User FAQ - Revision history

Mitchell-riley at 22:15, 26 February 2015

2015-02-26T22:15:55Z

Mitchell-riley: Added many missing links and fixed inaccuracies

2015-02-22T17:04:38Z

Added many missing links and fixed inaccuracies

Show changes

Bheron: /* Does GNUstep run on Windows? */

2013-05-03T01:30:23Z

Does GNUstep run on Windows?

Awiebe: /* Why not use framework bundles? */ changed dynamic link to symbolic link

2013-04-15T07:56:41Z

Why not use framework bundles?: changed dynamic link to symbolic link

Rfm at 13:25, 2 October 2011

2011-10-02T13:25:20Z

Espectador: Updated the Live CD link

2010-11-20T17:43:14Z

Updated the Live CD link

Espectador: Adding IconManager in some sections

2010-11-18T04:48:14Z

Adding IconManager in some sections

Bheron: /* What is GNUstep? */

2010-11-17T16:02:00Z

What is GNUstep?

Bheron: /* What is Cocoa? */

2010-11-17T16:01:06Z

What is Cocoa?

Bheron: /* What is the OpenStep standard? */

2010-11-17T16:00:47Z

What is the OpenStep standard?

@@ Line 54: / Line 54: @@
 === What is usable? ===
-Most of GNUstep is quite usable and there are many complex applications that work well. However, GNUstep does not completely track the latest changes that Apple makes to their interface and there are still some parts that need some work.  This means many applications will run quite well. Applications that require very complex text handling and some unusual features and/or some of the latest additions to Cocoa may not work as well. See the [[User FAQ#Compatibility and Layout|Compatibility and Layout]] section for more information.
+Most of GNUstep is quite usable and there are many complex applications that work well. However, GNUstep does not completely track the latest changes that Apple makes to their interface and there are still some parts that need some work.  This means many applications will run quite well. Applications that require very complex text handling and some unusual features and/or some of the latest additions to Cocoa may not work as well. See the [[#Compatibility and Layout|Compatibility and Layout]] section for more information.
 == Compiling and Installing ==

@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 and the non-gui libraries are reported to work well.
-The GUI library uses the win32 backend library to work under Windows. The backend library is a thin layer that converts the GNUstep methods to handle drawing of GUI elements to calls to the Windows API. This project is currently in beta.
+The GUI library uses the cairo backend library to work under Windows. The backend library is a thin layer that converts the GNUstep methods to handle drawing of GUI elements to calls to the Windows API.
 === What is GNUstep's position towards KDE and the GNOME project? ===

@@ Line 112: / Line 112: @@
 Framework bundles are much more difficult to port and to use, and are very unnatural on a UNIX system; extremely unnatural on Windows. In a framework bundle, the shared dynamic library is inside a framework wrapper directory. Because of this, the dynamic linker can't find it.
-We have frameworks, so how do we work around that? Well, we build dynamic links from a directory inside the dynamic linker path into the framework, which work, but then you can't move the framework anywhere else on the system, otherwise you break the link, and nothing will find the framework any longer! On systems without dynamic links, like Windows, we can't even do this! We have to copy the library from the framework into the dynamic linker path, but that is simply a shared library then! Absolutely no difference. You put the dynamic library in a system directory in the dynamic linker path, and associate with that library a resource directory. OpenStep for Windows did that, and still called them frameworks. So we can do the same, and call our libraries frameworks.
+We have frameworks, so how do we work around that? Well, we create symbolic links from a directory inside the dynamic linker path into the framework, which work, but then you can't move the framework anywhere else on the system, otherwise you break the link, such that nothing will find the framework any longer! On systems without symbolic links, like Windows, we can't even do this! We have to copy the library from the framework into the dynamic linker path, but that is simply a shared library then! Absolutely no difference. You put the dynamic library in a system directory in the dynamic linker path, and associate with that library a resource directory. OpenStep for Windows did that, and still called them frameworks. So we can do the same, and call our libraries frameworks.
 Shared libraries are all in a flat directory where the dynamic linker can easily find them. This is how it works on Unixoids, Windows and probably most other systems. The OpenStep API requires us to provide some stuff for frameworks, like creating and registering a framework object automatically each time a framework is used (linked at runtime, or linked into the app), and attaching to it the list of classes inside the framework, which are not particularly trivial to implement and might make trouble when porting, as they depend on playing with the linker and the object file format. However, shared libraries are handled by the operating system for us, so we never have to use these facilities.

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 === How do you run GNUstep? ===
-You are presumably under the misapprehension that GNUstep is some sort of program or window manager.  It isn't!  GNUstep is a whole load of things -- primarily a set of libraries for developing software.  At present, it's those libraries, plus various command-line based support tools and service providing daemons, plus various GUI development tools, a GUI desktop/workspace application, etc.  At no stage will you ever 'run' GNUstep -- you will run applications and tools and will make use of it's services. At some point you may well find packages distributed as 'GNUstep' systems in the way that you get 'GNU/Linux' systems packaged today. For instance, look at the [http://io.debian.net/~tar/gnustep/ GNUstep Live CD].
+You are presumably under the misapprehension that GNUstep is some sort of program or window manager.  It isn't!  GNUstep is a whole load of things -- primarily a set of libraries for developing software.  At present, it's those libraries, plus various command-line based support tools and service providing daemons, plus various GUI development tools, a GUI desktop/workspace application, etc.  At no stage will you ever 'run' GNUstep -- you will run applications and tools and will use it's services. At some point you may well find packages distributed as 'GNUstep' systems in the way that you get 'GNU/Linux' systems packaged today. For instance, look at the [http://io.debian.net/~tar/gnustep/ GNUstep Live CD].
 If you want to see a sample GUI application running you need to build GNUstep and look at the example applications in the gnustep-examples package. Build 'Finger' or 'Ink' and start it with 'openapp Finger.app' or 'openapp Ink.app'
@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 === What is usable? ===
-Most of GNUstep is quite usable and there are many complex applications that work well. However, GNUstep does not completely track the latest changes that Apple makes to their interface and there are still some parts that need some work).  This means many applications will run quite well. Applications that require very complex text handling and some unusual features and/or some of the latest additions to Cocoa may not work as well.
+Most of GNUstep is quite usable and there are many complex applications that work well. However, GNUstep does not completely track the latest changes that Apple makes to their interface and there are still some parts that need some work).  This means many applications will run quite well. Applications that require very complex text handling and some unusual features and/or some of the latest additions to Cocoa may not work as well.  See the Compatibility and layout section for more information.
 == Compiling and Installing ==
@@ Line 59: / Line 59: @@
 Read the file 'GNUstep-HOWTO', which comes with the GNUstep distribution (gnustep-make), and also is available separately on the GNUstep web site. To check beforehand, take a look at the [[Platform compatibility]] list.
 === Are there any precompiled packages available? ===
@@ Line 92: / Line 93: @@
 === Is GNUstep following changes to OpenStep and Mac OS X? ===
-Yes, gnustep-base already contains the documented changes in the Foundation library. GNUstep aims to be compatible with both the OpenStep specification and with Mac OS X. It should be easy to write an application that compiles cleanly under both GNUstep and Cocoa.
+Yes, gnustep-base already contains the documented changes in the Foundation library. GNUstep aims to be compatible with both the OpenStep specification and with Mac OS X. It should be easy to write an application that compiles cleanly under both GNUstep and Cocoa.  GNUstep can be expected to support the OSX 10.4 version of the Cocoa APIs (we consider it a bug if it does not), but also actually supports many APIs from OSX 10.5 and later (contributions of methods from these later versions are very welcome).
 === Do we have to have the NEXTSTEP look and feel? ===

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 === How do you run GNUstep? ===
-You are presumably under the misapprehension that GNUstep is some sort of program or window manager.  It isn't!  GNUstep is a whole load of things -- primarily a set of libraries for developing software.  At present, it's those libraries, plus various command-line based support tools and service providing daemons, plus various GUI development tools, a GUI desktop/workspace application, etc.  At no stage will you ever 'run' GNUstep -- you will run applications and tools and will make use of it's services. At some point you may well find packages distributed as 'GNUstep' systems in the way that you get 'GNU/Linux' systems packaged today. For instance, look at the [http://www.linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/ GNUstep Live CD].
+You are presumably under the misapprehension that GNUstep is some sort of program or window manager.  It isn't!  GNUstep is a whole load of things -- primarily a set of libraries for developing software.  At present, it's those libraries, plus various command-line based support tools and service providing daemons, plus various GUI development tools, a GUI desktop/workspace application, etc.  At no stage will you ever 'run' GNUstep -- you will run applications and tools and will make use of it's services. At some point you may well find packages distributed as 'GNUstep' systems in the way that you get 'GNU/Linux' systems packaged today. For instance, look at the [http://io.debian.net/~tar/gnustep/ GNUstep Live CD].
 If you want to see a sample GUI application running you need to build GNUstep and look at the example applications in the gnustep-examples package. Build 'Finger' or 'Ink' and start it with 'openapp Finger.app' or 'openapp Ink.app'

@@ Line 26: / Line 26: @@
 === What is GNUstep's position towards KDE and the GNOME project? ===
-You can use GNUstep with GNOME and/or KDE. GNUstep displays on top of X11. You can still do programming in C (since Objective-C is just a super-set of C), and if you're using gcc 4.1 or later, you can mix C++ and Objective-C code in the same file.
+You can use GNUstep with GNOME and/or KDE (See [[IconManager.app]]). GNUstep displays on top of X11. You can still do programming in C (since Objective-C is just a super-set of C), and if you're using gcc 4.1 or later, you can mix C++ and Objective-C code in the same file.
 GNUstep, is much more than a window manager or desktop environment. It frees you to develop cross-platform applications without the work of developing an OS independent framework from scratch. It gives you lots of basic functionality, from font panels to Unicode strings to distributed objects.
@@ Line 40: / Line 40: @@
 If you want to see a sample GUI application running you need to build GNUstep and look at the example applications in the gnustep-examples package. Build 'Finger' or 'Ink' and start it with 'openapp Finger.app' or 'openapp Ink.app'
-For the best look, use WindowMaker (preferred GNUstep window manager) as your window manager.
+For the best look, use WindowMaker (preferred GNUstep window manager) as your window manager. In others desktops (that have its how window manager) you can use [[IconManager.app]]
 === Is there a web site? ===

@@ Line 3: / Line 3: @@
 === What is GNUstep? ===
-GNUstep is the Free Software Foundation's effort to implement Apple, Inc's (formerly NeXT Software, Inc.'s)  Cocoa APIs (formerly the [[OpenStep]] Standard). Also we are building developer and user applications based on this standard which may be used to form a complete desktop experience. For more details, take a look at the [[Introduction to GNUstep|introduction]].
+GNUstep is the Free Software Foundation's effort to implement Apple, Inc's (formerly NeXT Software, Inc.'s)  [[Cocoa]] APIs (formerly the [[OpenStep]] Standard). Also we are building developer and user applications based on this standard which may be used to form a complete desktop experience. For more details, take a look at the [[Introduction to GNUstep|introduction]].
 === What is Cocoa? ===

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 === What is Cocoa? ===
-Cocoa is an Application Programming Interface (API) for creating applications using the Objective-C language. It was published by Apple, Inc.(Formerly NeXT Software, Inc.) in 1994.
+Cocoa is an Application Programming Interface (API) for creating applications using the Objective-C language. It was published by Apple, Inc.(Formerly NeXT Software, Inc.).
 Cocoa consists of three parts: the `Foundation Kit', a library of non-graphical objects; the `Application Kit', a library of objects useful in creating graphical applications; and the Quartz display system.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 GNUstep is the Free Software Foundation's effort to implement Apple, Inc's (formerly NeXT Software, Inc.'s)  Cocoa APIs (formerly the [[OpenStep]] Standard). Also we are building developer and user applications based on this standard which may be used to form a complete desktop experience. For more details, take a look at the [[Introduction to GNUstep|introduction]].
-=== What is the OpenStep standard? ===
+=== What is Cocoa? ===
-OpenStep is an Application Programming Interface (API) for creating applications using the Objective-C language. It was published by NeXT Computer, Inc. in 1994.
+Cocoa is an Application Programming Interface (API) for creating applications using the Objective-C language. It was published by Apple, Inc.(Formerly NeXT Software, Inc.) in 1994.
-OpenStep consists of three parts: the `Foundation Kit', a library of non-graphical objects; the `Application Kit', a library of objects useful in creating graphical applications; and the `Display PostScript System' (DPS), an interface for drawing to the screen using the PostScript graphics language. DPS support is not being persued at this time however.
+Cocoa consists of three parts: the `Foundation Kit', a library of non-graphical objects; the `Application Kit', a library of objects useful in creating graphical applications; and the Quartz display system.
 === What platforms does GNUstep run on? ===