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First GNUstep Renaissance Public Release.

Posted by Hemos on from the who's-da-vinci dept.

Christopher "CJayC" Jenkins writes "Nicola Pero recently announced on the discuss-gnustep mailing list the public release of his GNUstep Renaissance software, which allows for user interfaces utilizing the GNUstep and Apple Cocoa APIs to be specified in XML. While still alpha-quality code, it can be used at the present to replace .nib (and .gorm and .gmodel) files with .gsmarkup files, which can be easily edited by hand. "

The source code can be checked out of the GNUstep CVS repo:
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/gn ustep login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anoncvs@subversions.gnu.org:/cvsroot/gn ustep co dev-libs/Renaissance

13 comments

  1. great.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With an Gorm/IB like tool it will be best way to develop GUI on GNUstep/*nix GNUstep/Windows and MacOSX.

    I hope MacOSX developpers will use it.

    1. Re:great.... by cbv · · Score: 4, Insightful
      With an Gorm/IB like tool it will be best way to develop GUI on GNUstep/*nix GNUstep/Windows and MacOSX.

      It seems to be the way to go if you (in general) want to develop applications that run basically wherever GNUstep runs on, without having to worry about the layout of your GUI, however...

      I hope MacOSX developpers will use it.

      ... why the fsck would they care? They have Interface- and ProjectBuilder that undeniably are much more mature compared to Gorm and ProjectCenter (and now Renaissance). And I don't think most really _are_ interested in porting their software to Windows or any of the various UNICES, GNUstep runs on. A few, maybe, but most certainly not.

      But Renaissance most certainly will help GNUstep to "get the word out" - and it might even help to get GNUstep a little (compared to GNOME and KDE) of much deserved (again, compared to GNOME and KDE) "hype" - as applications do not require a running X server, like ported GTK/Qt applications do.

    2. Re:great.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      first off, Real OpenStep (from NeXT) is/was available for Windows. While the core gnustep libraries are mature, useable, and reportedly faster than Cocoa, the GUI part is not.


      Additionally, GTK, QT, and GNUstep are all varying degrees of X-independent... QT has QT embedded as well as QT for Windows and MacOS. GTK is available for Windows (though, why?), but GNUstep has a raw xlib backend, a postscript backend (eg ghostscript + XWindows), or a Windows backend.

    3. Re:great.... by cbv · · Score: 1
      Additionally, GTK, QT, and GNUstep are all varying degrees of X-independent... QT has QT embedded as well as QT for Windows and MacOS. GTK is available for Windows (though, why?), but GNUstep has a raw xlib backend, a postscript backend (eg ghostscript + XWindows), or a Windows backend.

      True, but - you still need to install GTK and Qt on your MacOSX, while GNUstep applications can (or say: should - as long as you don't use GNUstep extesions) run "out of the box" - as most prominently demonstrated by GNUMail.

      Windows, as usual, is a different story entirely....

  2. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Story was posted at 8:30 (am). But, comments couldn't posted until 12:04 (pm). Huh?

  3. The full announcement.... by cbv · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... is here and here.

    1. Re:The full announcement.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is also a web page
      here
      and a short tutorial here

  4. Any chance of a standard? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Off the top of my head, we have:
    • Glade XML for GTK+ apps
    • XUL from the Mozilla project
    • and now Renaissance from the GNUStep/Cocoa folks

    plus dozens of non-portable, programmatic interfaces (Tk, Swing, Motif, Mac Toolbox, etc.) Is anybody looking at whether a portable superset XML spec is feasible? XSLT transforms ought to be able to derive a platform-specifc file. Imagine:

    ./configure --with-interface=cocoa

    User Interfaces are the final frontier of program portability.
    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re:Any chance of a standard? by cbv · · Score: 1
      XSLT transforms ought to be able to derive a platform-specifc file. Imagine: ./configure --with-interface=cocoa

      Not every software needs to be ./configure'd ;-)

      User Interfaces are the final frontier of program portability.

      Take a look at THE.

    2. Re:Any chance of a standard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Off the top of my head, we have:
      >* Glade XML [gnome.org] for GTK+ apps

      Please don't compare toys and real app

    3. Re:Any chance of a standard? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with this approach is that Glade/XUL and nib files solve different problems. A glade file will contain a description of the interface, while a nib file will contain a description of the interface, a listing of classes, instances of those classes, and interconnections between the classes and the interface that specify the flow of data.

  5. rapid response by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

    I mailed hemos about it, and he turned on comments within minutes, with a polite thank you note to me. I assume noone else bothered since he was so fast to respond. I guess some people would rather be annoyed and bitchy. Let's cut him some Holiday Slack.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  6. As a Mac OSX developer ... by torpor · · Score: 2

    ... I can say that I'd use it, if it meant I could take my OSX apps and - relatively easily - move them to Linux-land...

    Of course, audio API's are a different story.

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --