Re: GNUstep on Hackernews

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2021 at 13:31, Gregory Casamento
<greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ???  I'm wondering why Cocoa wouldn't be well known.

As I always keep saying: my interest (here, there are others!) is
operating systems, and the article was about software packaging for
Linux distributions and the subsequent piece was about how the
evolution of packaging tools is influencing the development and
construction of Linux distros.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/03/nixos_linux_os_design/

Remember, altho' I know that for the majority of the small GNUstep
community, it's a framework for app developers, a tool for
programmers, it is also more than that. As a proportion of the
computer-using human race, not many people are programmers. Most just
use computers, they don't program them.

A lot of Linux users are interested in look and feel. They enjoy
customising their OSes, trying different ones, changing UIs and
desktops. They can't program and they're not interested in
programming.

Cocoa is a codename for an API for a proprietary OS for proprietary
hardware. These days it's the only API and the OS has abandoned 32-bit
platforms and no longer offers the other API, Carbon; the name Cocoa
was one of a pair of codenames, Cocoa and Carbon, for a triplet of
APIs.

Cocao for Yellow Box, Carbon for Blue Box, and the now-forgotten Red
Box for running Windows apps on Rhapsody:
https://lowendmac.com/1997/red-box-blue-box-yellow-box/

And the Java API too, also now gone because it was farmed out to
Oracle after Oracle bought Sun.

These are historical terms now, and they're only interesting or
relevant to programmers on the Apple platform.

If you search Apple.com for the word Cocoa you get a 2013 document
with a warning on it that it is archived historical content:
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaFundamentals/WhatIsCocoa/WhatIsCocoa.html

NeXTstep remains relatively widely-known and respected as the OS that
was the ancestor of macOS.

There are emulators to run it:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/previous/

There are docs explaining how to run the Intel version in a VM:
http://stuffjasondoes.com/2018/07/25/installing-nextstep-os-openstep-on-virtualbox-in-2018/

There is or was a NeXTstep GUI for Windows:
http://litestep.net/

There are multiple NeXTstep-like window managers for free xNix OSes,
including Window Maker, OpenBox, BlackBox, FluxBox and others.

NeXTstep is a thing in the public consciousness. It is something a
reasonably well-informed techie has probably heard of. It's Steve
Jobs' pet project before he returned to Apple.

Cocoa is an obsolete codename for a tool for programmers. It is not
well-known to the general public, to whom it means a hot drink or the
stuff chocolate is made from.

So I submit it is a *much* less useful word.

> Of Cocoa. :)   My point was, from reading the article, if someone doesn't 
> know the heritage of Cocoa, then they will read that as "GNUstep is a clone 
> of NeXTSTEP."

Which, to a non-programmer, it is.

>> Is the .app folder bundle format part of Cocoa, the API, anyway?
>
> Part of the API?  Not necessarily, but part of the OS, yes, absolutely.  
> macOS/Cocoa still uses it.

So it's not part of Cocoa as an API, and therefore, using the word
Cocoa at this point and in that context would have in fact been
unhelpful and misleading.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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