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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."
Riiight. 'Nuff Said.
Nothing like a little optimism, eh? Quick question, what are you smoking and who's your dealer? I gotta get some of that stuff...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
How about decent and WORKING drag and drop?
everyone is busy with eye candy and other useless add-ons and ignore basic operability and useability.
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 GOOOOOOOORRRRMMM!!!!!! GORM SMASH!!!!! KDE EAT!!!! SMASH GNOME!!!! GUUUUUhhhHHH!!!! GrrrRRRRR!!!! I GOOOOOOOORRRRRMMMMM!!!!
alternatively:
Gorm nuts!
Corn nuts!!
Gorm nuts!
Coooorn nuts!!
Gooorm nuts!!!
Cooooooooorn!!!!!!
Gooooooooooorrm!!!!!
Maybe GORM will make GNOME and KDE obsolete, but first their server will have to withstand a righteous Slashdotting!
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
Having set the expectation with references to OSX, why don't they have any drop dead gorgeous screenshots instead of one very dated looking one? I had high hopes that got dashed with WTF?
Fnord! Any sufficiently undocumented code is indistinguishable from magic.
So why can't we moderate articles too?
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
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
I think three things will really help GNUstep. the first it the ability to read nib files. If GORM can load a OSX nib file, it will allows people to port the thousands of OSX apps they have made to GNUstep. Second, if they chnaged their target to Cocoa (link it to a version of OSX and release new versions with each release to add features).
The third and final thing is the appearance. GNUstep will never be popular looking thw way it does now. The default look looks too much like 1994 and unfortunately, many people will judge it based on that.
OSX + linux cross platform development would be a HUGE boost to linux.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
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.
GORM also obsoletes XTerm, Vista, Web 2.0, the Automobile and the Universe in general.
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).
Why waste time trying to make my desktop work and act like Windows(tm)(r)(C)(and possible 666) when all I really want is to get my work done without all the bling?
--
A random sig
Dynamic
Saying nothing
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.
The VIM development team just announced that emacs is obsolete.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
An all too common mistake, Mr. Wiggum. The word you're thinking of is 'gort', the tasty, yet completely moistureless mix of nuts, rasins, and small freeze-dried squirrels. The term 'gorm' is actually the species name of a Star Trek lizard (Capt. Kirk owns a pair of gorm skin boots).
But don't worry, the 'gor' words are often confusing. For example, many people forget that 'gorp' is the name of an alien robotic policeman who destroyed life as we know it in the classic SciFi movie It's a Wonderful Day to Stand Still on the Earth. And the word 'gork' (meaning "I knew that") was coined by writer Robert "Bob" Heinlein for his novel Strange Sex in a Strange Novel. There are hundreds of other 'gor' words (well, 26 max), but I don't have time to cover them all!
Hope this little chat has cleared up your lexographic apostrophe. I know it's helped mine.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
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
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.
Fuck Mac OS X. I have a Mac and still prefer Gnome or KDE (I have used both extensively and like both). OS X is a sorry excuse for a UNIX.
Good - don't use it then. Sell your Mac on ebay and buy a new Linux box. However, while you are trolling - go take a long look at modern Linux desktops, then go look at OS X. You'll probably be supprised to notice that alot of the "good" functionality in KDE and GNOME was swiped directly from OS X.
It doesn't even have a working native terminal program (one which allows PGUP/PGDN), and Fink's repository is very poorly maintained. Running X apps doesn't work all that great (why don't they show up in the Dock?). Maybe with a huge amount of effort (and buying a few shareware apps), I could get OS X to work how I want it.
That argument is the EXACT argument used by Windows users against Linux in the early days. Why would you do it? To perhaps show your support to a commerical company that IS actually innovating. Oh, and they don't show up in the dock because they were written using a different API and are connecting to a different window SERVER!
But why would I bother when I can have Linux working out-of-box the way I want it? Why would a want a non-free OS when a free one works just as good if not better?
Again - show some support for a company that is innovating.
There are a few apps that are really great on OS X, but that is all I use it for. Linux is my primary OS. Just because all the pussy, wannabe users fled to OS X, doesn't mean that OS X is better. It's better than Windows, but that's about all that can be said for OS X.
I'll call it like I see it here. You must be an l33t h@x0r right??? Go back to high school and do your homework. OS X has a unique and interesting background in NextStep - which is what both AfterStep and Windowmaker (two of my favorite window managers) are open source clones of. I find it ammusing that someone with your mentality is extolling the virtues of Linux and in the same breath praising KDE and Gnome rather than a more lightweight window manager. Your views are an uninformed mishmash of "popular" thoughts without ONE of your own.
This is special. I WISH I had modpoints today. Can someone tell me why my post (see above) is modded as flamebait while this parent is modded as insightful? PLEASE - read the two posts and tell me why. I'd love to know.