Overview

Étoilé intends to be an innovative GNUstep based user environment built from the ground up on highly modular and light components with project and document orientation in mind, in order to allow users to create their own workflow by reshaping or recombining provided Services (aka Applications), Components etc. Flexibility and modularity on both User Interface and code level should allow us to scale from PDA to computer environment. Read more

Features

CoreObject

CoreObject is built on top of EtoileSerialise, which uses the runtime introspection features of Objective-C to give automatic persistence and versioning of arbitrary object types.

Runtime

The Objective-C language continues to evolve. We are committed to supporting the evolving needs of the the language through a new runtime library. We also aim to support foreign object models, such as that of Io, without resorting to bridging.

The Étoilé runtime has a lot of features not found in the GNU and Apple Objective-C runtimes which will make higher-level frameworks like CoreObject significantly more efficient.

Étoilé developers are also working on the clang LLVM front end to support Objective-C on the GNU and Étoilé runtimes.

GNUstep

Étoilé is built on top of GNUstep, a Free Software implementation of the OpenStep Specification, familiar to OS X users as Cocoa. This is a mature framework, which has undergone constant refinement for almost fifteen years. OpenStep makes use of the dynamic capabilities of the Objective-C language to make many complex tasks simple.

Camaelon

Although the classic OPENSTEP look implemented by GNUstep is very clean and usable, it lacks appeal to more modern aesthetic tastes. Camaelon is the Étoilé theme engine for GNUstep. The Nesedah and Narcissus themes have been developed on top of Camaelon to provide the same degree of usability as the classic OPENSTEP look and better visual appeal.

Frameworks

Most of the existing work in Étoilé has been focused towards building a strong foundation on which to construct the rest of the environment. In OpenStep terminology a framework is a bundle containing a shared library and its header files—everything you need to start developing with it. The Étoilé tree contains a number of frameworks designed to make developers’ lives easy.

Applications

Étoilé aims to be a component-based system. Applications are services which provide some user interaction components as well as services to other components.

The tree currently contains a number of services, divided into two categories - user and private. User services are those which interact directly with the user like traditional applications, while private ones form the building blocks of the user experience.