Just putting in my two cents for the Cocoa/Mach build.
>From a pure community building standpoint, this is the best way to go. If
you want more people to work on the Mac port of Mozilla, allowing anyone
with OS X to be able to potentially work on it is great.
>From a user standpoint, the early adopters of OS X are already calling for
Cocoa apps. Few feel Carbon is an equal to the speed/fluidity of Cocoa, and
most avoid Classic like the plague.
>From a user base standpoint, the core users (and all new users starting last
Monday) will be using OS X (ok, so X will only be the default boot starting
in July, but still, all new Macs are shipping with OS X). Those who came on
board when Apple started its upward climb in 1998/1999 (after the first
intro of iMac, then B, C and D) are due for replacements soon. I know I'm
in the market for an upgrade to my 266 Tangerine iMac, just waiting for the
wonders of MacWorld . . . Anyway, the point I was attempting to make, was
that it is not worth supporting the few stragglers left behind in OS 9.
They have Navigator 4.7, which works and they are familiar with it. The
only reasons they would stick with OS 9 would be familiarity, or speed of
computer. A finalized release of Mozilla would never address these
concerns. Mozilla will never quite "feel" like the old Netscape, and will
never run at the "old" speed on old hardware. It would be a waste of
resources to even attempt to try to address these issues. The future is
forward. A standards compliant fast browser for OS X would be a godsend.
OmniWeb is not standards compliant, and is slow. IE, let's not go there . .
.
So (a bit of a rambling rant later), a fast app for the future of the OS
accessible via gcc/IB/PB sounds like the best direction possible.
-Adam.
