GNUstep News

GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.6 Released

2011-11-24T18:04:00.001-08:00

GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.6 features:

Compatibility with the new runtime APIs introduced with Mac OS X 10.7 / iOS 5.
Support for small objects (ones hidden inside a pointer). On 32-bit systems, the runtime permits one small object class, on 64-bit systems it permits 4. This is used by GNUstep for small NSNumber and NSString instances, and these are used by LanguageKit for message sending to small integers.
Support for prototype-style object orientation. You can now add methods, as well as associated references, to individual objects, and clone them. The runtime now supports everything required for the JavaScript object model, including the ability to use blocks as methods on x86, x86-64 and ARM.
Support for Apple-compatible objc_msgSend() functions for x86, x86-64, and ARM. Using these approximately halves the cost of message sending operations and results in a 10% smaller total binary size.
A fully maintained POSIX Makefile to make bootstrapping builds and packaging easier. This will be used automatically if GNUstep Make is not installed.
Improvements to the included LLVM optimisation passes. Testing on a 2.8GHz Xeon, a loop of 200,000,000 class messages took 0.8 seconds with all optimisations enabled (including speculative inlining). With -Os, the test took 2 seconds. With explicit IMP caching in the source code, the test took 1.2 seconds. For reference, the same test using the GCC Objective-C runtime took 11 seconds (when compiled with either Clang/LLVM or GCC).

GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.5 Released

2011-07-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

This runtime was designed to support the features of Objective-C 2 for use with GNUstep and other Objective-C programs. Highlights of this release include:

Support for Apple-compatible garbage collection APIs, along with extensions to support CoreFoundation-style explicit reference counting in a garbage collected environment. This uses the Boehm garbage collector and is enabled by specifying boehm_gc=yes when building. This requires version 7.1 or later of libgc. Code compiled with -fobjc-gc can be mixed with code that implements normal reference counting and with code compiled with -fobjc-gc-only. The runtime supports both GC and non-GC code when compiled with GC support and will automatically select the correct behavior depending on the loaded code.

The runtime will now use Boehm GC for several internal data structures, if it is built with GC enabled. This avoids the need for defensive programming with respect to thread safety in several places.

This is the first release to provide a superset of the functionality provided by the Mac Objective-C runtime, as shipped with OS X 10.6.

Full support for Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), compatible with OS X 10.7 and iOS 5, including support for __weak references.

The LLVM optimisation passes have been improved and better tested. Code compiled with them now passes the EtoileFoundation test suite.

Sony SNAP

2010-11-24T19:19:00.000-08:00

Sony's SNAP uses GNUstep

PRICE 0.9.0

2009-12-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

New features of PRICE

fixes to build on current glibc and current compilers with optimizations enabled.

new, unified, PRFilter architecture which simplifies all the controllers and unifies parameter passing with an Array

all PRTransform actions (rotations, flips, transposition) now support both color and grayscale and preserve alpha channel

complete update of all filters to support Cocoa >= 10.4 which pads the NSBitmapImageRep rows

faster access to bitmap data by using PRImage instead of recreating the bitmap image rep. Used now pervasively, for example in the custom edge tracer: much faster

Resize to fit is now live tracked when resizing the window

GNUstep 2.0 LiveCD

2009-12-10T18:00:00.000-08:00

Here

Terminal 0.9.5

2009-05-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

Bug-fix release, now hosted in GAP Project.

Google Summer of Code 2009

2009-03-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

For people who are interested.

FOSDEM 2009

2009-01-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

FOSDEM 2009 will take place at at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Brussels on the 7/8. Feb 2009. Join the discussion here and there.

Gorm 1.2.8

2008-12-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

Noteworthy changes in version 1.2.8
=========================================

Requires: gnustep-gui-0.16.0. It will not compile without this version of the library. Reason: Nib and Gorm loading were moved to a more sensible file structure. Additionally, Nib loading was refactored.

Correction for bug#25001 (Gorm compilation fails with --as-needed linker flag).

Correction for bug#25111 (Segmentation fault when switching between items being inspected).

Fixes for nib encoding to use the proper template class instances.

Changes to use new headers.

New GNUstep Release

2008-12-21T23:30:00.000-08:00

GNUstep Make 2.0.7, Base 1.18.0, GUI/Back 0.16.0 can be found here.

Noteworthy changes in Make:

New configuration file to set default installation

gnustep-make now uses the -no-print-directory flag when invoking make

Files make have same name but different extensions (.c and .m)

Change in path checking algorithm in GNUstep.sh and GNUstep.csh

Test applications linked against gnustep-gui by default

Noteworthy changes in Base:

Many new OSX 10.5 methods and stubs and general 10.5 compatibility

Changes to build on 64bit Windows

Support for @synchronize

Noteworthy changes in GUI:

Nib loading refractored and improved.

Added support for autosaving in NSDocuments

NSWindowController made a subclass of NSResponder

NSTokenField and netokenFiledCell classes added.

Noteworthy changes in Back:

Transparent windows implemented in WIN32 backend, better position and scaling of images. General cleanup of code.

FTP 0.2 released

2008-12-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

Here

ProjectCenter 0.5.0 & Gorm 1.2.6

2008-10-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

Changes for ProjectCenter 0.5.0:

Added new project types "Framework" and "Resource Set".

Implemented on demand loading of bundles (project types, editor).

Impemented localization support for projects.

Some user interface ehnancements were made (save/restore geometry of subviews in project window splitview, drag and drop for icons).

Clicking on .m and .h file in project browser expands to file structure (classes, methods).

Incorporated ProjectManager's editor with some modifications. Implemented syntax color highlighting.

All windows and panels are now GORM files.

Fixes for MingW environment.

Support for separate build directory added.

Changes for Gorm 1.2.6:

Corrections to allow Gorm to build and run properly on the Darwin operating system.

Corrected sizing of Controls Palette.

Added preliminary support for IBPlugin API.

Added preferences panel to add plugins dynamically.

Moved load/save logic for gorm, gmodel, and nib to plugins. This change should allow plugins for virtually any format to be read/written by Gorm.

Correction for bug#24146, bug#23889.

Slackware 12.1 Packages

2008-10-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

As announced by Stefan Bidigaray:

GNUstep core packages for Slackware 12.1 are now available at:

ftp://ftp.gnustep.org/pub/gnustep/binaries/slackware

Packages List:
* Make 2.0.6
* Base 1.16.3
* GUI 0.14.0
* Back 0.14.0
* GWorkspace 0.8.7

NOTES
Packages have been built atop a full (minus KDE) Slackware 12.1 installation.

GNUstep-back is now shipped with both libcairo and libart support. Libcairo is the default backend. Libart can be "turned on" by setting your GSBackend to "art" in your defaults.

More packages will become available as I run into more time, stay tuned!

If you run into any problems installing any of these packages, feel free to contact me.

Thank you,
Stefan

FLOSS Weekly 44: GNUstep

2008-10-12T16:55:00.000-07:00

Interview with GNUstep developers, Gregory Casamento and Riccardo Mottola. Listen here

GWorkspace 0.8.7

2008-09-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Changes in version 0.8.7
=========================

* bugfix in color read of preferences (crash when certains desktop colors were set)
* portability issue solved with NetBSD
* fswatcher now is able to auto-close connections when started automatically with --auto, like other system daemons
* complete rewrite of the configure/make system using recursive configure files. Now the package can finally make a working "make dist" which was used for this release
* updated appwrappers and new appwrapper for OpenOffice
* Infopanel now displays information from the plist, allowing thus consistent data easily

New Recipe in GNUstep Cookbook: Calendar View

2008-07-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

You can find it here.

MplayerGS 0.6

2008-07-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

MplayerGS is a frontend to Mplayer which was originally a port of Mplayer OSX. However, it has changed since then. Notable changes since the last release are:

a. Revamped menu structure
b. Implimented mouse support in dvdnav
c. More filetypes added

It can be downloaded at GNUstep FTP

BatMon 0.3

2008-07-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

A battery monitor and some discussion.

TimeMon 4.1

2008-06-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

TimeMon is a GNUstep-based CPU monitor which sits in the dock. It shows several levels of information, CPU, nice, user and system, in configurable colors.

New Release of GNUstep

2008-06-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

New stable release of GNUstep make 2.0.6, base 1.16, gui 0.14, back 0.14.

By the way, two images for bloggers:

GNUstep Software Index

2008-06-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

See announcement and website.

GNUstep on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-06-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

Install these dependencies:

subversion (for downloading GNUstep from svn repository)

gobjc

libxmu-dev

libcairo2-dev (cairo backend)

libart-2.0-dev (art backend)

libxslt1.dev

libtiff4-dev

libgif-dev

libssl-dev

libgmp3-dev

libffcall1-dev

libaspell-dev

libcupsys2-dev

GNUstep can be download from official website or svn respository:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/modules/core core

Additional fonts for art backend can be found at Ocean Resources.

A detailed guide is available for new users. Alternatively, use GNUstep Startup to install GNUstep.

If there is a problem of environment variables for installing GNUstep with sudo, use `sudo -E` instead.

mySTEP at LinuxTag and get one for yourself !!

2008-05-26T02:01:00.000-07:00

A good chance to see embedded GNUstep on various PDA such as Openmoko Neo 1973 and Acer n30. And grab one with 99 EUR.

Google Summer of Code 2008

2008-04-22T22:50:00.000-07:00

Three projects awarded this year.

Zipper 1.3

2008-04-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

This release consists of two bug fixes:

Resolve an issue with 7zip archives on system where only the 7za binary is avaliable

The output of unzip changed, causing Zipper to skip the first entry in the zip file

Étoilé Hackathon Progress

2008-04-04T00:27:00.000-07:00

With some photos

GNUstep LiveCD 1.6 Released

2008-04-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

Latest release with lots of packages.

How to keep your GNOME settings when using WindowMaker

2008-03-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

This article provides a way to keep GNOME settings in WindowMaker. It may partially improve the integration between GNOME and GNUstep.

GNUstep Renaissance 0.9.0 GUI Framework released!

2008-03-19T22:07:00.001-07:00

GNUstep Renaissance is a Framework for writing GUIs for GNUstep and Apple Cocoa in an open, portable XML format without Interface Builder. From the release notes:

Ported to Windows (via GNUstep).

Ported to Apple Mac OS X 10.5.

Updated to use newer key-value-coding API.

Extended and standardized available attributes of many tags.

GNUstep Google Summer of Code 2008

2008-03-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

GNUstep is accepted for Google Summer of Code 2008. Please help update the following wiki pages. It is only TWO weeks away from deadline of applications.

From: Adam Fedor

GNustep was accepted as a mentoring organization for 2008 Google SoC! However, that means we have a lot of work to do in the next few weeks. There is barely a week before students are able to submit applications for projects, and only a week after that is the deadline for applications.

I need help updating the project ideas page:

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Summer_Of_Code_Ideas

Developers and even students interested in SoC are invited to write down project ideas here. The more complete and informative an idea is, the more interesting it will seem to others, so please think a lot about your ideas!

Also, please sign up if you'd like to be a mentor:

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Summer_Of_Code_2008

Thanks.

RSS Reader

2008-03-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

There are a few RSS Readers for GNUstep. Ticker is a simple one. When it starts, the Feeds window shows up. Or you also use menu 'Feeds > Administer feed...' to bring it up. In feeds window, you can input a feed and change its appearance, then use menu 'Feeds > Add/Update' to store it. Once it is stored, use menu 'Feeds > Instantiate' to make a window out of it. It will stay on your desktop and cycle through entries of RSS. Menu 'Article' allows you to show all entries, open entry in default web browser, Lynx, etc. You can instantiate as many RSS as you want and arrange each feed as individual window. To open entry in Mozilla, check Ticker website for details.

Grr is a 3-pane RSS Reader as most of RSS Readers out there. It is currently hosted in Étoilé Project. If you already download Étoilé as previously suggested, you can install RSSKit and Grr in Etoile/Frameworks/RSSKit and Etoile/Services/User/Grr respectively.

Grr can parse various formats of RSS and Atom. You can subscribe feeds and organize them with categories. RSS can be downloaded with proxy and searched. It can parse limited HTML with reasonable result. That is pretty much you can expect from a standard RSS Reader.

NewsStand is another RSS reader in Étoilé Project. It is ported from Vienna 2 without fancy user interface and WebKit. You can find it in Etoile/Services/User/NewsStand. It uses the same XML/HTML parser as StepChat. Therefore, you may want to install StepChat first, or at least ETXML inside. It also depends on curl to parse various date format.

It works more or less the same as Grr. Besides, it allows you to import and export your feeds in OPML format. Smart folder works, so you have a few default ones like 'Unread Articles'. But the interface for editing smart folder is not done yet.

Frankly, both Grr and NewsStand suffer from stability problems with different reasons. One is written from scratch and has to fight with malformatted RSS. The other one is ported from a Cocoa application and the difference between Cocoa and GNUstep need to be ironed out. It would be nice to have a stable RSS reader for GNUstep.

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep
Font Manager and GNUstep Backend
System Preferences and Theme
Ink, a GNUstep text editor, and Services
Addresses, a contact manager
StepChat, TalkSoup, and Grouch
More on Services
Image Viewer and Editor

PDF Viewer

mySTEP vs iPhone SDK

2008-03-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

mySTEP is an embedded GNUstep framework to develop applications for Linux/X11 based handheld devices. It is a open source project and is under LGPL. It runs on Sharp Zaurus, OpenMoko, Acer n30, etc. See the complete comparison with iPhone SDK for details.

GNUstep on FreeBSD 7.0

2008-03-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

These dependencies can be installed with packages or ports:

windowmaker

svn

ffcall

gmake

openssl

libxslt

libart_lgpl

cairo

libgmp

mDNSResponder

aspell

Remember to use gmake instead of make for compilation. The rest is the same as GNUstep on Ubuntu. Although I haven't met any problem, this post may help in some cases.

PDF Viewer

2008-02-25T16:16:00.000-08:00

Vindaloo is a PDF viewer. It is currently maintained by Étoilé Project. If you download the whole Étoilé project as in previous article, you can install the IconKit, PopplerKit and Vindaloo under subdirectory Etoile/Frameworks/IconKit, Etoile/Frameworks/PopplerKit and Etoile/Services/User/Vindaloo respectively. PopplerKit depends on poppler library for PDF rendering.

Vindaloo comes with basical functionality for a PDF viewer. You can zoom in and zoom out, fit page, width or height, and jump pages. The performance of going through pages are reasonablly good. Although you cannot select text for copy-and-paste, you can search text and the found ones will be rendered with light yellow background. That's pretty much all it does for now.

Another application to preview PDF is Yap. It is more like a previewer before you print the documents. It uses a2ps to generate PostScript, therefore, you can use it on many formats as long as a2ps supports, including most source codes, html, even LaTeX. You can also view images, but the only way to scale is to use menu 'Resolution' to do limited scaling. An interesting function is that if you select an area of image, that part of image will be automatically copied into pasteboard. Then you can paste it into other applications. You can also use menu 'File > Save pasteboard as TIFF' to save it directly.

For formats other than images, it uses GhostScript for rendering. For the first time, you should use menu 'Info > Preferences' to set the external tools. Click button Defaults should work for most of people. Use Set to save the preferences. Once you open a PDF document, it shows a row of radio buttons on the top as pages. You can use menu 'Resolution' to adjust scale for viewing. If you have any problem with Yap, it is mostly caused by wrong parameters in a2ps. You can look at your terminal emulator and find the command like this

/usr/bin/a2ps ("--portrait", "--rows=2", "--columns=2", "-o", "-", "source_code.m")

These paramters, like portrait, rows, are the same as menu 'Options > Display'. You can either use menu 'Options > Reset' or go through each option to make sure none of them are enabled.

Image Viewer and Editor

PRICE 0.8.2

2008-02-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

What are the news?
- selectable method for greyscale conversion (rgb average and luminance of YCrCb)
- image inversion for both color and greyscale images
- in the GNUstep version an interface was corrected since it was corrupted and caused crashes

Image Viewer and Editor

2008-02-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

There are many image viewers for GNUstep. By default, GNUstep supports reading TIFF, GIF, PNG and JPEG formats and writing to TIFF. It also supports image scaling and transformation. So it is relatively easy to write a simple image viewer with GNUstep. Different backends may have slightly different results and performance.

Preview supports these basic built-in functionalities from GNUstep. You can also drag image to move it around if the image is bigger than the window, though for me, it is quite slow if I do that. It is more usable just to drag the scrollbar. It is a document-based application. So you can view multiple images at the same time.

PhotoClip is a single-image viewer and scales the image to fit the window by default. It supports image clipping and rotation by 90, 180 or 270 degree with jpegtran, which comes with libjpeg. You can easily view the previous and next image in the same directory. It is an idea application to go through your photo collection in the same directory, view them, do rotation and clipping, then save them.

PRICE is an image editor with many features. It not only allows you to scale and crop images, but also adjust brightness and contrast, even apply filters, do convolution and Fourier transformation, and trace edge ! While it does not offer preview on some of these filters, it does support undo and redo as a temporary solution. It seems to have issues with image containing alpha layer, but works quite well with the rest. I also have troubles using the convolution, which is the basis of many filters. All these features can be found in manual. Some of these features may require knowledges of image processing, but it is definitely an application with quality and worth to look.

Cenon is a professional application for vector graphics and desktop publishing (DTP). It can import many formats including PDF and Adobe Illustrator, then export to Cenon, EPS, or DXF (Drawing Interchange Format) format. You can have layers, draw shapes and Bezier paths, add text and paragraph, do text on paths, align objects and do transformation, fill objects with colours or gradients, vectorize pixel images, etc. There are so many features that I would suggest you to read the manual first.

You need to download Cenon and CenonLibrary, then follow the INSTALL to install it. It is not updated to use GNUstep Makefiles Package 2.0 yet, so there are some warnings during compilation. I still have some random crashes from time to time, but in general, it is quite pleasant to use. Just remember to save frequently. It also supports multiple undo and redo.

More on Services

More on Services

2008-02-12T17:40:00.000-08:00

In previous article, we introduce Services. This time, we will show some more applications which supports services.

Affiche is a sticky-note application.

You can create notes in different colours, change fonts on text and set titles. Notes with titles will show up in menu Windows. These settings can be applied globally in preferences or individually. Text can be imported and exported.

Once Affiche is installed, you can use service to create new note from any application with text view. In this case, select text in Ink, choose menu 'Services > Affiche > Make Note'. If Affiche is not running, it will launch automatically and make a new note based on selected text. It shows how convenient services are.

DictionaryReader is another good example. If you downloaded Étoilé project before, it is under Etoile/Services/User/DictionaryReader/.

It looks up definition with DICT protocol. Although it supports local dictionaries, I had hard time to find a good one. So it may be wise to use the remote servers, which is the default setting. It also provides a service to look up definition of selected text in any application with text view.

For advanced users, I wrote a small application to use Unix scripts as services. It is inspired by Terminal. Unfortunately, Terminal is not maintained for a long time and does not compile with latest GNUstep. For developers, it is quite easy to fix. You can get ScriptServices by

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/etoile/branches/yjchen/ScriptServices ScriptServices

After installation, you need to run `openapp ScriptServices --update` to update services. You have to do that every time you install new scripts as services. Once services are updated, you should be able to see a Calculate service in Services menu. It calculates your selection with Unix bc and return the result. There are some useful scripts in Examples subdirectory. You just need to copy them to ~/GNUstep/Library/ApplicationSupport/ScriptService/ and run `openapp ScriptServices --update`. For more dtails, see README of ScriptServices.

ScriptServices is far from perfect. But it makes a point that you can reuse many Unix tools from GNUstep through services. It opens doors for countless applications.

StepChat, TalkSoup, and Grouch

SimpleWebKit Status

2008-02-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is the latest status of SimpleWebKit.

HTML

Loading: 99% (NSURLConnection -> parser)

Parser: 99% (HTML 4.0 -> DOM Tree)

Evaluator: 90% (DOM Tree -> NSAttributedString)

EcmaScript

Loading: 100% (handling <script> and <script src="">)

Parser: 90% (not well tested for completeness and robustness)

Evaluator: 50%

Objects: 0%

CSS

Loading: 100% (handling <style> and <tag style="">)

Parser: 0%

Evaluator: 0%

WebView, WebFrame, ...

Basics: 100% (interworking of all these classes)

Advanced: 70% (not completely working are Forms & Frames)

Editing: 0% (not intended)

For people who know nothing about SimpleWebKit, you can find the official website, news and discussion here and there.

StepChat, TalkSoup, and Grouch

2008-02-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

StepChat is an instant messenger using Jabber Protocol (or called XMPP). Jabber Protocol is an open source project. Both Google Talk and Apple iChat support it. If you have a Google account, you have a Jabber ID already. StepChat is a part of Étoilé Project. It requires Addresses on GNUstep. It can also run on Mac OS X. To avoid any complication, I suggest you to download the whole Étoilé, which is easier to work with:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/etoile/trunk/Etoile Etoile

We need a patched Addresses. Go to Etoile/Frameworks/AddressesKit and install it with `make; sudo make install`.

Now, you should be able to install StepChat under Etoile/Services/User/Jabber.

For the first time, it will ask your Jabber ID, server, then password.

It automatically adds the Jabber ID into your contact in the address book. If you didn't set Me in the address book, it will create one for you. You can also check the saved server and password in user defaults:

defaults read StepChat

If you input wrong information the first time, StepChat won't let you change it. When that happens, you can fix it by

Manually add your Jabber ID in address book. Cycle through the options of instant messenger for Jabber once ID is input. Remember to set Me with menu "Person > This is me" in AddressManager.

Do `defaults delete StepChat XMPPPasswords` to remove saved password

Manually set server by `defaults write StepChat Servers '{"user@gmail.com" = talk.google.com}'`

user@gmail.com

talk.google.com

Since password is deleted, StepChat will ask you again the next you run it.

StepChat is a standard Jabber client you can expect. You can add more buddies, change status and have chats with many people. There are also some new features like XHTML-IM and vCard support. The text field on the top allows you to input something to be seen by your buddies.

StepChat has a XMPP framework underneath. It might be useful for other applications to take an advantage of it.

TalkSoup is an IRC client. During the installation, it may put bundles under root directory as /Library/ApplicationSupport. You need to move the content of it into your GNUstep/Local/Library/ApplicationSupport. Once you can start TalkSoup, choose menu 'Connection > Open Server List...'.

You can select FreeNode > irc.freenode.net, click Connect button, then you will be connected to the server. To join GNUstep channel on FreeNode, type `/join GNUstep`:

Then the GNUstep channel will show on a new tab. Now, you can talk to people and get your questions answered. For more about IRC, you can read this tutorial. TalkSoup uses plugins to expand its functionality. You can include more functions with its preferences (menu Info > Preferences):

Just drag-and-drop plugins between Loaded and Availabe. Each plugin has detailed description and explanation on how to use it.

For AIM and ICQ users, there is a Grouch. I don't have an AIM account. So I will just show you a screenshot:

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep
Font Manager and GNUstep Backend
System Preferences and Theme
Ink, a GNUstep text editor, and Services

Addresses, a contact manager

Étoilé Spring Hackathon

2008-02-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

David Chisnall announce:

Hi Everyone,

The Computer Science Department here in Swansea has agreed to allow us the use of a room for a hackathon over Easter.

The date is provisionally the 31st of March to the 3rd of April (let me know if this is a major problem for anyone, and we can try to reschedule).

The Swansea University campus is situated a short distance from the city centre, between a park and the sea. There are a few nice pubs (including one with real ale and free WiFi) within walking distance, and some nice scenery to explore when people are bored with staring at screens.

There are direct busses and trains from London airports (trains around £25 in advance or very expensive close to the time, bus around £40) and a number of cheap B&Bs within ten-fifteen minutes walk of the campus.

Étoilé and GNUstep developers of all levels of experience are welcome. If anyone would be interested in giving a public talk during the hackathon, let me know and I'll organise some publicity.

David

Addresses, a contact manager

2008-02-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

Addresses is inspired by Apple's Address Book. For regular users, you can use it to organize your contacts locally. Addresses is also used by GNUMail and StepChat, which we will talk about some time later.

Everything is self-explained. Choose menu "Person > New" to add new person. The plus (+) button on the bottom is a faster way to add group and person. Use button "Edit" to switch between viewing and editing. You can put name, address, phone number, etc. To change a field, say Main Phone to Work Phone, you have to input the phone number first and hit Enter key, then choose the small icon next to the field to cycle through the options. You can also use the small plus and minus icon to add or remove fields. Click on the question mark to add a photo for that person. Contacts can be grouped by drag-and-drop. You can import and export contacts in vCard format, which are used by most of contact managers for data exchange. In the preferences (use menu 'Info > Preferences'), you can decide how to display people's name and address according to the custom of each country.

Addresses has many potentials to be a great application. It is written to be extendable with plugins. The search functionality is in the Addresses framework already. Developers just need to add the user interface in AddressManager. There is a LDAPAddressBook in subdirectory Goodies to access information on LDAP server. It can potentially allow users to exchange information, even with ZeroConf support in GNUstep.

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep
Font Manager and GNUstep Backend
System Preferences and Theme

Ink, a GNUstep text editor, and Services

RegexKit 0.6.0

2008-01-29T22:11:00.000-08:00

This release upgrades PCRE to version 7.6, which includes an important security related bugfix. All users are encouraged to upgrade. Other changes include preliminary support for internationalization, returning NSError objects, and the ability to evaluate multiple regular expressions in a collection concurrently on multiple threads, one per CPU.

GNUstep 2.0 (FHS) Binary Packages for openSUSE 10.2 on i586

2008-01-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

Announcement and Web Page.

Ink, a GNUstep text editor, and Services

2008-01-28T10:10:00.000-08:00

Ink is originally written as an example for GNUstep text view and has many latest features. You can get it from svn by execute this:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/tests/examples/trunk/gui/Ink Ink

It can read plain or rich text file. Fonts and colours can be easily changed. To change colours, make a selection of text and drag a colour onto the selection. There is no 'set' button on colour panel. You can have rulers and change positions of tabs. The tab stops seems to only support left alignment for now. To remove a tab stop, click and hold on it, then move it away off the ruler. Your mouse cursor may not follow, but the tab stop will disappear. Undo is working good and supports multiple undoings. Image can be inserted by using menu "Document > Insert File..." or pasted from other applications. Paragraphs can be aligned to left, center or right. You can have spell checking if you set it up correctly. You can also print your document or save it as PostScript file. The results may depend on the backend you use. Cairo backend is supposed to work better in this case. Ink mostly uses standard GNUstep components. So many of these functionalities are also available to other applications using GNUstep text view by default.

There are other choices of text editors, like TextEdit or Typewriter. They all work more or less the same. I would suggest to stick with Ink for now. For developers, Bean may be a good candidate to port to GNUstep, but you may need to improve GNUstep text system first.

Ink is also a good example of using Services in GNUstep. This Cocoa document from Apple explains the concept of services. You can download some examples of services by doing this:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/tests/examples/trunk/gui/ExampleService ExamplesService

After installation, execute `make_services` to update your system services. Now, use Ink to open a document and make a selection. Choose menu Services and you will see all available services. For example, you can change case of selected text. These services are context-sensitive and are only enabled when they can handle the selection of text or images. Services allow you to easily access functions from other applications without switching applications. Many GNUstep applications provide services. We will mention them later. As long as you can make a selection in GNUstep applications, you probably can use services. To conclude this article, LaTeX Service may be worth to take a look. It allows you to type a LaTeX text in any text view and use services to render them as embedded image. Pretty nice.

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep
Font Manager and GNUstep Backend

System Preferences and Theme

VolumeManager

2008-01-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

VolumeManager is basically a GNustep daemon/tool that uses HAL and DBUS to detect newly attached / removed / mounted / unmounted volumes. What does it do further? Well, a GNUstep application can register itself as DO client at VolumeManager and will get notified about such changes and may also use DO to mount/unmount volumes. Moreover, VolumeManager can be configured such that is automatically mounts new data volumes or that it automatically plays audio CDs or DVDs using GNustep services. In addition to the daemon the package contains a plugin to SystemPreferences to configure VolumeManager and it does contain a menulet for Étoilé's menu server that displays mounted volumes and allows to unmount them.

CDPlayer 0.5

2008-01-23T10:10:00.000-08:00

It is quite a while since last update.

System Preferences and Theme

2008-01-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

If you are not a command-line person to use defaults, there is a System Preferences to help you on some of the settings, but not all.

Some people complain that GNUstep color scheme is too dark. The root of problem is because most monitors are not properly calibrated. Color Scheme allows you to change the scheme as a whole or on individual color. There are three default color schemes to choose.

Date & Time is for time zone. Find your city and click on it. It is equivalent to

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSTimeZone 'MyPlace'.

You can find the valid name for time zone in GNUstep/System/Library/Libraries/gnustep-base/Versions/1.15/Resources/NSTimeZones/zones. It is quite obvious that System Preferences is easier to use in this case.

Fonts is the same as what we mentioned in previous article about NSFont and others. A good thing of using System Preferences is that you don't need to guess the font name any more. It does not support NSPreferredFonts, but it is good enough.

Defaults list all possible settings for GNUstep. You can see the GSBackend as we introduced before. It is quite convenient to know what GNUstep supports and what are the valid values for these settings. User Defaults Summary also explains some of the settings and possible values.

Modifier Keys map your physical keyboard to modifier key, like Ctrl, Alt and Option. You should read Keyboard Setup to know what Control, Command and Alternative mean. Then how do you know your physical right "Shift" maps to Right Hyper, Right Super or any other choice ? You can start a program xev and try each of your modifier key. You should be able to see something like this:


KeyRelease event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x3200001,
    root 0x3f, subw 0x0, time 1896953680, (375,276), root:(380,325),
    state 0x40, keycode 115 (keysym 0xffeb, Super_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

This is what it prints when I release the left Apple command key. You can tell it is called Super_L in X window. Then it is what System Prerences calls Left Super. You can also use defaults directly. Super_L is the value to used. You can always use this command to see what is in the user defaults:

defaults read NSGlobalDomain

Other preferences are mostly used by GWorkspace, which will be talked about some time later.

It is possible to have different theme of GNUstep. The solution is to install a user bundle to override the default GNUstep drawing. User bundles will be loaded automatically in any GNUstep application. It is specified in user defaults NSAppKitUserBundles. One side effect of this approach is that the user bundle has to be in sync with GNUstep. And bugs in user bundles may affect all of your GNUstep applications. Camaelon is the first one to support theme on GNUstep. You can download it from Étoilé project:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/etoile/trunk/Etoile/Bundles/Camaelon Camaelon

Once installed, it will be under your GNUstep/System/Library/Bundles/Camaelon.themeEngine.

Then add the full path of Camaelon bundle in user defaults:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppKitUserBundles '( "/usr/local/GNUstep/System/Library/Bundles/Camaelon.themeEngine" )'

Next time you start any GNUstep application, it may look like this:

And this is the default GNUstep theme:

GNUstep is still under development and Camaelon is not actively developed recently. So your milage may vary. Another theme engine is Narcissus. After installed, add its full path into user defaults:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSAppKitUserBundles '("/usr/local/GNUstep/Local/Library/Bundles/Narcissus.themeEngine")'

Note that Narcissus is installed in Local by default. And this is a screenshot of it:

Narcissus is written more recently and its source codes may be more cleaner than Camaelon, but it is still in early stage and is less tested. Camaelon starts as an experiment to support theme on GNUstep and some of these methods are incorporated in GNUstep later. With recent changes in GNUstep, it may need some updates. Again, any change in GNUstep may affect these theme engines. If your GNUstep application has weird behaviors, you can remove the theme in user defaults by

defaults delete NSGlobalDomain NSAppKitUserBundles

It will fall back to default GNUstep theme.

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep

Font Manager and GNUstep Backend

SimpleAgenda 0.36

2008-01-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

See announcement for details:

* Calendar UI changes : to reduce calendar size, use different visual hints. Today has a yellow background (unchanged), the selected day cell is bezeled/pushed (was a bold font) and busy days use a bold font (instead of a tick mark). Always show six weeks with black text for the chosen month and white text for the previous and next ones. Use a defined font size so that it all fits whatever the user choose as a default size.
* Day view : circle through appointments with TAB and edit the selected one with enter
* Day view : no more appointments overlapping. The algorithm is not 100% correct, we might want to change that in the future
* Change license for future GNUstep GPLv3 release compatibility Thanks to Yavor Doganov for pointing out the issue.
* Use ETags to prevent overwriting distant modifications
* Add a menu item to force agendas to reload their data
* Bug fixes and various improvements
* Experimental GroupDAV support : some things work but use with care. Feedback appreciated

System Preferences 1.0.2

2008-01-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

Here

Font Manager and GNUstep Backend

2008-01-17T01:00:00.000-08:00

Since a few font-related things were brought up in the previous article, there is a GNUstep application, Font Manager, to view installed fonts in the system. To download it from svn, execute this:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/etoile/trunk/Etoile/Services/User/FontManager FontManager

You can see a list of fonts in the system and preview text with different fonts, sizes and colours. Different styles of the same font is grouped together. It is quite convenient to see them all and pick the good ones to use. Then where is the font name to be used in user defaults of NSFont and NSPreferredFonts as in previous article ? To know the answer, you need to know which GNUstep backend you are using.

GNUstep provides different backends to draw text and graphics. The default one is art backend and the alternative one is cairo backend. If you install GNUstep without knowing anything about backend, you probably have art backend. By default, you will see only one font in Font Manager, Helvetica, unless you install extra ones as in previous article. Art backend use nfont package as discussed here. If you look into nfont package, you will find a file FontInfo.plist. For each style (face) of font, there is a corresponding PostScriptName. This PostScriptName is the name you will use in NSFont and NSPreferredFonts.

Cairo backend use fontconfig instead of nfont package. In this way, it shares fonts with X window. The font name to use in user defaults is less obvious. You can try the name listed under Fonts in Font Manager or the name in the preview panel on the most right. The rule of thumb is that if you want to use normal font, do not add Roman in font name. If you do want bold or italic font, you should use the name on the preview panel containing Bold, Italic, or others.

To show the difference, this is the screenshot from art backend:

And this is from cairo backend:

While cairo backend handles graphics better, art backend does supports ligature nicely.

For advanced users, you can switch between backends easily. As mentioned in INSTALL of gnustep-back, you can install art backend and cairo backend side-by-side:

./configure --enable-graphics=art --with-name=art; make; sudo make install

./configure --enable-graphics=cairo --with-name=cairo; make; sudo make install

Then you can select backend with

defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSBackend libgnustep-cairo

or

defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSBackend libgnustep-art

If you specify fonts for NSFont or NSPreferredFonts, remember that these two backends may use different font name. Therefore, you may get warnings about missing font when you switch from one backend to another.

Font Manager works on both Mac OS X (Cocoa) and GNUstep. It plans to support font enable and disable. It may be challenging because Cocoa, art backend and cairo backend all use different mechanism to manage fonts.

Previous articles in this series:

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep

GNUstep Makefile Tutorials Updated

2008-01-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Writing GNUstep Makefiles and More on GNUstep Makefiles are updated for GNUstep Makefile Package 2.

FOSDEM 2008 and Developer Meeting in Brussels

2008-01-16T09:10:00.000-08:00

See this page for more details and confirm your interest on wiki.

Gomoku and Localization in GNUstep

2008-01-13T19:18:00.000-08:00

This is the first post of a series of articles about GNUstep applications. The purpose is to introduce useful GNUstep applications to regular users and provides some tips. These applications can be used on daily basis, though it doesn't mean they are perfect or bug-free. Any problem should be reported to the original authors or in GNUstep maillist.

Gomoku is an extended TicTacToe game for GNUstep. It is small and fun to play. You first click on the board to put a white piece, then try to have 5 white pieces adjacent to each other horizontally, vertically or diagonally like this:

If you think it is too easy, you can increase the difficulty under Info menu:

Now, computer seems very smart:

You can also increase the size of board by executing it with the size of board like this:

openapp ./Gomoku.app 10

The size must be bigger than 8.

Gomoku is a good example to test internationalization (i18n) and localization (i10n) in GNUstep because it is small and simple to do so. It is already localized in 9 languages and you should have no problem using it with your native language. In some cases, depending on your system, you may have some difficulties to see your native language. This article summarizes the steps to take for art backend. Here shows another example in cairo backend. The steps are mostly identical.

GNUstep is smart enough to guess your language, Execute `echo $LANG` or `echo $LC_CTYPE` to know your locale. In my case, it is en_US.UTF8. So my system is in UTF8 encoding and uses English. If I decide to use German in Gomoku, I have to specify the language in user defaults by executing

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSLanguages "(German, English)"

It tells GNUstep to find the German localization first, then English. Unfortunately, it is not enough for me. The German localization is in different encoding than mine (UTF8). I guess it is in ISO 8859-1 encoding. So I set an environment variable GNUSTEP_STRING_ENCODING like this:

export GNUSTEP_STRING_ENCODING=NSISOLatin1StringEncoding

Now, the menu is in German:

Note both NSLanguages and GNUSTEP_STRING_ENCODING affect all GNUstep applications.

If I want to go further to use Traditional Chinese, the default font of GNUstep may not have Chinese characters in it. So I need to specify the default font by doing this:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSFont "AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni"

And select the language and encoding:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSLanguages "(TraditionalChinese, English)"

export GNUSTEP_STRING_ENCODING=NSBIG5StringEncoding

Now, it shows Chinese:

If you work on many languages and specifying a single font for NSFont doesn't suit you, you can try NSPreferredFonts, but it only works on art backend. First, you can download pre-packed fonts from Étoilé Project. Look for etoile-default-fonts.tar.gz. Unpack and move the nfont package (.nfont) into your ~/GNUstep/Library/Fonts/ or in the system GNUstep/System/Library/Fonts/. Then specify the preferred fonts:

defaults delete NSGlobalDomain NSFont

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSPreferredFonts '("ShanHeiSun-Uni")'

In this way, GNUstep will try to use the preferred fonts if it cannot find the glyphs in the default font. Again, it only works for art backend for now. If you do not specify NSPreferredFonts, GNUstep will go through all of your fonts to find the glyphs, It may pick up the font you don't like. So it is better to specify the NSPreferredFonts.

For developers who wants to support NSPreferredFonts in cairo backend, try to implement -coveredCharacterSet and -numberOfGlyphs in back/Source/cairo/CairoFontInfo.m. You can use back/Source/art/ftfont.m as a reference.

Browser and WebKit progress

2008-01-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

See the screenshots !!

GNUstep Packages for Slackware 12.0

2008-01-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

There are packages for both stable and unstable releases of GNUstep.

SimpleAgenda 0.35

2007-12-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

Get it from the new website.

New GNUstep Stable Release

2007-12-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

GNUstep Startup 0.18.3, Base 1.14.2 and GUI 0.12.1 are released. You can download them from various sources

GNUstep Narcissus theme

2007-12-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

A New Theme Engine

JSONWire 0.1

2007-12-17T22:27:00.000-08:00

JSONWire is an attempt at JSON-RPC implementation for GNUstep and Cocoa, released under MIT license. See more at its website.

Need Windows Installer Testers

2007-12-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

Adam asked people to help test the windows installer.

You should be able to install the required installers and the Calculator.app installer and "just run" the GNUstep Calculator app from the Start Menu

Differences between GNUstep and Cocoa

2007-12-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

This discussion and that one may interest some people regarding the differences between GNUstep and Cocoa.

GNUstep Build Guide 2.0

2007-12-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

Here.

Tasks for GNUstep going forward

2007-12-02T12:07:00.000-08:00

Now, it is a good chance to help GNUstep going forward. The main tasks are:

Improve the website

GNUstep Official Forum

New binary installers for platforms

Tighter integration of theming capability

Applications

Get GUI to 1.0

Some tasks are assigned. Help is always welcome.

JIGS 1.5.7

2007-11-30T07:25:00.000-08:00

Bug-fix release of Java Interface for GNUstep.

GNUstep on Ubuntu 7.10

2007-11-25T23:23:00.001-08:00

You can use `sudo apt-get install XXX` to install these dependencies:

svn (for downloading GNUstep from svn repository)

gobjc

libx11-dev

libxft-dev

libxmu-dev

libtiff4-dev

libpng12-dev

libungif4-dev

libart-2.0-dev (art backend)

libcairo2-dev (cairo backend)

libxml2-dev

libxslt1.dev

libssl-dev

libgmp3-dev

libffcall1-dev (universe)

GNUstep can be download from official website or svn respository:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/modules/core core

Additional fonts for art backend can be found at Ocean Resources.

A detailed guide is available for new users. Alternatively, use GNUstep Startup to install GNUstep.

SimpleAgenda 0.30

2007-11-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

What's New :

* Refactor code to handle multiple kinds of events
* Add simple task (iCalendar VTODO) support
* Add a task view
* Coherent ui : in summary, day view and task view, simple click to select and double click to edit
* Make calendar view smaller
* Fix appointment resize bug in day view

Gorm 1.2.2

2007-11-13T00:25:00.000-08:00

What's New :

* Moved to GPLv3
* Added text field to NSTableColumn inspector to allow editing of table column title.
* Corrected issue with selection.
* Added button modifiers for special keys to button inspectors.
* Corrected issue with loading of older gorm files.
* Fix to allow Gorm's menus to be Mac-style, but not the one being edited.
* Other miscellaneous bug corrections.

New Objective-C Runtime

2007-11-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

A quick summary of features:

- Two layer model, with Self-like object model at the core and classes built on top.
- Very small code base (roughly 10% of the size of the GNU runtime)
- Support for @synchronized on all objects / classes.
- Support for concrete protocols / mixins.
- Support for prototype-based object orientation (can be mixed with class-based; classes really are just another kind of object in this runtime)
- Support for safe method caching (including polymorphic inline caching) with low overhead.
- Support for fast accessor methods (we can implement properties that are much faster than Apple's)

New GNUstep Release

2007-11-08T13:51:00.001-08:00

From GPLv2 to GPLv3

RegexKit 0.2

2007-10-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

The RegexKit.framework is an Objective-C wrapper for the PCRE and supports for Mac OS X Cocoa and GNUstep.

GNUstep port of WebKit

2007-10-07T22:58:00.000-07:00

A new one, an old one, and a simple one.

Why did GNUstep never really take off?

2007-10-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

One of the main reasons for its lack of popularity is that it never really meshed well with the other, more popular, open source desktop systems. In some ways, that is understandable. GNUstep has its own paradigm, and its concepts are sometimes at odds with what other desktops, like GNOME and KDE, offer.

Transparent window with cairo backend

2007-09-02T08:48:00.000-07:00

With screenshot.

SimpleAgenda 0.26

2007-08-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

Minor upgrade.

New GUI Library Maintainer: Fred Kiefer

2007-08-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

Congratulations !!

OpenBSD GNUstep ports

2007-07-29T16:39:00.000-07:00

For 4.1.

Étoilé 0.2 Released

2007-07-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

See announcement with screenshots.

Addresses 0.4.7 and New Home in GAP

2007-07-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

What's new?
---------------

- the makefiles are now gnustep make 2 compatible
- editing in the AddressManager is now compatible with the latest gnustep versions
- improvments in the VCF parser
- transitioned into the new GAP home

Sudoku.app beta

2007-07-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

here.

MidnightBSD Roadmap

2007-07-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

GNUstep integration with many GNUstep based applications will be included in 1.0 release. It is near 0.1 release now.

Slackware 12.0 Packages

2007-07-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Here.

SimpleWebKit and Vespucci

2007-07-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

It works, even on Microsoft Windows !!

Étoilé on FreeBSD 7

2007-07-03T13:52:00.000-07:00

It is mostly for GNUstep on FreeBSD 7.

GNUstep Brochure

2007-06-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

To know GNUstep in five pages. Click images to see website of each project.

Maintainer wanted for GNUstep in MacPorts

2007-06-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

See this.

iTunesFS 1.1.3

2007-06-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

iTunesFS allows you to mount the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file as a file system, using the excellent MacFUSE. ... As of version 1.1.3, you can also build this application using GNUstep on any supported unix-like system (i.e. FreeBSD). Please read the included README-GNUstep for further information regarding FUSE and GNUstep. Now, that's the cool news for all you guys - if you ever wanted to code a cool FUSE based file system in Objective-C on a non-Apple platform, now you can! ;-) Just use iTunesFS as a detailed example and/or inspiration.

SimpleWebKit Status

2007-06-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

The recent additions are
* X(HT)ML parser made incremental, so that it directly handles incoming html fragments and allows to stall when a 'script' tag requires to load a subresource before continuing parsing
* text attributes are made more complete (e.g. 'em', 'tt', 'sub', 'u', 'stike' etc.) - appearance depends on NSTextView's capabilities
* preliminary 'hr' support
* handling of JavaScript - it gets parsed and evaluated, but the evaluator lacks most functionality

For people who do not know the SimpleWebKit vs WebKit issue, there is s thread of discussion.

GWorkspace 0.8.6

2007-06-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

A bug-fixed release.

Jigsaw.app

2007-06-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

these are the changes to Jigsaw.app:

* solved puzzles a displayed as a single image (without the boundaries of the pieces)
* images are no longer restricted to TIFF (JPEG and PNG work as well, assuming you have the appropriate libraries on you system)
* open images from the command line
* automatically save window frames to the defaults database.

SimpleAgenda 0.15

2007-06-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

WHAT'S NEW ?

- handle multiple agendas (no easy way to create one though, you have to use 'defaults write...')
- each agenda has a color
- first/last hour preferences
- better event drawing
- ...

Demise of FreeHand, Future of Cenon

2007-05-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

After FreeHand is discontinued, there is a discussion regarding improving or forking cenon started by William:

... I've been interested in Cenon for a while and it's seemed a solid tool, but has some interface aspects (I guess CAD/CAM-oriented) which I find hard to handle.

Has there been any discussion of adapting Cenon to make use of more typical graphic design interface concepts? If not, would that be considered? Or could Cenon be forked to create a new program which would be more focused on the needs of a graphic designer? Or could a graphic design module be created which would significantly alter the interface? ...

Zipper 1.2

2007-05-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

Zipper is a tool for inspecting the contents of a compressed archive and for extracting.

GNUstep Startup Package 0.18.0

2007-05-23T22:09:00.000-07:00

What is the GNUstep Startup Package ?
====================================

GNUstep Startup is a compilation of the following core GNUstep packages:

gnustep-make Version 2.0.0
gnustep-base Version 1.14.0
gnustep-gui Version 0.12.0
gnustep-back Version 0.12.0

The main advantage of Startup is that it includes a script to automatically build and install the core GNUstep system.

After installing GNUstep Startup, you will have a complete system for compiling and running GNUstep applications. You will, of course, need to compile and install applications (such as GWorkspace) to actually use GNUstep in a runtime system. ...

Reviews of GNUMail 1.2.0

2007-05-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

About.com rates it as 3.5 stars out of 5:

Pros

* GNUMail.app is a well-rounded email program
* Support for GnuPG message encryption and the exclusive use of plain text offer security
* GNUMail.app organizes threads well

Cons

* GNUMail.app doesn't support HTML
* You cannot set up smart folders in GNUMail.app, and comprehensive message search could be faster
* GNUMail.app has no internal spam filters

Linux Magazine says (cached by Google):

open source developers have created a GPL’d program named GNUMail that is not only similar to Mail in most ways, but actually surpasses it in a few important areas. It runs on Linux and other varieties of Unix, including Mac OS X.

Gorm 1.2.1

2007-05-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Bug-fix release

GNUstep cookbook

2007-05-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

A sort of recipes have been updated recently.

Making packages with gnustep-make 2.0 step by step

2007-05-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here.

SimpleWebKit Demo on Mac

2007-04-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have commited the latest version to the SVN - so we all will soon have something quite useful.

A new demo running on MacOS X 10.4 is available at
http://www.quantum-step.com/download/GNUstepWeb.app.zip

(load the www.gnustep.org page try the z and Z buttons to zoom font size).

-- hns

And its wiki page

Base Release 1.15.0

2007-04-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

This is an unstable release from 1.14.0. It is otherwise identical to
the 1.14.0 release. Releases in the 1.15 series are not guaranteed to
be forward compatible with previous 1.15 releases.

Real-world examples of using GNUstep

2007-04-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

In a post of OSNews, some comments about using GNUstep in real world:

I work at the physics department of a major university and we are developing a series of applications to interface with lab equipment, and all the development is being done is objective-c and Cocoa / GNUStep.

It is a fairly straight forward process to re-compile a Cocoa application under GNUStep, it is an excellent cross platform solution for Mac and Linux (I do not do Windows so I do not know how well GNUStep work there).

I am also working on a set of numerical quantum and fluid dynamics simulations where the visualization / user interface is using opengl with Cocoa / GNUStep and the numerics are C / lapack, and so far I have not run into any real compatibility issues between GNUStep and Cocoa.

In a previous life, I was forced to use Windows and develop in MFC and C-sharp, what a nightmare that was. It is a true joy to develop in Objective-C / Cocoa / GNUStep, far superior to any other enviornment I have worked in (well QT is not bad, but still not as nice as Cocoa).

My company is using GNUstep to develop a commercial long-range data multiplexer equipment configuration and monitoring application. It is a distributed client-server system, so yes, GNUstep can be used to do more than simple stuff. We've also written our IPTV solution in it (live streaming server, VoD server and a few other pieces of IPTV headend software).