On Fri, 7 Jul 2023 at 17:51, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I am really happy to see this article. I only have one bit of feedback...
>
> "GNUstep has been around since the 1990s, and has re-implemented a substantial amount of NeXTstep, completely from scratch. "
>
> Could we please stop saying NEXTSTEP? This only furthers the misunderstanding that GNUstep is limited to an OS that stopped being produced long ago. Also, we have far exceeded NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is much better to say that we have re-implemented a substantial amount of Cocoa. Otherwise the article is wonderful. Thank you for getting the word out. :)
I'm very glad you liked it.
We've gone around the NeXTstep-vs-MacOS thing before. I don't know if
you remember.
Yes, and we had the same fundamental disagreement then as now.
*In this case*, no, I have to disagree.
GSDE seems to me to very clearly and definitely be trying to recreate
NeXTstep, *not* Mac OS X.
Yes, visually, GSDE is trying to look like OPENSTEP/NeXTSTEP. But, in your article when you refer to GNUstep tries to recreate NeXTSTEP... that statement ENTIRELY belies the fact that we have implemented all of OPENSTEP and are almost done with major portions of Cocoa/macOS up to and including Catalina. Saying that we are simply NeXTSTEP because of how the default appearance LOOKS is selling us a little short because we are SO MUCH MORE than NeXTSTEP and even OPENSTEP was. Hopefully you see why I am concerned about characterizing us in that manner. You do make it clear that we implement Cocoa in your article, but to the AVERAGE developer who will only spend about 20 seconds skimming the article they are going to see "implements NeXTSTEP" and move on.
I like that. I approve of that.
Absolutely. I admit they have done a fine job of it... but an environment is so much more than just how it looks.
In context, trying to spell out that GNUstep is aiming at something
else would only be confusing.
Please explain HOW it would be confusing.
Secondly, Apple itself no longer uses the term Cocoa and that itself
is obsolete terminology, so I don't think it's a useful comparison or
term. I think the reverse is true. It's unhelpful and unclear and
confusing.
Then call it the macOS APIs or whatever you wish. We are closer to them than we are to NeXTSTEP. In fact if you look at the origina NeXTSTEP APIs they are pretty minimal and quite different so that comparison doesn't hold up from a technical point of view whatsoever. As far as comparing us to OPENSTEP we are way beyond that because we implement the entire standard, plus so much more.
I don't have a better answer right now, sadly, but in the context of a
desktop environment, no, I think making a comparison to an obsolete
and discontinued Apple internal API spec would be considerably *less*
helpful.
I think it's terribly interesting to defend using one EXTREMELY obsolete term because a more recently obsolesced term is (somehow) more confusing.
Note that on Apple's own page:
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaFundamentals/WhatIsCocoa/WhatIsCocoa.html
There is a big warning:
«
Retired Document
Important: This document may not represent best practices for current
development. Links to downloads and other resources may no longer be
valid.
»
I do not have a proposal but I think the name Coca went away a full
decade ago and you need something more useful to replace it.
If you have to compare us to something refer to the macOS APIs without using the term Cocoa, if you wish, but PLEASE don't say we are NeXTSTEP because we have grown WELL beyond that now. It makes developers less likely to use us because they think we are some museum project that is stuck in time trying to recreate an obsolete platform.
--
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Please don't take my original feedback or, indeed, this email in a negative manner. Your article was great and I meant what I said in the earlier email about getting the word out. I just have come to feel like developers are very fickle and the first thing they see that suggests to them that this is something old and obsolete will cause them to turn their backs on it.
All of that being said... I too love NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. I have some original black hardware and I am in the process of talking to Rob Blessin (Block Hole Inc) about getting some of my old HW replaced (my NeXTstation has a faulty motherboard). The reason I joined GNUstep is because of my love for this platform. So, honestly, I am happy to look at GNUstep's default look all day long... but there is no doubt in my mind that it drives developers who are not like me away... so does the notion that the API is only NeXTSTEP.
Yours, GC