> directory are plmerged to create the global default plist, which is hence
> kept up-to-date. :-)
>
> That said, it should probably be used with restrain ;-)
>
> Presumably you have a specific example in mind where it makes particular
> sense (Etoile ?); but
> in general, I personally don't see a reason why installing a package should
> change some system defaults.
> Installing a package doesn't necessarily mean enabling it.
>
> Eg, I could be installing 10 or 20 themes or other GNUstep GUI-changing
> bundles, but that doesn't mean
> every theme that is installed must be trying to force all users to switch
> to it.  I'd expect to have
> a Preferences panel somewhere where I can change my own user defaults and
> activate/deactivate the bundles
> or themes I want/don't want.  Different users might activate/deactivate
> different bundles.
>

I agree with you, but the packager/distribution developers need to know what
they want.  For example, in Debian when I install "gnome-core" I get nothing
but a plain GNOME desktop with no theming (default GTK theme), but when I
install "gnome" I also get a few themes and theme engines installed but only
1 is sets Clearlook as the default theme.  If the themes are installed
separately (outside the "gnome" package) nothing happens, they're just
installed and it's up to you to do something.

Similarly, a "gnustep" package might want to install some core packages and
an "etoile" package install Camaleon and it's themes and set 1 of them as
default, setup horizontal menus, etc.

So I think it is more important to have a very good preference application
> that allow real users
> to configure their environment to suit their needs, including turning
> on/off bundles or extensions. :-)
>
> Thanks
>


By the way, is anyone keeping notes so that this won't all disappear after
the discussion dies down?  What I've gotten so far is:

* Seems to be a consensus in keep GNUstep with it's default theme.
 GlobalDomain.plist allows packagers or distributions to global define their
theme if it pleases them.
* Everyone seems to want a new website.  Content needs to be looked over
because there is a lot of old and outdated information out there confusing
newcomers.
** On the same topic, people also seem to be getting detracted by the
decentralized information about GNUstep.
* Packages, packages, packages.  Last I heard we lost the person who did the
packages for the Debian project (which is really bad).  I've also been
slacking on the Slackware packages (lack of time and a dedicated "play"
computer).
* Code beautification?

Anything I missed so far?

Stefan
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Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Stef Bidi]

I'll just give my opinion on each topic...

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Gregory Casamento
wrote:

> 1) improve our website.  It's been the same for years and doesn't
> reflect our progress.
>

I agree here.  A while back, myself an Jesse from the Etoile project
started, but I had to divert my attention to other things and I'm guessing
so did Jesse.

I think the move to link the Software Index was great, but, at this point,
GNUstep has 3 different sources for software look-up:
1. Software Index
2. Wiki
3. Website (which links to the wiki and freshmeat)
That's just plain confusing!  I personally like the Software Index better
but it will require application developers to be more active in maintaining
they're projects up to date.

Also, I think there needs to be a real content "audit".  If I want to get to
the developer docs I need to go Developers -> Manuals and Documentations...
and when I get there need to scroll through quite a few links, which may or
may not be outdated and redudant... only then will I find the actual API
docs.  This is just an example.  One this issue (content) I think the core
developers need to take a step back and ask "who do we want to reach" and
"what to we want to convey".

2) improve GNUstep's default theme as well as theming in general.
> While I know some people will respond negatively to changing the
> default theme from a NeXT-like look to something more modern, I
> believe it's one way for us to spark interest in the project is to
> update it's look.   The current look should always be available, but
> not necessarily the default.
>

I agree with Richard on this one!  Windows, QT, GTK and FLTK (to name a few)
all come default with a very bland theme (except Windows, but you still have
the option).  Square buttons, grey everything, etc.  At most, I'd say the
theme can be a little more subtle... the buttons just feel very raised for
my taste.  In my opinion, and that's all it is, the problem here is a little
deeper.

The first, and most obvious, is that GNUstep theming is still very young.
Apart from Camaleon (does it still work?) and some of Riccardo's themes
there's nothing out there.

The second, which is a little deeper, is that there's no way to globally
define defaults.  If I'm out there creating a GNUstep package (and I mostly
do for Slackware, I just need to get on it for 13.0) there's not way for me
to set a default, "preferred" theme--which is what the GUI toolkits above
allow you to do--there is just no way for me to do that.  I know it's been
brought up a few times in the past, and if I remember correctly it's because
of the way NSUserDefaults is setup, so (again, in my opinion) that's where
the problem lies.

3) Improve our ability to market ourselves in general.
>

A new, targeted website would definitely get you off on the right foot.

Let me know if I can help in anyway.  My help will be limited, at best,
because I just started grad school.

Stefan
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Re: Default Sounds

[Stef Bidi]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 9:18 AM, David Chisnall  wrote:

> On 30 Jul 2009, at 14:19, Gregory Casamento wrote:
>
> Which format would be best?
>>
>
>
> Anything that the new NSSound code supports.  Since they only need to be a
> couple of seconds long, we can probably distribute them as uncompressed
> sounds, I'd suggest 16-bit either mono or stereo depending on the sound (the
> 'whooosh' sound Apple provides makes good use of stereo, flying from one
> side to the other, but others are essentially mono).


I would recommnd 16-bit PCM WAV format (any sample rate is fine).  I have
backup code that can read WAV and AU/SND files without requiring and
libraries.  I plan on implementing them on the GSSoundSource protocol after
the NSSound changes are in.  This would allow reading sound even without
libsndfile... libao would still be required for playback, but the plan is to
deprecate that in favor of native ALSA, OSS and WINMM.

AU/SND format would be fine, too.


> Apple provides theirs as 16-bit Integer (Big Endian - even on x86,
> marginally interestingly), Stereo, 44.100 kHz .aiff files.  The total file
> size for all of the sounds is under 1MB.  Someone shipping a handheld
> platform where space was at a very tight premium could encode them as
> something like vorbis if the sound input bundle supported this format to
> save some space.


AIFF/AIFC sound is a pain to read because of the 80-bit float.  Not saying
it's not possible, just painful.
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