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GORM 1.0 Release to Take on GNOME/KDE?
qa'lth writes "Today marks the occasion of the release of Gorm 1.0, the Interface Builder for the GNUstep project, and with its release, comes the obsolesence of the GNOME and KDE projects. Finally, today, Free Software users can enjoy the power of a well-designed, powerful object-oriented system derived from OpenStep, legacy to the acclaimed MacOSX, through GNUstep, our loving reimplementation of the OpenStep standard."
Gorm is also a RAD application that allows one to create user interfaces and various application object models in very intuitive way, benefiting from highly dynamic features of the Objective-C language and runtime. Flash videos can be seen here. More information can be found on this blog. Interesting is, that the application could never be done in C++, check out why.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
I'll be the first to admit that Interface Builder (in OS X at least) is an incredible, life changing piece of software. If you've never written a GUI using Cocoa with Interface Builder you can't even imagine how easy it can be.
And Gorm is supposed to be Interface Builder for GNUStep.
That said, it's not GNOME or KDE. You've still got to write that whole boring desktop thing. Gorm might make it a lot easier to write all the stuff that's still missing but saying it made GNOME and KDE obsolete is just plain bullshit.
They GNUStep guy announcing this was just trying to have some fun, why the hell to people get some riled up by the obsoleting GNOME and KDE statement, have people completely lost their sense of humour? Congratulations to the GNUStep team on their Gorm 1.0 release! nuff said
Hhhmmmmm.
Me thinks that this poster is a bit sarcastic.
But whatever. GNUstep is a mature and well thought out system for power users. Not my cup of tea, but in absence of Gnome 2.4 and newer software I would probably be using it.
It's also great for systems with lower resources. X terminals, Pentium 2 machines, and the like. Very nice and is picking up the slack that KDE and Gnome leave as they race to beat Microsoft Vista (hopefully before Vista reaches critical mass 2-3 years after it finally gets released (MS still saying it's end of next year?))
If your like me and KDE makes you twitch nerviously, or unlike my you don't have a gig of RAM to deal with Gnome's concept of "simplicity thru complexity" then definately give GNUstep-based systems a look. (GNUstep is actually the API stuff, other projects do the desktop bits)
The nice thing about GNUstep that may attract people is that it's a implimentation for OpenSTEP.
Software previously developed for the Openstep API is what Apple used to create the 'modern' Cocoa half of OS X. (were as the 'older' half is Carbon which follows along the lines of OS 9 and OS 8).
Effectively this makes Cocoa a extended version of Openstep. GNUstep and Cocoa then share a high degree of API compatability. That means that if you write for Cocoa you can much more easily port your applications to run in Linux on Gnustep API and visa versa.
Both OS X's Cocoa and GNUstep are based on the same API specification; "OpenStep" jointly written by NeXT Software and Sun Microsystems in the mid-1990s. Code which targets OpenStep will work on both Cocoa and GNUstep - however from thereon there are divergences...GNUstep has classes which Cocoa lacks and vice versa. It would be possible to reimplement the missing classes on the other system, just it hasn't been done.
GNUstep has drag and drop, and doesn't have much eye candy.
It's a bit tedious to explain with words what Gorm is all about -- it's much simpler to actually *see* it :-)
If you have only one video to see, check the one about the custom palette -- but the other are interesting too :-) (the StepTalk one demonstrate a creation of a simple calculator *entirely* in Gorm, using the StepTalk palette, which let you code in various languages).
First: ugly appearance is not equal to non-funcionality. Flashy and colorful does not mean functional. If you want it to be pretty, use Camaelon as depicted here. The Camaelon bundle is in the progress of being included into the main GNUstep distribution. Themability was low priority to the project, compared to functionality.
Besides that, if you would like to know, then I have seen many expert applications that are "ugly" because of some obsolete GUI toolkits. And guess what? The experts use it and do not care about the appearance at all, but about the functionality.
And how it competes with KDE? By different application development approach, by different point of view on objects (C++ objects vs. Objective-C/Smalltalk-like), by another objective runtime, by different paradigms... If it had everything that KDE has, it would be KDE, not GNUstep. It is different so developers can have an alternative. Can you imagine a world where everyone would be the same?
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Gorm
GNUstep
I think, therefore I am. I think?
The target is currently Cocoa. GNUstep includes many Cocoa classes.
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
The OpenStep Standard. And the object oriented C. And how Interface Builder looked on OPENSTEP. And the live CD with the older version (soon to be updated).
Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance
the screenshots on that page are horrible. look at these for a batter idea:
the dock
like GTK, Everything looks better once it is themed
look at this
The new icons are really nice too
gorm
help
installer
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
All,
For all of those of you who can't take a joke, tongue was firmly planted in cheek regarding the "KDE/GNOME obsolesence" bit of the post. While I didn't write the post, I know who did and that part, at least, was meant as a joke. Also look on it as something of a commentary on slashdot itself: sometimes it's impossible to get anything on here unless it's sensationalistic or overly stated.
I, personally, tried posting 6 times before giving up. Imagine my suprise at seeing this when I woke up this morning!
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Compare Glade to Gorm feature-wise. Aside from the appearance of GNUStep, which admittedly stands to be improved, you will find that some of the features Gorm has, Glade blatantly lacks. One thing in particular is the ability to use custom palettes. Glade comes with a standard set of widgets, period... also Glade does not allow the modelling of non-gui objects, Gorm does.
So from that standpoint alone Gorm is compares favorably. I think you better step back from that "BMW" for a while and ask yourself what you're really getting.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
The GNUStep desktop doesn't work or act at all like Windows. It acts like NextStep, which Apple incorporated into Mac OS X. It is fast, light, and very intuitive and pleasing to use. Gorm is a development environment for GNUStep, similar to Kdevelop/QTdevelop (I forget which it is called) for KDE or the Interface Builder for Mac OS X.
--Muzz
Just my $0.2 here, but...
I follow the GNUstep-dev mailing lists (big fan, myself), and I can assure you the poster was making a joke. Among the GNUstep developer community I do not think there is any misconception as to how "complete" the system is. I use it, and I write apps for GNUstep using Gorm and ProjectCenter, but there is a lot of ground to cover before obsoleting the likes of GNOME.
Amusingly, there was recently a thread about trying to get the release of Gorm 1.0 announced here. Plenty of folks said that they had submitted the story numerous times, only to be rejected. There is perhaps a feeling that the editors deny the existence of anthing that isn't KDE/GNOME, Microsoft/Google/Apple, etc., and perhaps the poster just didn't have very high hopes that the story would even get through.
Here's the latest Camaelon theme engine. There's a really nice theme called "Nesedah" out there.
First, the way the interface looks is irrelevant. A GNUstep theme engine is available here. There's a nice theme in progress called Nesedah (mockup and screenshot of IRC client along with OS X comparison shot)
Second, why is this such a big deal? Don't QT, Visual Basic, and Delphi provide the same RAD approach? No. I've used all of those tools and they just don't stack up. QT is about as good as you're going to get out of a static compile-time-oriented C++ approach. But it's not as simple or direct as a runtime-oriented OO solution like Smalltalk or Objective-C. This is the power of Cocoa/OpenStep/GNUstep.
Delphi, .NET, and QT GUI designers focus on generating code. This is cumbersome and brittle. But Apple/NeXT's Interface Builder and GNUstep's Gorm take a different approach. They actually instantiate objects, set state, create inter-object connnections, and then persist the in-memory objects to disk. When your application is loaded, these objects are unarchived and your application connects to them. This prevents the OO-mocking approach of subclassing a Window class just to create your own instance--something that always makes me laugh but is ubiquitous in the Windows world and has been blindly copied by KDE and GNOME.
Finally, the poster is not a native speaker of English and clearly was not able to convey the sense of humor intended.
Ass.
1) Linux desktops have almost all been around since before OS X, and could not have copied that interface.
2) OS X was partialy inspired by NeXTStep, which also inspired GnuSTEP (through the OpenStep standard). Which is *what the article's about* and which existed before OS X.
BTW, Expose just rearranges windows for you, so saying that it makes it unneccesary to rearrange windows is a bit of a stretch.
Just for the record, Drag-n-drop is only useful for simple actions - it becomes a nuiscance for more complicated tasks, or is simply non-intuitive in some situations. What if I drag a file and drop it on the icon of a text file - do I want to concatenate them, do I want to run the perl script in that text file, do I want to rename a file, do I want the guy down the hall to spontaneously combust? I drop a file in the middle of a word document. Do I want to insert the file there, do I want to open a new window, do I want to replace the current window, so I want the file name inserted at the drop point? What's intuitive to every user? What's sensible?
You mean like this[1]? Not only is it visually attractive, it's been carefully designed for usability as well - for example only controls that can be manipulated with the mouse have a gradient. The default theme for GNUstep is still the original NeXT look which, while dated in appearance, is very usable (although possibly because the developers put more effort into the feel than the look). Many of the GNUstep developers are NeXT refugees, and so the default theme is unlikely to change, although Étoilé - a GNUstep-based desktop environment - uses the Nesedah theme.
[1] The window borders in this screenshot are provided by WindowMaker, not GNUstep, and are not themed. A native GNUstep WM exists, but was not used here.
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Odd, every one of the examples you mentioned works in MY Windows.
I don't get why the previous poster used those examples because they're the same function-wise, but there is a difference in the GUI implementations. The thing about the Windows drag and drop I remember (it's been a while) is that many times it simply changes the cursor to indicate you're dragging something. For example, when you're dragging a picture off a web page onto the desktop, or when you are dragging highlighted text. In OS X, you actually have a transparent image of what you are dragging, like the picture or highlighted text. I actually think this has more to do with how Microsoft would integrate features from other software producers, but simply change the look and feel to make sure it doesn't infringe on copyright, rather than lack of functionality. Like I said, it's been a while so I'm not sure if they have changed this.