Hi, Michael P. Soulier wrote: > On 30/10/13 Charles Philip Chan said: > >> First of all you need to get a handle on NeXTstep. Here is a good intro: >> >> http://web.archive.org/web/20061020203358/http://www120.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/intro.htmld/ > K, thanks. Generally, GNUstep is "Mac-like" and "OpenStep-like", that is, for example, click-focus. Also, the Finder too has our kind of "document setup". It is intrinsic in how Apps work. You are feeling its disadvantages right now, but you will, I hope, feel its advantages.
You can, for example, in a shell type "gopen xxxx.yy" and it will open the file exactly as with a double click. You might even want to write a replacement for GWorkspace to your likening and it still would behave consistent. >> Wow, the Debian packages are real old and outdated! These 2 apps are >> obsolete. > I tried to build the latest, the build failed, and I was told to use the > Debian packages. I sense an infinite loop here. :) On debian, given that you install all the dependencies (-dev) building and installing is really easy and has no hickups. However, it is also true that debian should provide working, up-to-date packages. Please open bug reports to them. If no one voices up, they will never get fixed I suppose! Perhaps some requests will motivate them. Especially if the Apps in questions are maintained upstream! You are currently fighting a new environment, its usage, packages, and, sadly, perhaps also some intrinsic bugs. Sorry for that. > Not yet, I'm trying to understand how a new user would ever get this far > without simply giving up and moving to Gnome or KDE. I'm not trying to offend, > but the environment is hardly friendly to the new user, even one like myself > who's used *nix for decades. It's not exactly out-of-the-box friendly, and > that's likely due to the Debian packaging. Unfortunately I couldn't get the > source packages to build. > > With Nautilus in Gnome (bloatware, granted) you can simply associated .py > files to open in Vim with a simple right-click. Something to think about > there. AppWrappers are more a step-gap for missing ports of native packages. Ideally, there should be a GNUstep port of Emacs and GVim, for example. Emacs, btw, used to work, but never officially. I don't know its current state. >> Again the Debian packages are ancient. > And I seem to be stuck with them... Voice up! >> Charles >> >> P.S.: I will send you a tarball of some X apps that I personally use to >> get you started. > Great, thanks. I'm tired of bloated desktop environments, and I appreciate > some of the NextStep API from Mac, so I thought I'd delve deep into GNUstep > and WindowMaker, but it looks like I'm a victim of poor Debian package > maintenance. Well, victim of new and poor packages and other stuff. Nice that you are looking into it. Perhaps subscribing to our mailing list, reading some developer blogs, reading our wiki will get you started more... than writing on the WM mailing list :) > > That said, I'm using WM at work right now with two displays, and it's so much > faster than KDE on the same box that I can't imagine going back. Maybe until I > want to mount a USB stick without a shell command... > Oh, it definitively is! Currently GNUstep is my only hope regarding computing on workstations, I invest my soul in it, but, alas, few coders around so progress is sometimes slow. But it exists, be trusted! Riccardo -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [email protected].
