Quoting Michael Thaler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Saturday 04 March 2006 09:33, Sašo Kiselkov wrote: > > > And not only that, I think the separators are a style element which set us > > appart from the plain Apple style, and we need to be different so our menu > > system won't be an obvious rip-off. > > I really like the Apple style menu on top of the screen. I think for most > people used to Windows or MacOSX (or KDE and GNOME) the Apple style menu is > more useable then the the vertical Nextstep menus. > > But I have to admit that I really don't like these vertical seperators. They > just make the menu look more busy and less elegant. I don't know anybody who > does not understand the concept of a menu. > > I think it really doesn't make any sense to introduce style elements which > sets the Etoile menus apart from the plain Apple style if this does only make > the menu look more busy and less elegant. The Amiga did have an Apple style > menu on top of the screen (see http://toastytech.com/guis/amigaaweb.gif) and > also KDE can use the Apple style menu on top of the screen (see > http://people.kde.nl/images/boud/desktop_big.png) and they both did not > introduce new style elements because it is not necessary and (at least in my > opinion) just makes the menu look worse. > > Basically, just doing things different from Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome for the > sake of being different is one of the main problems I have with > gnustep/Etoile. Many things in Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome might not be perfect, > but they work reasonably well for many people and people can get their work > done with it. > > With gnustep/Etoile this is not possible at the moment. For me, the first > step > for gnustep/Etoile should be to create a framework and applications so that > peope could actually use gnustepEtoile. For this it is perfectly fine (at > least for me) to just use some ideas from Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome that work > reasonably well. Then people should start to implement new ideas and improve > gnustep/Etoile. > > I am one of the contributors of Krita (a KDE painting/image editing > application). I thought a number of times about creating a simple pixel > painting application like Kolourpaint/MS paint for gnustep. I suppose coding > such an application shouldn't even be that hard. > > I have gnustep installed on my computer and I guess I also have the coding > skills to write an application like this. But my problem is, that I cannot > use gnustep. Basically all the esential applications like a webbrowser are > missing, KDE/Gnome applications look totally foreign in wmaker + gnustep and > gnustep applications are hardly useable in KDE. And I also don't like to > write an application if noone at all will use it and I don't know anybody at > all that uses gnustep right now. > > I think the gnustep/Etoile people should create a lightweight MacOSX like > desktop environement (maybe something similar like XFCE) and some of the most > important applications like a browser, an email program (probably GNUMail is > fine), a good editor (personally I would like to see something like kate, but > maybe not as bloated). I think it is perfectly fine to look at > Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome and copy the best ideas from them. MS, Apple, KDE > and Gnome all copied the best ideas from eachother and from other systems and > there is really nothing wrong with that. We all learn from other people. > > After this is done and gnustep/Etoile gets a reasonable number of > users/developers, one could start to think about improving gnustep/Etoile > over existing systems like Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome. But in my opinion, one > should really take one step after another and not try to make everything > different from the very beginning. This almost never works out. > > I am quite sure if I would have a useable desktop based on gnustep TODAY that > I can actually use to surf the web, write emails and so on, I would have > already started to develop for gnustep/Etoile. But I will never start to > develop for gnustep/Etoile if gnustep/Etoile is just about being different > from Windows/MacOSX/KDE/Gnome. > > And I am not the only one that thinks like that. There recently was an > interview with the main developer of Krita (http://people.kde.nl/boud.html). > He talks a bit why he is developing for KDE and not the competition and he > says: > > What competition? When I started looking for something better than fvwm, > GNUStep was still in denial mode -- we're not a desktop environment, we're a > cross platform development platform! -- and little-known GREAT was a gratis > but closed source CDE clone. CDE was out of reach, so I started using KDE as > soon as I got my first computer with 64MB of memory. > And when I wanted to code a GUI application for Linux, the only GUI toolkit > that came close to being as easy to use as Visual Basic was Qt with its > Python bindings. Motif was closed, Gtk still asked me to handle the > scrollbars around a treeview myself, that funny toolkit Lyx used -- XForms -- > was closed, binary and sucked. And Athena simply demanded C coding. No way... > So my second free software application, Kura was done in PyQt. (The first was > a UUCP mail and news client in Visual Basic -- just when I had finished it, I > moved to Linux.) And when I got my first glimmer of Gnome it was a horrible, > complex, convoluted, crash-prone sliver of a shell around Enlightenment. I > remember I called it the Dark Side of User Interface Design in an article I > wrote for O'Reilly Network. That kind of political incorrectness would be > impossible nowadays, of course, so I won't repeat that remark. > And the current state of the competition doesn't inspire a desire to switch > either. XFCE isn't competition: it may have a panel and a file manager, but > there's no framework for integrating applications. GNUStep applications are > still horribly crash prone and there's still no concerted effort making a > real GNUStep desktop environment. And Gnome still looks like no fun at all to > hack on. Or work with. > > Krita is becoming really nice lately. Just imagine he would have started to > work on a gnustep image editing application instead of an KDE image editing > application. > > I am not writing this because I want to blame gnustep/Etoile developers. I > write this because I think it is a really pity that gnustep/Etoile keeps a > shadowy existence. I think gnustep could have been THE desktop environement > for Linux/BDS/... if it would have actually tried to. > > Greetings, > Michael
Wow o_O, unbelievable what ammounts of stored frustration can be set free by a few 21 point long, 1 point wide lines, with either 1.0 or 0.67 gray, and 0.5 alpha :-D To address the comments that were in respect to the Etoile menubar implementation that I'm working on: comparing it to and saying that we should redo *every* aspect like a years old Amiga OS with fixed width fonts is somehow casting a smile on my face... sorry. And KDE? Well, as we all know, KDE is basically just a rip-off of other modern GUIs and on top of that a not very well glued-together one. The reason why I like the menu item separators is to make it more easy for a user to find menu item borders, simply to add a bit of "visual" aid and make the user's eyes feel more "safe" when running across the menubar. It really isn't any problem to make this feature user-adjustable, but I think that no simple user will really feel uneasy about the light menu separators and I like them, since they help my strained eyes... :-) -- Saso _______________________________________________ Etoile-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-dev
