Gorm

From LinuxReviews
Jump to navigationJump to search
Frustrated stallman cropped.jpg

Gorm is a "Graphical Object Relationship Modeller" for GNUstep modeled after some obscure piece of software released by some obscure American corporation called "NeXT Computer" in the 1990s. It does not scale to modern display resolutions, so it is practically useless on modern hardware. It may or may not be of some interest if you are using a computer from the 1990s.

Features And Usability[edit]

Gorm-1.2.26 - on Gentoo.jpg
Gorm version 1.2.26 on Gentoo Linux. It's hard to tell, but it's the tiny thing circled in red.

The GNUstep website story is that:

"Before NeXT Computer Inc. revolutionized software developement with its OpenStep API, a new way of designing graphical user interfaces was already introduced by NeXT at the beginning of the 90s. Its operating system NeXTstep featured Interface Builder, an application that for the first time allowed developers to quickly create nice user interfaces without having to code everything manually.

(..)

As part of the GNUstep project, Gorm is meant to be the counter part to NeXT's Interface Builder."

http://gnustep.org/experience/Gorm.html (quoted on May 12th, 2021)

The GNUstep project has, clearly, succeed in re-creating whatever this NeXTstep Interface Builder thing was in the early 1990s - right down to requiring hardware from that era. Gorm is clearly designed for those big square CRT computer monitors with a 800x600 pixels resolution that were common in the early 1990s. Gorm's interface doesn't scale, so it is impossible to see what it's about or what it's supposed to do on a modern computer display. I guess you could install it on a computer at your local museum and see what the various menu items in the tiny wildly outdated interface are supposed to do if you're really curious.

Why anyone would insist of making software that's only suitable for 30 year old hardware is anyone's guess. The GNUstep project's done it, for whatever reason, so you're in luck if you know what a "NeXT Computer" was and you're nostalgic and you happen to have some 30 year old you can use to run this "Gorm" thing on.

Links[edit]


Add your comment
LinuxReviews welcomes all comments. If you do not want to be anonymous, register or log in. It is free.