Re: Cocoa downgrade from openstep?
Re: Cocoa downgrade from openstep?
- Subject: Re: Cocoa downgrade from openstep?
- From: Eric Peyton <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 17:50:34 -0500
Quickly - if you think this is degrading away from the -dev
charter - please let me know directly and I will make sure it stays
on course as best I can. This is a long response to a long rant.
(One note: Please do not turn this discussion in to a pissing
match about promises made by management, features that have never
been implemented anywhere in OpenStep or Cocoa, or differences in
the core operating system itself. What Erik said and what I wanted
expanded upon was that OS X Cocoa is "significantly downgraded from
Openstep 4.2 in many respects." That is the idea of this thread.
If you want to spin this in to a -talk article, please do it on a
-talk forum (where I am not a member). My intention with this
thread is to discuss the technical shortcomings that developers see
in the Cocoa framework vis-a-vis Openstep. If this degrades in to
a -talk posting I will do my best to stop it.)
I guess I started it, so here goes ...
On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 04:58 PM, Scott Anguish wrote:
On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 12:08 PM, Eric Peyton wrote:
On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 10:45 AM, Erik M. Buck wrote:
I don't know how much you use Cocoa, but it is significantly
downgraded from
Openstep 4.2 in many respects.
Wow - as a huge Cocoa advocate, I had not noticed this. (blinded
by my own love for the platform? :-) )
Well, as much as I also love the platform, I can see what Erik
Buck is talking about... mind you, YOU (Eric Peyton) have more
access than we do.. :-)
Could you elucidate on which classes and what functionality has
downgraded for you?
From OpenStep 4.2?
- cross-platform is gone
This has nothing to do with cocoa as a language or as a technology
(which is Erik's point). This is and was a management decision.
Not pertinent to this discussion.
- eof as a standard part of the system, gone
This has nothing to do with cocoa as a language or as a technology
(which is Erik's point). This is and was a management decision.
Not pertinent to this discussion.
- pantone support, gone
I do not know the reasoning behind this (someone could enlighten me
however).
- integrated inter-machine DO, gone
Because nmserver was removed. Well below Cocoa. But the point is
taken. It can be added back in in many ways, but is currently not
supported.
- a single unified method of development is now gone, with
many services not being brought to Cocoa classes, but instead
being left as much more complicated procedural APIs
For now, yes. But this is not something that could be blamed as
degradation of Cocoa, just not Cocoa improvement. Not pertinent to
this discussion.
- services are not universally available anymore
Still not a Cocoa issue. An OS X issue. As far as I know all
Cocoa apps can still take advantage of Services to their little
hearts content. As this is a Carbon! issues , not pertinent to
this discussion.
- NeXTime (lost it for a QuickTime procedural API only)
Agreed. This is a sad loss.
I have found that Cocoa has improved substantially since the
OpenStep days. The addition of things like NSTabView, NSDrawer,
improvements to NSApplication, the addition of CoreFoundation,
NSDocument* and NSWindowController, NSOpenGLView, all the new
image support (via Quicktime), NSSpell*, NSToolbar, etc. seem
like a little more than "some features".
NSSpell has been around for a while... I seem to recall that
being a "way back when" thing.
Yes, but integrated spelling in to all text fields, yadda yadda
yadda, was not part of Openstep, etc. Major enhancements have
happened here.
Yes, we have some new widgets, and the document classes are a
blast.. but.. we were told that there was a commitment by Apple to
make ALL UI bits that Apple uses available as GUI components..
many are still missing
Sure. So is the "do everything" widget etc. etc. There is only so
much manpower and time between releases. I believe that commitment
still holds.
the new image support is very poor... we do get to load a good
number of additional file types, but we don't get to actually
exploit any of the additional stuff once they are loaded
the support for the image types that was there in Openstep has not
degraded at all, and the new importers are gravy. I see no
"degradation" here.
we have the total goat seal of launch services, type/creator,
resource fork madness. Virtually zero support for this in Cocoa
directly, and some things like NSFileManager are totally busted
with respect to this support.
Once again, not a degradation, but definitely a feature set that I
think Apple is very well aware of.
previously we had a pretty set standard of using TIFF for
everything. And that was great, since most every graphic program
will load and save them.. now we have CICN's, and without special
add-ons these aren't really creatable.. plus, there is no support
for them in NSImage, so you can't load/edit/save them trivially
(you need to again, resort to procedural APIs)
An issue, once again, not with Cocoa in any way whatsoever. This
was a decision, based on many factors, that was well outside of
the Cocoa realm. Not pertinent to this discussion.
I also wouldn't consider CoreFoundation to be a Cocoa plus, if
anything, it's an indication of the state of things.. yes, there
is the bridging, but that's all.
Foundation itself was originally built on something. You can't
code a string class without some char *'s. Isn't it nice that they
provided toll-free bridging, open source and all that jazz?
That there are no Cocoa specific APIs that allow in-depth
access to things like QuickTime, Security Framework, Internet
Config and such is a real indication of concern... it's even more
of a concern when you hear people say that there are no plans to
wrap this behavior/functionality for Cocoa... even opening an URL
is now split between NSWorkspace and launch services..
For now, yes. But this is not something that could be blamed as
degradation of Cocoa, just not Cocoa improvement. Not pertinent to
this discussion.
(Boy - I am saying that a lot - Scott - you really took this simple
Cocoa degradation thread and turned it in to an attack on the state
of OS X, not Cocoa.)
yes, there are also performance issues...
Agreed. Completely agreed.
and things like sound, HTML viewing (NSText's support is absolute
minimal - we need something substantially better),
This has nothing to do with cocoa as a language or as a technology
(which is Erik's point). This is and was a management decision.
Not pertinent to this discussion.
there are also issues with the tools.. PB is great, but lacks
the level of integration that we had with InterfaceBuilder even
more recently than OpenStep 4.2... completion, auto-formatting,
these are all things that I'd come to rely on, yet are now missing
(even if they come back)..
This has nothing to do with cocoa as a language or as a technology
(which is Erik's point). This is and was a management decision.
Not pertinent to this discussion.
Overall, I find that many areas are not providing the polish
that we got, even with NeXT (a miniscule company in comparison)...
Which has *nothing* to do with this thread ...
OpenStep was a focus at NeXT, but here, it seems to be much less
so. We can't be sure that we'll get good, complete, proper
integration of capabilities into the Cocoa frameworks by default.
I'd love to know if Cocoa on 10.1 will have any support for
SOAP XML-RPC, or if it will strictly be procedural...
I don't want to rag on the Apple folks in the trenches.. they
can't make the choices.. just implement them.. but I'd like to see
more emphasis on this stuff...
Scott - and so would the people at Apple. But turning a thread
about degradation of Cocoa in to a rant about your perceived "sorry
state of OS X" doesn't help anyone (no matter how much people just
*love* rants.) Let's please now get back on track. Erik has some
valid points about some valid degradation's in Cocoa performance.
Are there any other valid points about degradation in Cocoa on OS X
vs. cocoa on Openstep (NOT in OS X vs. Openstep/NextStep)? Can we
discuss them without dragging in everyone's opinions on OS X vs.
every other OS out there?
Eric