As I mentioned earlier in this column, right now Vasko's main goal is to slow down on the addition of new features to AfterStep and begin the arduous task of cleaning up the code being used today. Vasko speculates this will involve a re-working of the entire code base. Once AfterStep is cleaner and more efficient, Vasko indicated, other goals will include:

• The addition of ICCCM and extended WM hints.
• A high-level user configuration interface by combining configuration management code into separate library, thus simplifying runtime configuration via GUI.
• Integrated theme support
• Moving all the drawing code into a separate rendering engine, which will feature runtime compressed image storage in memory, alpha-blending, anti-aliased fonts, and image scaling.
• Shaped titlebars and window decorations support.

Right now, only two developers are actively working on AfterStep: Vasko and Andrew Ferguson, so work proceeds at a slower pace than they would like. More interest in this project may be on the way in the future, as Apple's purchase of NeXTstep and subsequent marking of that interface may generate more interest among the development community in this stepchild of NeXTstep.

In next week's From the Desktop, another resurrection of a not-so-forgotten GUI will be examined: AmiWM, emulator of the Amiga Workbench interface.