(Note: I'm not subscribed to -devel, only -private and d-d-a, so please Cc
me on replies -- this text is copied from the web archives, which is the
reason the references are gone)
Steve Greenland wrote:
On 06-Oct-04, 06:41 (CDT), Jeff Teunissen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
And developers writing with GNUstep recognize the same thing. The
difference is that we *have* to give enough information about an app
using only two pieces of information -- the name of the app and its
icon.
*Have* to? Why?
Because those are the only bits of meta-info available for programs on an
OpenStep-compliant system. OpenStep intentionally does not provide for a
program menu including additional metadata, instead using certain well-known
directories that you browse in a file manager.
Other applications manage to provide unique names.
So do we. The names for GNUstep-based programs ARE unique -- no other free
software is using (or, to my knowledge, has ever used) those names, and the
names that conflict are named as they are for descriptiveness and for
compatibility (Terminal, Preferences).
As for those names, Terminal and Preferences are named after (and are
reimplementations of) programs NeXT created for their NeXTstep operating
system, and as such they are important for interoperability. There needs to
be a program called Terminal responding under that name to the
distributed-objects (DO) system, so that other programs can spawn (and
optionally control) a new shell (or just a program) in one of its windows.
We couldn't just name it something merely similar -- that would break the
API (where names for things are significant).
One of the things I'll be working on at some point will be an xterm-like
client interface (operating via DO) to Terminal to act as an
x-terminal-emulator alternative -- precisely BECAUSE we think operating in a
mixed environment is important. It'll probably be called bbterm or something
similar.
Why does being a GNUstep application give you the right to claim generic
names like mail, editor, etc.
False argument. None of those names have been used by GNUstep-based apps,
and no one has posited any such right.
Claiming necessity doesn't make it so. If it's simply a convention
of the GNUstep developer's, then your claim to have considered mixed
systems is bogus.
It's not merely a convention, it's something that falls out of the spec that
GNUstep implements and something that we have to live with.
Note that I'm not promoting the idea that all GNUstep packages names
must begin with gnustep-. I find the .app convention sufficiently
clear; in fact, I assume pretty much anthing with a . in it's name
GNUstep.
To be fair, not all .app programs/packages are created using GNUstep, but
AFAIK all of them are intended to be used with it (or with a part of it,
like Window Maker).
If we are going to allow generic names, then obviously they would be
applied to the most commonly used or best for the novice example, so
I'm pretty sure that GNUstep apps aren't going to get them.
On one of those counts, many GNUstep-using apps often win over their
competition. e.g. Terminal is a _very_ nice terminal emulator with
excellent compatibility (it does UTF-8 well, and emulates the Linux console
very well) and many features that are not found elsewhere. TextEdit is a
rather good plaintext/RTF text editor, modulo some bugs in the GNUstep
libraries.
--
| Jeff Teunissen -=- Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing -=- deek @ d2dc.net
| GPG: 1024D/9840105A 7102 808A 7733 C2F3 097B 161B 9222 DAB8 9840 105A
| Core developer, The QuakeForge Projecthttp://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux http://www.d2dc.net/~deek/
