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Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

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Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#41

Post by astrange »

ctas wrote: post #6
linguae wrote: post #4

I will have to try this out when I get the free time! I’ve been periodically checking on the GNUstep ecosystem since 2004, and this is the most exciting development I’ve seen since Étoilé from the late 2000s. Judging by the screenshots, the desktop appears to be Mac-like while also not being an exact clone. If this desktop takes off, maybe we’ll finally see an ecosystem of applications that use GNUstep instead of GTK…

I’m working on something similar for Linux. Would love to chat if this is interesting to you. The idea is to bring the UX of OSX Snow Leopard back, adjusted for today’s possibilities (better developer experience, AI, etc.). I’m developing a DE, SwiftUI/AppKit-equivalent, and a bunch of reference apps I‘m personally missing in terms of quality (e.g. Raycast/Spotlight, Mail).

> adjusted for today’s possibilities

You would want to adjust it for today's display and input technologies. A high resolution OLED display deserves a different UI design than a 6-bit low-contrast TN LCD display did.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#42

Post by probonopd »

12_throw_away wrote: post #33

Love this. Both my reason for wanting to replace macos and my biggest blocker to doing so is needing a desktop GUI with some HIG consistency, which is apparently a very old-fashioned idea these days. Really, anything that can adhere to the old-school HIG well enough to offer A) consistent keyboard shortcuts across the apps that B) use a dedicated, thumb-actuated command key, I'm sold. (The `control` key, and thereby…

Gershwin is using the key next to the spacebar (whatever is written on it) as the Command key.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#43

Post by probonopd »

lproven wrote: post #38
dustbunny wrote: post #26

Why not use elementary OS which looks far better?

Elementary OS does look superficially Apple-like, but on closer inspection, there's no menu bar, which is a core element of the macOS UI. So actually it's more like iPadOS on the desktop: apps generally only have hamburger menus, which personally I do not like at all, and it's limited by its insistence on Flatpak apps for everything. You can of course open a console and use `apt` to install whatever you want, but the…

Exactly. Design, to us, is also how it works. Not just how it looks. The "feel" part in "look and feel".

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#44

Post by pjmlp »

linguae wrote: post #4

I will have to try this out when I get the free time! I’ve been periodically checking on the GNUstep ecosystem since 2004, and this is the most exciting development I’ve seen since Étoilé from the late 2000s. Judging by the screenshots, the desktop appears to be Mac-like while also not being an exact clone. If this desktop takes off, maybe we’ll finally see an ecosystem of applications that use GNUstep instead of GTK…

Sadly, GNUStep is hardly moving, plus last time I remember there were still issues regarding the adoption of modern Objective-C, given that it is only supported on clang, and they were focused on using only what was available in GCC.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#45

Post by ctas »

astrange wrote: post #41
ctas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on something similar for Linux. Would love to chat if this is interesting to you. The idea is to bring the UX of OSX Snow Leopard back, adjusted for today’s possibilities (better developer experience, AI, etc.). I’m developing a DE, SwiftUI/AppKit-equivalent, and a bunch of reference apps I‘m personally missing in terms of quality (e.g. Raycast/Spotlight, Mail).

> adjusted for today’s possibilities You would want to adjust it for today's display and input technologies. A high resolution OLED display deserves a different UI design than a 6-bit low-contrast TN LCD display did.

I agree that displays and input changed. But if you think in fundamentals, like clarity, readability, affordances, you tend to arrive at the right answers anyway.

Those principles survived CRTs, TN panels, Retina, touch, trackpads. They’re not tied to a specific technology.

Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#46

Post by ctas »

ludamn wrote: post #16
ctas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m working on something similar for Linux. Would love to chat if this is interesting to you. The idea is to bring the UX of OSX Snow Leopard back, adjusted for today’s possibilities (better developer experience, AI, etc.). I’m developing a DE, SwiftUI/AppKit-equivalent, and a bunch of reference apps I‘m personally missing in terms of quality (e.g. Raycast/Spotlight, Mail).

Is there a link for this project? It sounds exciting!

Thank you. Not all parts are open-sourced yet. I published the first repo yesterday: https://github.com/cihantas/applib

Going to launch a few apps powered by AppLib in the next few weeks and then continue with the DE.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#47

Post by wink »

12_throw_away wrote: post #33

Love this. Both my reason for wanting to replace macos and my biggest blocker to doing so is needing a desktop GUI with some HIG consistency, which is apparently a very old-fashioned idea these days. Really, anything that can adhere to the old-school HIG well enough to offer A) consistent keyboard shortcuts across the apps that B) use a dedicated, thumb-actuated command key, I'm sold. (The `control` key, and thereby…

Using my first mac for work, cmd instead of ctrl is actually the only thing I could get used to because I admit it's kinda nicer.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#48

Post by wtallis »

ctas wrote: post #45
astrange wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adjusted for today’s possibilities You would want to adjust it for today's display and input technologies. A high resolution OLED display deserves a different UI design than a 6-bit low-contrast TN LCD display did.

I agree that displays and input changed. But if you think in fundamentals, like clarity, readability, affordances, you tend to arrive at the right answers anyway. Those principles survived CRTs, TN panels, Retina, touch, trackpads. They’re not tied to a specific technology. Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

> Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

There are a lot of places where I now see a miniature thumbnail preview of a file's contents, where in the 1990s you would only have seen an icon corresponding to the file type. Those previews are enabled partly by faster IO and processors making the preview rendering cheap, but also by higher resolution displays making the previews a lot more useful than they could have been at 32 pixels or smaller.

While it's not exactly a quality change as the driving force, the proliferation of dark mode UIs is a result of OLED displays that draw meaningfully less power with darker content, so pushing users toward darker UIs helps battery life. And it looks much better on a display with decent black levels than it would on a crappy LCD that washes out all the dark colors.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#49

Post by astrange »

ctas wrote: post #45
astrange wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adjusted for today’s possibilities You would want to adjust it for today's display and input technologies. A high resolution OLED display deserves a different UI design than a 6-bit low-contrast TN LCD display did.

I agree that displays and input changed. But if you think in fundamentals, like clarity, readability, affordances, you tend to arrive at the right answers anyway. Those principles survived CRTs, TN panels, Retina, touch, trackpads. They’re not tied to a specific technology. Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

> Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

The extremely heavy "pinstripe" Aqua UI existed because displays were so low contrast at the time that it didn't look nearly as heavy. A much higher contrast display that actually displays blacks properly means it'd look more like visual noise.

Re: Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

#50

Post by astrange »

wtallis wrote: post #48
ctas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that displays and input changed. But if you think in fundamentals, like clarity, readability, affordances, you tend to arrive at the right answers anyway. Those principles survived CRTs, TN panels, Retina, touch, trackpads. They’re not tied to a specific technology. Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality?

> Can you give me an example of a change in todays UI that was motivated by change in display quality? There are a lot of places where I now see a miniature thumbnail preview of a file's contents, where in the 1990s you would only have seen an icon corresponding to the file type. Those previews are enabled partly by faster IO and processors making the preview rendering cheap, but also by higher resolution displays ma…

> Those previews are enabled partly by faster IO and processors making the preview rendering cheap

That's not really it. You could cache the thumbnails so it was never expensive to do.

If anything standards for performance were lower then (no 120hz displays) so people felt free to do more expensive things at the time.

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