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Etoile Project Releases Mac-Like Environment
pschmied writes "Today the Étoilé Project released v0.2 of its Desktop Environment. Not only does Étoilé share user interface similarities with Mac OS X, Étoilé enjoys some source-level compatibility with Mac OS X as well. Many here undoubtedly remember NeXT, the revolutionary computer / development environment that gave rise to the first Web browser and later became the foundation of Mac OS X. Étoilé uses the FSF's own implementation of the NeXT development environment, GNUstep, making this a close technological relative of OS X. Screenshots and a source tarball are available."
Interestingly, the Etoile developers seem to want to avoid the GPL and prefer the BSD License (as seen on their about page here: http://www.etoile-project.org/etoile/mediawiki/ind ex.php?title=EtoileWiki:About/), which I find a bit odd...
Etoile may be in its relative infancy, but I believe it has great strategic potential for the FOSS movement. Etoile / GNUStep is building some great infrastructure, uniting the Mac and FOSS communities, and is building on some very interesting ideas.
If you haven't already done so, I urge you to check out David's Core Object posting. There is some exciting stuff there. Smalltalkers will find it particularly interesting.
Props to the Etoile team! This is even more reason for me to grow my Objective C / Cocoa / GNUStep skills.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
But the problem exists on that level as well. I confined my comments to the visual layer because that's what parent started with this thread. But these people seem to writing themselves into a corner and it's pretty easy to see how their frameworks are going to have to be wedged in with electronic equivalents of shims and compatibility layers to come back into the fold. They're writing a lot of their own stuff and making it, just like on the surface layer, an approximation of true interoperability.
GNUStep is reasonably compatible with NextStep which is reasonably compatible with Cocoa. They branched from a common ancestor and happen to be reasonably similar now. All the extra frameworks tossed in to this project looks to be a third fork more than a bridge between the two.
That's strange. The main aspects I like about my Mac are the menu placement and the way the dock+expose manages applications and windows.
The Mac argument for zoom is that noone wants maximised windows... which is true when you really think about it. Most Windows or indeed Linux converts (that includes me) I see are always struggling to maximise their windows until it hits them - they never really wanted it maximised in the first place. Why would they want to maximise Word on a 36" monitor?
I'm not sure why we maximise windows. I think I had two reasons:
- It was hard to tell which window was what. I have quite a bit of difficulty distinguishing between windows without decent shadows behind them, which neither Windows or Linux at the time provided.
- I always used to use the top of the screen as a sort of mouse reflection point. I knew that if I threw the mouse up there from any point on the screen, it's stop and I could be more precise and lower it carefully to select a menu button... it was easier because the top of the screen was a sort of infinite height target.
The small screen argument has been irrelevant for a few years, I think.
I think the problem you're having is that your mouse settings are crap. Macs are really optimised towards high precision mice optimised so that you can cover the entire screen in a short sweep as well as having good precision when you move slowly. This means quite high acceleration. I can cover over 1000 pixels in about 4cm when I move my mouse sharply, but if I move slowly I can almost move the mouse with 1:1 distance correspondence between mouse distance and screen distance... about 40px/cm.
Plus, try using cmd+tab (and other shortcuts or expose once in a while, though expose is also optimised for decent mouse settings. You do have a point about dual monitor, but I think even mac fanboys tend to accept that it's a PITA for dual monitor. What applications are you using that require menu interaction that frequently? CS3 suite or something? If so, do yourself a favour and learn the shortcuts. It's damn near impossible to use a program with that much menu interaction without learning shortcuts... Windows, Linux or OS X.