On Fri, 21 Jul 2023 at 08:27, Gregory Casamento
<greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
This is the core of the issue that I have been trying to get across
for, what, a decade now?
Which part? Also, who do you believe reads your articles? It is important to play to both parts of the audience. Developers, while not the majority, are extremely important because without them you can't create the engagement needed to build the environment.
If you want people to use your software, to adopt it and try it and
develop for it, then you have to find a way to appeal to as many
people as possible.
Which means having applications... which means having developers...
That means, whatever your tool, the problem is not about programmers.
It is not about APIs.
It is about *users*.
It's about BOTH. You have to appeal to BOTH or you get nothing.
Over 2/3 of the human race uses computers. Of those 6 billion or so
people, 99.99% are not programmers. They are users.
And, you think... that set of non-programmers will be good with using something that looks like an operating system and compared with a GUI that has not been in production since the 90's? GNUstep has had the ability to theme itself and look like practically anything for a very long time now.
If you aim your message at programmers, you are excluding all but a
tiny rounding error of any potential market.
I agree that users are important which actually makes MY point much stronger. PEOPLE will walk away from something that is considered obsolete... even LOOKS obsolete.
APIs and so on are irrelevant abstractions to users.
Users need apps... apps need developers. So, they depend on one another.
GSDE is a desktop environment, one which happens to contain some
development tools. It's what I've been saying GNUstep needed for half
this century so far.
Yes, indeed GSDE is a good thing, but GSDE is NOT what we are talking about. We are discussion the wisdom (or vaccuous lack thereof) behind touting GNUstep as a clone of NEXTSTEP. :/
Forget anything to do with developers. Talking about the name of a set
of APIs that _the company which created those APIs_ stopped using over
a decade ago is the definition of futility.
Again you defend using a name that the predecessor in interest (NeXT) of said company (Apple) stopped using almost 30 years ago (NeXTSTEP) in lieu of a name you assume they "abandoned" a decade ago based on the fact that the document on their website is retired.
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I think, essentially, we are discussing two separate sides of the same coin... both users and developers are important. I simply disagree that presenting even users with the idea that a NeXTSTEP-like environment is usable as a modern desktop for the average user today. For me, yes, for you, perhaps... but to most I am not convinced.