On 5/6/25 11:57, Steven wrote:
Hi Ethan,
Glad to hear the site under GitHub is only a temporary parking spot.
Having everything under the gnustep.org umbrella certainly reinforces
the brand (for lack of a better term).
I agree the website mockups are dated but for the purposes of the
document I was thinking more evolution rather than revolution, my
preference being the latter, but I don’t know what the community
appetite is for that kind of approach. I’m hoping we’ll figure that
out as a result of discussions launched by the document.
I feel that the current website has too little useful information in
order for evolution to work. A lot of content needs to be written from
scratch and imported from sources outside the website, and the current
layout is not very useful.
I also agree with having a standard font, colour palette and design
guide - results from our efforts should be more professional and will
keep everything consistent.
Lastly regarding a new modern theme, I agree with that comment as
well. I would even go so far as to make a modern gnustep look and feel
the default, but also retaining the classic look as an option. Having
said that, the look and feel is somewhat dictated by the desktop
environment a user might be running under. Personally I am using
WindowMaker + GNUstep apps + other stuff but does everyone use that?
Taking that into consideration, what are the implications for
consistency of look and feel? I think some thoughts and discussions
will be needed in this space.
I am on KDE, but I don't really use any GNUstep apps (most of my current
needs are handled by Gtk, Qt, and Electron apps). I think we definitely
need to choose a certain theme to use for our marketing materials, and
we can also create more for each of the common desktops and common
third-party themes in order to integrate better with their desktop.
Best regards,
Steven
On May 6, 2025, at 12:03 PM, Ethan C <[email protected]> wrote:
gnustep.github.io is planned to be moved to gnustep.org or to
developer.gnustep.org once it is more complete.
The website mockups you shared look pretty good, and I like it, but
it looks kind of dated (it screams early 2010s to me, which might not
be the impression we want to give).
For the font, I think we should move to a free-software font. The
fonts that look good on both marketing materials and are legible on
UI that I know of:
* Inter - looks a lot like SF Pro, used by lots of React websites
* Noto Sans - looks kind of like Segoe UI, used by KDE
* Cantarell - used by GNOME
* Source Sans
* Fira Sans
* Ubuntu - used by Ubuntu
Of course, we could choose not to have a preferred UI font, but I
believe it is better to use a font that looks good on marketing
materials and is the same as the UI, so that UI screenshots can look
nice in marketing materials. Of the ones above, Noto Sans and Inter
are probably the most neutral-looking ones.
Also, I feel like we should make a GNUstep theme which looks more
modern (although GNUstep is quite themable most of the themes still
look kind of dated, even Rik and Nesedah). We should make it
integrate well with the visual identity, and I think it should have
proportions that are similar to macOS (to prevent layout issues when
porting macOS apps) but have a distinct look. However, it might not
be feasible to adopt a very distinct look, as we would need to design
a good one that is also usable. In that case, we might want to go
with adapting an existing GNU/Linux theme (libadwaita, late Gtk3 era
Adwaita, current Breeze, or one of the more popular third-party ones
like Numix).
On 5/6/25 06:56, Steven wrote:
Hello GNUsteppers!
I’m following up on the initial email sent on the email list, of
people expressing their interest in working on promoting the GNUstep
project. Since I have a long train commute to the office, this has
given me time to organize some thoughts into a document that I am
sharing here today.
Please note the intent is to have something in hand to continue the
discussion and perhaps organize some individual efforts to
accomplish things. Take everything with a grain of salt, it
certainly is not a plan but I hope it is the first step towards one
(if everyone feels there is a need for a one)!
In a nutshell, I think there is a case to be made for a refresh of
the gnustep.org website, in look and feel as well as content
organization. I believe there’s an even stronger case to move all
developer related content under a new developer.gnustep.org
<http://developer.gnustep.org/> section, if not for anything else
but to simply be consistent with what seems to have emerged as a
defacto standard in the industry. This effort is all to provide the
base for any new PR campaign(s) the community wishes to pursue (some
suggestions in the document).
I understand there is an effort being made to produce a new site
(gnustep.github.io) and I believe this is probably due to the same
conclusions I came up with after surveying the gnustep landscape,
but imho moving away from the gnustep.org site would not be beneficial.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on the mailing list.
Cheers
Steven L.
On Mar 14, 2025, at 9:19 PM, Steven <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I’ve been reading through the gnustep-discuss thread "GNUstep
Public Relations" and this is something I would like to help with
if there’s a need. I’m wondering if there’s a published plan or a
set of goals the project is working towards and interested parties
could take on the task?
I’ve been following GNUstep off and on for a long time and I’m just
re-familiarizing myself with everything. I just gave the
gnustep-web-install-dev script a try as per the instructions on
gnustep.org but unfortunately it didn’t work. After displaying the
ascii art I got:
IMPORTANT!
You must update your .ssh directory so it contains your github ssh key
Begin setup for linux
bash: line 45: ./setup-linux: Permission denied
======== Create gnustep build directories ========
Cloning into 'tools-scripts'...
The authenticity of host 'github.com (140.82.112.4)' can't be
established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is
SHA256:+DiY3wvvV6TuJJhbpZisF/zLDA0zPMSvHdkr4UvCOqU.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting
(yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com' (ED25519) to the list of
known hosts.
[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
...
After this I tried out the slightly different script/instruction
shown on gnustep.github.io site (gnustep-web-install)
This one worked a bit better for me:
Begin setup for linux
./setup-linux: line 7: /etc/lsb-release: No such file or directory
sudo command is already present.
Checking if root password is not set, please set it...
Adding steven to sudoers...
Please enter the root user's password.
Password: su: Authentication token manipulation error
======== Create gnustep build directories ========
Cloning into 'tools-scripts’…
That error show shown in setup-linux line 7 is because I am running
Slackware, which does not have /etc/lsb-release but it does have
/etc/os-release
Having said that I would like to work on a
“install-dependencies-slackware” script and maybe fix up the
gnustep-web-install script to cater for Slackware also.
I don’t know how to go about contributing changes or documentation
or anything else like that, is there a process?
Do changes get reviewed by someone?
The other issue I did have with the gnustep-web-install script is
the post installation failed:
...
GNUmakefile:31: Unable to obtain GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES setting from
gnustep-config!
…
Once I manually fixed up my path, the post-install-linux script
runs, but it fails because it can’t link Gorm with libdispatch.
Taking a closer look I see that it is built as part of
gnustep-web-install but is installed
in /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Libraries/libdispatch.so
<http://libdispatch.so/> which is not in ld’s path. I created
/etc/ld.so <http://ld.so/>.conf.d/gnustep.conf containing the path,
ran ldconfig and the post install linking completed.
So the good news is there’s only a few things to fix and Slackware
could be listed as a GNUstep target system!
My other observation I have is, right at the start of the script is
says it’s adding my user to sudoers (it’s already a sudoer) but
also prompts for the root password, is that necessary?
Cheers
Steven
