In GNUstep 0.9.3 spell checker has been reimplemented using libaspell. There is a new NSComboBox implementation. NSToolbar is much improved. There are binary incompatibilites from ivar additions in NSView and subclasses, a number of W32 window event enhancements, and art backend glyph drawing with alpha enhancements. On other toolkit news, the C++ Fox Toolkit 1.2.4 was released.
GNUstep 0.9.3, FOX Toolkit 1.2.4 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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Is there any support for XP/GTK/KDE themes?
I can seem to find any info on that.
-magg
Sorry I mean “I can’t seem to find any info on that”.
-magg
http://www.fox-toolkit.org/
Sorry if this sounds like a troll, but:
What is the point of Fox? Seems to me that there is already a surfeit of cross-platform GUI toolkits. What advantage/difference does Fox offer in comparison with GTK+, Qt, Wx, Swing, SWT, etc. that would make me want to use it in preference to one of the others?
Thanks.
I don’t know what’s wrong with RMS but all the fundamental projects from FSF other than gcc/glibc sucked.
GnuStep should either be completed 10 years ago or dumped 5 years ago. And the same goes with the Hurd.
I’m no expert, but think of GTK and Qt as the competing API’s for desktop UNIX, and think of Fox and Wx as the equivelent situation for cross platform API’s. Fox and Wx are very cross-platform, where GTK / Qt have half-assed implementations on less focused platforms.
Umm… I certainly wouldn’t call Qt half-assed on any platform. I would actually say that if cross platform is your foremost goal than Qt would be a very good choice. I personally don’t like Qt (although I have limited experience, only writing one relatively small app), but I think it’s a decent toolkit to build an cross platform app with.
As for Gtk on windows… yeah, it’s kind of half-assed. I haven’t tried Wx or Fox, but from what I remember of reading about Wx, it isn’t really comparable to Qt or Gtk. I believe that Wx simply wraps the native toolkit of the particular system it’s on (not sure though) whereas Qt and Gtk are actually a toolkit by themselves.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with RMS but all the fundamental projects from FSF other than gcc/glibc sucked.
GnuStep should either be completed 10 years ago or dumped 5 years ago. And the same goes with the Hurd.”
GNUStep is pretty much complete now (http://www.gnustep.org/information/progress.html), and it would have been difficult to complete 10 years ago, as it didn’t exist. GNUStep’s progress is amazing, especially when you consider they have had no corporate backing, unlike KDE or GNOME who have many full-time hackers, getting paid for their work. Who knows, perhaps GNUstep will become more prominent and help dissolve the QT/GTK split? They do need to get the word out there and make the platform work with more window managers, though.
Also, don’t be so down on HURD. They have like, 6 part-time hackers? Unlike the Linux kernel which has hundreds of full and part-timers, and millions of dollars of corporate backing. Just appreciate these people are donating their time and skills at all.
I use the Ruby bindings to GTK. My first project was an IRC client, and I still use it to chat once in a while.
Nowadays, I’m using all kinds of little softwares that help me. I don’t use Swing, Delphi, VB, ’cause Ruby plus GTK are great already. I never used TCL, but I think that with Ruby + GTK, I can do almost all what people can do with TCL + Tk.
Yesterday and today I had to use GIMP, and it was a pleasure (mind you, I hate to do graphics, but GIMP was so easy that I simply loved when I had to redo the damned graphics).
I look forward to use more GTK apps on Windows.
If you’re curious, check out my site (in Portuguese, so jump straight to the “Exemplos Meus” (My Examples) section, for code and screenshots:
http://www.geocities.com/canalruby/#exemplos
I am currently working on TreeView bindings to databases and on a chess game (.pgn) viewer.
Lots of folks use it with Ruby as well. I’m waiting for Lyle, the maintainer of the bindings, to release a new version that supports the current Fox toolkit (FXRuby currently supports Fox 1.0.x).
The real reason lots of people use FXRuby is that Lyle is a great man
I agree that Fox is a contender to WxWidget, not gtk, but I’m not really sure it is so cross platform, it still needs an XServer on Mac boxes. If someone could send an OSX machine to one of the authors of Fox he’ll be happy to port it to quartz
wxWidgets is comparable to QT. it has many classes, which are missed in gtk+. so you cant say that wxWidgets is just a wrapper.
As for Fox. It uses Xlib to create new interface, as Gtk+ and Qt, but it makes it much faster. I recommend to see Fox version of Eclipse or Sancho (mldonkey gui client).
Unlike wxWidgets, FOX looks the same on all platforms.
So how does fox compare with fltk?
This is probably off topic, taken for granted the other messages, but is anybody really using GNUStep as a production desktop? Isn’t it already outdated? Developed in ridiculously slow pace? Can somebody tell me a compeling advantage that would make somebody use it?
Well, GNUstep is NOT a desktop, it’s a programming framework for cross-platform application. Additionally, it provides to the programs that use it a range of services that permit a good integration between applications; if you want, the closest approximation could be to equal GNUstep to KDE libs.
In addition, the GNUstep project also propose development applications such as GORM, ProjectCenter, etc; and GWorkspace, which is a file manager similar to the one found in OPENSTEP (I agree, inclusion of GWorkspace tends to blur the borders between GNUstep the development environment and GNUstep the hypothetical desktop). Actually, there is a project of a desktop based on GNUstep, Backbone (http://www.nongnu.org/backbone/), but the progresses are slow.
Else, to answer you, some people really use GNUstep + GNUstep apps + Backbone as their main desktop (me, for example — ok… I’m not a good example… but anyway
). And no, it’s far from being outdated — the technologies used are damn good. I don’t think it’s developed at a ridiculously slow pace; actually, it progressed quite impressively since a couple of years (no miracles, when you start to have more developers, things starts to advance).
For the compelling advantages, if you’re speaking about GNUstep, it’s from the developer point of view. I shall refer you to http://www.roard.com/gnustep/GNUstep-brochure.pdf and http://www.roard.com/gnustep/Booklet.pdf . For the user, it depends on which GNUstep software you are using. But in general, they tend to focus on usability and simplicity, plus they have a good consistency, and some nifty mechanisms such as services provided by and to all applications.
I have used a little FOX, and what I’ve seen of it is very nice. It is super fast in terms of redrawing speed, but unfortunately lacks in visual appearance. FOX apps look like Windows 95 apps. Maybe that’s the reason why it’s so damn fast
What I’d like to see is a sort of independant theme engine. Something like a C library with callbacks for drawing pixels, lines, text, etc. Then have each toolkit connect their drawing functions to the themelib callbacks, and voila. No need to port themes to multiple toolkits.
I hope this will happen soon.
because GNUStep is a compliant OpenStep implementation that runs in X11, is the center toolkit of Mac OS X (Cocoa), and runs natively in Windows using Cygwin (no x11 server needed).
thus you can port a gnustep app, without a huge amount of work, to all 3 major platforms. sounds almost as good as gtk and qt doesn’t it? objective-c is also a much nicer language to use with C, as it is a strict superset of C. in general, objective-c is a cleaner extention to C than C++ is with the same power but far more simplicity and more dynamic capabilities. for a good read check out the wikipedia article on Objective-C: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-C or my objective-c tutorial page: http://www.otierney.net/objective-c.html