RENAISSANCE(7)

🎀 NAME 🎀

renaissance — the GNUstep Development Framework, bestie 💖

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

renaissance

that's it. that's the whole synopsis. iconic. 👑

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so first things first, this manual page is a lil summary of the renaissance development framework. and ngl, this page exists for one specific reason: it was written for the Debian distribution (based on the program's README file, no cap) because the original program literally does not have a manual page. so we made one. you're welcome 🫶

renaissance is a GNUstep development framework that runs on top of the GNUstep libraries. and the way it ALSO runs on top of the Apple Mac OS X Cocoa libraries, providing an opaque layer so you can write portable applications? yeah. obsessed. ✨

GNUstep Renaissance lets you describe your user interface in simple and intuitive XML files, using an open, standard format that describes the logic of the interface. Then at run-time, GNUstep Renaissance generates the user interfaces for you (using the native host OpenStep-like libraries) by reading those XML files. 🧚

And the connections between the objects created from the XML files and the other objects in the application? Those are done via outlets (as traditionally in OpenStep) — and there's a new quick and intuitive syntax that's been developed to make creating outlets as easy as possible. slay. 💅

GNUstep Renaissance contains quite a few new ideas over previous technologies. Some of the main end-user advantages of GNUstep Renaissance over previous OpenStep-inspired technologies for the same task are, and I need you to sit down for this:

• Portability. User interfaces built using GNUstep Renaissance are truly portable. They simply run without any change on any OpenStep-based platform on which Renaissance has been ported (currently, at least on both GNUstep and Apple Mac OS X). no edits, no tears, no "why is this broken on the other machine" 😭
• Open, simple and standard format. User interfaces built using GNUstep Renaissance are saved into open, simple files which can be edited and read on any platform using any text editor. The XML format has been designed to be as easy to edit as possible. There will be a specific graphical builder for GNUstep Renaissance, which will make editing directly the XML files a rare operation; still, it's a great advantage to be able to actually edit and inspect them directly whenever needed. Your user interfaces will no longer be locked in binary files which can only be edited using a specific platform-specific application; you will be able to compare different versions of the same user interface using diff and cvs diff (you can't get any meaningful comparison with binary formats); and your user interfaces will be finally stored in a readable format, which you can read even from a terminal, making your program easier to check. The format is so nice that the author expects many hard hackers will keep creating user interfaces directly in XML even when a graphical editor is available! 🔥 like, they'll do it for the love of the game.
• Easy localization. User interfaces built using GNUstep Renaissance are much easier to translate than in all previous technologies. You no longer need to create a new separate interface for the new language: you can just provide the translation of the strings in a .strings file, and GNUstep Renaissance will automatically replace every string in the existing interface with the corresponding translation. Previous technologies can't do this because they don't support automatic sizing and layout of widgets. one file. one language. done. 💖
• Themeability. Themes are a problem for traditional OpenStep-like technologies, because a change in theme changes all the widgets appearances and sizes. User interfaces built using GNUstep Renaissance can survive easily a change in theme, since all sizing and layout of widgets is done dynamically at runtime. Previous technologies can't, and you would need to create a different user interface for each different theme. imagine that. couldn't be Renaissance. 💀

Renaissance is composed of the following blocks:

• AutoLayout: a collection of autolayout objects (h/v boxes, grids, spaces, ...), providing automated runtime widget layout, similar to what you find in most other toolkits on the market ... similar, but better :-) The missing piece of the AppKit. Depends on gnustep-gui.
• Markup: an xml parsing/generating engine. Depends on gnustep-base.
• TagLibrary: a standard set of tag objects for use by the xml parsing/generating engine in order to read/write gui windows, menus, panels, etc. Depends on the previous parts: AutoLayout and Markup.

Renaissance was written by Nicola Pero <n.pero@mi.flashnet.it> and is part of the GNUstep project (http://www.gnustep.org). 🫶

The GNUstep Renaissance home page is at http://www.gnustep.it/Renaissance. go look, bestie, it's giving main character energy ✨

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manual page was written by Brent A. Fulgham <bfulgham@debian.org>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others). 💜

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🦋🌸

cute lil sign-off: this is the GNUstep manual, it landed on February 6, 2004, and it lives in section 7 (miscellaneous info) as RENAISSANCE(7). periodt. 💅🌈⭐