[Ham-Mac] an attractive PSK application for Mac OS X?

[Steve Muncy]

On Tuesday, May 13, 2003, at 17:18 US/Central, Dick Rucker wrote:

> I second the motion.  I tried running OpenOffice, AbiWord, GIMP, and 
> some
> other *nix applications under OroborOSX, "an Aqua-like X11 window 
> manager."
> Unfortunately, I found the experience less than satisfactory on my 
> PowerMac
> G4, and it wasn't for lack of CPU, RAM, etc. on my part. Not only did 
> a few
> things not run at all, but those that did were more frustrating to use 
> than
> what I have become accustomed to using applications written with OS X 
> and
> the Aqua interface in mind (TextEdit, Safari, MacDopplerPRO, to name a 
> few).

There are active efforts to get OpenOffice and GIMP running under Aqua.

>
> I'd much rather see those with the programming skills devote 
> themselves to
> developing a PSK application for Mac OS X that takes advantage of Aqua 
> and
> all the other powerful features available within Apple's Cocoa 
> framework.
>
> Many of the battles that folks who still code in less capable 
> environments
> constantly fight can be avoided by adopting the built-in features and 
> rapid
> development tools of the Cocoa frameworks.

While this is true, there are some who will still prefer to concentrate 
on X Windows applications that run under other versions of Unix, 
including Linux. Some of these folks just aren't going to focus on the 
Macintosh market. (Many are using Linux on traditional Windows machines 
who want to move away from Microsoft monopoly and have no interest in 
the Mac.)  I don't see this as a matter of getting these programmers to 
move to the Mac (although I wish they would), but take advantage and 
use what they have written for other platforms. It broadens our base, 
and that is a good thing.

>
> From my standpoint as a user, I much prefer to use applications that 
> follow
> the Aqua interface conventions.  That can happen most readily if 
> programmers
> choose to take maximum advantage of the two Cocoa frameworks provided 
> by
> Apple.  Though the frameworks in Cocoa were written using Objective-C,
> several other languages, such as Java, can be used to write
> application-specific code within Cocoa frameworks,

I seriously doubt that ANYONE  on  this list would disagree. We would 
all prefer  to use apps that follow Aqua interface conventions, but it 
is better to adopt for our use programs that work under X11 than to do 
without such programs completely. The point is, the programmers who are 
developing the X Windows programs under Unix are not subscribers to 
this list....and probably know little or nothing about the Mac, because 
  they don't program for it....they program for the systems they know.

I use a APRS program (Xastir) that runs under X11 ....and it does, in 
my opinion, a much better  job running under OSX and X11 than MacAPRS 
did under classic Mac OS. I'm darn glad it was ported for use under OSX 
and X11!

____________________________________________________
Steve Muncy, NI5V    < mailto:ni5v@arrl.net >
Dallas, TX USA         < http://homepage.mac.com/smuncy/hamradio/ >
QRP-ARCI #10330  FISTS #7412  QCWA #30705  AMSAT #33939
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