GNUstep Look-and-feel

OpenStep originally was supposed to fit into the look-and-feel of the host system. Consequently, the Solaris and Windows versions of OpenStep looked different, and when OpenStep became the basis for Cocoa on the Apple, the look-and-feel got a Macintosh face-lift. However, Linux has no standard look-and-feel. It all depends on whether you are using KDE or Gnome or whatever.

The GNUstep developers chose to keep the “retro” NeXT look. There is even a desktop on Linux called Window Maker (or wmaker) that is part of GNUstep (or used to be) and implements the old NeXT look-and-feel. However, few people would seriously consider using Window Maker on a regular basis instead of KDE or Gnome (my apologies to Window Maker fans). There is also something called GWorkspace which takes over your desktop and tries to make it look like NeXTstep, but it didn't work right for me when I tried it under KDE4 or Gnome.

By keeping this “retro” look, GNUstep unfortunately makes itself uninviting to most potential users. It also creates a confusion between GNUstep the development environment and GNUstep as a desktop environment.

One feature of GNUstep that can be annoying is the big application icons that appear in the bottom left of the screen when you run a GNUstep application. In Window Maker these would be organized neatly along the right side of the screen, but other window managers just don't know what do do with them.

To get rid of the big icons (I can't think of a reason they will be missed), open a terminal window and type the following command:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain GSSuppressAppIcon YES

You can also change the freestanding menus to be at the top of the screen like in MacOS X using the following command:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSMenuInterfaceStyle NSMacintoshInterfaceStyle

However, this will affect other things such as scrollbar style.

To change it back use:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSMenuInterfaceStyle NSNextStepInterfaceStyle

There is also a NSWindows95InterfaceStyle, but it won't make your menus appear inside the main menu.

(I think if you set these for your application's name instead of NSGlobalDomain, it will only affect your application.)

In fact, these settings also exist in MacOS X in NSInterfaceStyle.h.

typedef enum {
NSNoInterfaceStyle = 0,
NSNextStepInterfaceStyle = 1,
NSWindows95InterfaceStyle = 2,
NSMacintoshInterfaceStyle = 3
} NSInterfaceStyle;

Apple and Microsoft don't have to support any look-and-feel besides their own. However, if you are producing a cross-platform development environment (like GNUstep), and especially if you are the underdog (as GNUstep is), your programs should behave as expected in whatever environment they are running in. This would be much easier if the GNUstep developers would just abandon the old retro look that simply doesn't appeal to most people anymore.