Re: Next GNUstep release?

[Gregory Casamento]

Riccardo,

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Riccardo Mottola <address@hidden> wrote:
[ SNIP ]
> Although I generally agree with leaving the default theme as is on Unix,
> where we can theoretically strive for a complete environment, on Windows we
> always will be hosted, thus I consider it correct to have a more windows.
> friendly theme as the default on windows. I consider it an exception. Even
> when using a complete development environment you probably want that. Also,
> if you go as far as having several developer applications installed, you
> will be smart enough to be able to revert to the default theme if you wish.

I believe on Linux and other open source OS's it's up to the package
makers.   They should decide what themes to use based on their
judgement.

> A default theme however must guarantee that any application can be compiled
> and work well without any further "porting efforts" to adapt it. This is not
> the case with the current WinUXTheme, although it works very well for some
> applications.

This is easy to say, but very difficult to accomplish.

The most glaring difference between the Windows theme and the NeXT
theme is, of course, the floating menus.   An issue arises when the
app doesn't bring up a window by default.  I'm concerned that, if we
bring up a window/menu in the absence of a window that the framework
is making assumptions about what the developer wants.

> I think a good proposal would be, if possible, to make the WinUXTheme as a
> user-selectable component in the NSIS installer, however selecting it should
> write automatically the global preferences so that it will be enabled.

I'm not even sure if the NSIS installer supports this.

> In this release I would make it by default unselected and maybe the next
> release will have it selected by default.

If we don't release the Windows theme this time I would suggest we
hold the release on Windows until it's ready.

> I don't know however if the windows installer can be so smart to write the
> NSGlobalDomain when installing it?

Not sure.

> Riccardo

-- 
Gregory Casamento - GNUstep Lead/Principal Consultant, OLC, Inc.
yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa
(240)274-9630 (Cell)