Re: Random question: GNUStep site design

[Scott Stevenson]

On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 03:55 AM, MJ Ray wrote:

> I don't think there are any feet in that water to tread on, so stomp
> away!  The limit of my thoughts on structure so far are in the order
> of the menu items on the newindex template.

Okay, let me mull that over. I'll start reading the docs, but I'm also 
curious if there's any document or archived post that describes what it 
is that GNUStep is looking to emphasize most about the platform -- 
Objective-C, the frameworks, that it's similar to Cocoa, etc?

GSWeb seems like an area of interest too, but not sure how usable it is 
at this point, or even if it's something that should have a presence on 
the site.


> I'm still wrestling with myself over whether to specify a width, in 
> spite
> of my instincts, or to say "sod Mac/IE, not being able to see 
> gnustep.org
> is the least of its problems and it can't be fixed simultaneously with
> all other browsers".

MacIE has its problems, but rendering pages really isn't one of them. 
This is one sticking point in an otherwise very solid rendering engine 
that has been benchmark for browsers that followed it years later.

I actually ended up having to create two sets of stylesheets for my 
personal site -- one set for WinIE5, and one set for everyone else. The 
problem was that WinIE5 calculates CSS box dimensions differently than 
every other browser and the W3C spec, though WinIE6 does it correctly. 
Multiple style sheets aren't ideal, but it's a manageable approach and 
gets the job done.


> I'd like people to be able to use the gnustep.org site to promote 
> gnustep,
> but I want to be able to use derived works of it that I get.  There's a
> GPL FAQ on the main GNU site, or ask particular questions here.

I just went and did some skimming and searches on the FAQ, but a web 
page is a much different beast than a piece of software. It's not clear 
to me what's being licensed/protected in that context, and I can't find 
an answer to that on gnu.org.

What would be considered a derivative work of a web page? It can't be 
the appearance, because that can be abstracted from the internal 
implementation. And then you run into the problem of the 
"implementation" consisting essentially of markup and style 
definitions, which have been and reused again and again since the dawn 
of time.

It's clear to me what's being protected in a program -- the individual 
components are common (loops, declarations, library function calls), 
but it's the way they communicate with each other and custom data types 
that's unique. The problem I see with web pages is that each web page 
element is essentially unaware of the other, so it's not clear what the 
larger concept is that the GPL is being applied to.

Sorry if this is rudimentary, and I don't mean to make a big deal about 
it. I have a basic understanding of GPL, but not sure how the nooks and 
crannies apply to this situation. I did some googling and didn't come 
up with anything that seemed to apply.


Thanks,

   - Scott


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