Hi all GNUsteppers, there is new rumour about an embedded MacOS X (aka OSXlite, OSXmobile etc.):
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/12/20061219140034.shtml http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2313 http://www.looprumors.com/LoopBlackPopup.php?mac-mobile,4046720790 All this shows where the industry is heading to: enhanced full operating systems that run on (open) Smartphones and Settop boxes. And it shows what the future needs: something besides Symbian, Qt and Windows Mobile. Therefore, I would like to take this as the opportunity to make a new "call for support" for the embedded GNUstep fork "mySTEP". The goals of mySTEP are exactly those described by the articles that I have cited above: provide a stripped down version of GNUstep that is 100% compatible to a Mac with Cocoa and is heavily optimized to run with the memory and processor constraints of a Linux based PDA or Smartphone. The status of mySTEP is already quite good: most Foundation and many AppKit classes are working well on all Sharp Zaurus models and on Acer n30 with Letux Linux - and there are already two Linux based Smartphones we want to port to next year and a third one is a good candidate. Some recent developments are native/binary NIB loading, @interface-compatibility of all classes to MacOS X 10.4, support for shaped windows (e.g. rounded corners), a simplified WebKit, NSIndexSet, NSIndexPath, basic PDF printing, and (not yet working) a complete rewrite of the DO system to fully support NSMessagePort and NSSocketPort, and too many others to list here. Compared to GNUstep, QuantumSTEP is a stand-alone system including application suite and window manager. It provides all that is required for personal information management, mobile mail, web browsing, input managers etc. on a handheld device. And sometimes it includes even the X11 server (which is not readily available for a Zaurus). So it is more like a mySTEP based "GPE". Making mySTEP a smooth, reliable and finally useful system is something different and therefore, if you are interested in supporting this project, please start to look into the source code, submit patches, contact me by mail - or during the planned presentation at FOSDEM 2007. Nikolaus Schaller Maintainer of mySTEP/QuantumSTEP http://www.quantum-step.com/wiki.php?page=mySTEP _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnustep mailing list Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep
