Well, they almost have it right, but it's still too clunky and non customizable compared to something simple and obsolete like Windows 95 GUI. Users want to be able to open up a dialog and customize their title size, scroll bar size, all in one shot.. and change the fonts too. GNUStep seems to fail at this in many ways. Users want buttons and widgets to be non-clunky. GNUStep button captions sometimes run off the screen and overlap each other, or do other annoying things. And they are generally a waste of screen space compared to even the obsolete Windows 95 design. GNUStep just reminds me of an advanced windows 3.1 look in some ways. It may have some cool features that attempt to look sexy (but comes out looking stupid), but in the end even Windows 95 GUI is more efficient and usable on screen, once you customize it in windows settings.
The GNUStep also seems to be less clear on an LCD monitor (CRT too?). The text is blurrier than a Windows GUI. The default fonts seem to have less clarity too. The fonts are more spaced out and not compact enough.
But rather than complain too much, it would be best to address what the problems are from a programming perspective, and how to solve them? What code could be implemented to solve some of the issues? Or is the design to flawed from the ground up to do anything? Or are there other GUI development kits out there for linux that could be easily used, which are designed from bottom up better than GTK and GNUStep? Is QT really better in both a speed and looks perspective? Most likely QT is slow compared to GTK, and QT has some licensing issues that some people have troubles with.
One question to ponder: When will a Pascal/ObjectPascal based GUI toolkit be developed? Only we can decide that as Pascal programmers. Yes, a true Pascal GUI from the ground up would be an interesting project.
Since Openstep and Nextstep uses Objective C, there is no reason why a Pascal toolkit couldn't be developed.. and hopefully a fast/square/usable one too.
Update: 2007: Well Martin with MSEIDE has basically done it! I wrote this article in 2004-2005 or around that time when MSEIDE was unknown at the time. Martin's MSEGUI kit is basically a compact and clean GUI system way to produce applications on linux and windows (bsd support is lacking, though).
The only thing missing with Martin's MSEGUI/MSEIDE kit is that it isn't so popular yet, and C++ programmers aren't using it since it is for Pascal only at this time. i.e. it is not part of a mass market. Not that mass market stuff is always good! Martin's GUI stuff might be my future choice of developing GUI applications since it is very clean and compact GUI. I think Martin needs a company sponsor too, in order to make it more widely known (funding, maybe some more developers, and payment for doing such a good job! If Z505 gets enough money some day, I'd sponsor him and the team.)
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