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GTK-Themes To Be Supported By KDE2

Tackat wrote to us regarding the recent announcement from the KDE folks concering KDE2. While KDE has had widget themes and such, the people behind KDE have announced support for GTK Themes. For some screenshots, check out the announcement body.

15 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Not to get your hopes up by Ex+Machina · · Score: 3

    but the KDE page says GTK pixmap themes. Most GTK themes use another themes engine. pixmap themes aren't always the greatest speed wise (or appearancewise -- look at the "pixmap" theme!)

    1. Re:Not to get your hopes up by sugarescent · · Score: 3

      Heh. Why don't you check out gtk.themes.org and see just how many engine themes there are. There are about an order of magnitude more pixmap themes than engine themes.

  2. Re:GTK-Themes To Be Supported By KDE2? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 3
    Now where is my QT theme support for GTK?

    I think Qt themes are coded, not pixmapped, which means that GTK+ can't just run them, just as Qt can't just run GTK+ coded themes.

    Theme writers sufficiently ambitious to take on two toolkits might want to create packages consisting of both GTK+ and Qt themes that provide the same appearance etc..

    And what is the status of GTK 1.4?

    The status is "it's going to be called GTK+ 2.0"; GTK+ and GLib 1.3.1 unstable developer's preview releases have been announced.

  3. Stop the massacre ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    How many more screens have to be shot ?

    Save the screens !

  4. Re:KDE guys are kind of twisting words by be-fan · · Score: 3

    Or, you could thing of legacy as any theme that existed before KDE2? KDE2's theme engine is the latest one availabe. Thus, anything BEFORE it can be considered legacy. When something support a legacy something else, it usually means that that somethign supports a body of somethings that aren't native, but already in existance. Thus, KDE2 supporting legacy themes means it doesn't support these natively, but since a large body of these themes exist, they're making special provisions to support these older themes. Plus, the air between GNOME and KDE is generally full of cooperation and friendship, so why would they do something like that? It seems to me that they weren't really expecting some people to read so much into this and got lazy in their wording. (Legacy Theme Importer as opposed to the Legacy and GTK+ theme importer!)

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  5. Careful with them acronyms. by crisco · · Score: 3
    But then again, IANAKD (I am not a KDE developer).

    I parsed that as I Am Naked.

    --

    Bleh!

  6. That's quite a shot. by a.out · · Score: 3

    "However, while GTK themes are displayed faster and more efficiently than even native GTK itself... KDE2's native widget theming which yields superior results both in terms of quality and speed."

    That's quite a blow to GTK and really sounds like a biased opinion to me. Or is there truth behind this blatent "slap in face" type statement? If it's faster and better I'll run it, but I need some conrete proof inorder to make an educated decision on the matter.

    1. Re:That's quite a shot. by boloni · · Score: 5

      Pixmap themes are essentially images painted over the controls. Widget themes on the other hand, are actual code, loaded dynamically which draws the controls. This make it not only faster, but allows to change the way in which the control behaves. For example, in some styles KDE scrollbars have 3 buttons (2 down + 1 up), combining the advantages of different toolbar styles. With a pixmap style you can change how the button looks, but you can not switch between different behaviors. Lotzi

  7. Re:GTK-Themes To Be Supported By KDE2? by nitehorse · · Score: 4

    Qt only provides very bare technical support for the GTK themes - the only support that it provides is that it can load pixmapped widgets. KDE actually implements the GTK themes and displays them with Qt- so the article is not mistitled.

    Hope that was informative.

    -Chris

  8. One more step away from the "forking" argument by Kissing+Crimson · · Score: 4
    For a few years now, Linux opponents have been doling out dire warnings about forking issues. It has been said that eventually there will be too many choices and not enough interoperability.

    Too many choices? Ludicrous concept.

    Once again, we see different software organizations working toward the same goals; lots of choices with few drawbacks to any one option. Even software groups in competition are now working toward interoperability.

    Coincidence is the Superstition of Science

    --
    What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
  9. Hey guys, *read* the announcement by vanza · · Score: 5

    Lots and lots of people have been saying "cool, GTK themes!" and such. Note that, as some have already pointed out, KDE will support GTK *Pixmap* Themes.

    This means that those nifty GTK Engines won't work, because they rely on how the GTK library implements themeing, and it is most surely different from the way KDE and Qt implement themeing.

    Another misleading link from the article is the kde.themes.org link. kde.t.o only carries KDE 1.x themes, and KDE 1.x has *no* mechanism for widget themeing, aside from window decorations using pixmaps.

    This thing that KDE is doing can probably also be done for GTK: build and engine to understand the KDE 2 pixmap themes (I read somewhere that there is an engine for pixmaps themes on KDE 2 ... maybe a look at http://www.mosfet.org/themeapi/ would help.)

    As for perfomance, I can't say much because I'm not a developer for any of them, but the KDE team has been talking much about this "really cool pixmap cache" that is supposed to be really fast...


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  10. Re:Nice, but why not just use GTK? by stripes · · Score: 4
    Qt is native C++

    Last I checked Qt was actually a slightly extended C++, there was a pre-processor that would turn event/slot things into real C++ code.

    For those of us who want a good C++ toolkit, this is much better than some terrible C++ wrapper of a C toolkit (and faster as well).

    On the other hand I remain utterly unconvinced that Qt is better then a good C++ wrapper of a C toolkit. And I am totally convinced that Gtk-- is not just a good wrapper, but a great one.

    Sigc++ (the slot/event scheme Gtk-- uses) also handles events faster then Qt's event system according to a biased benchmark. I don't know how fast or slow the rest of the system is as opposed to Qt. It seems quite fast enough on a slow (PPro 150) machine, so I'm content to leave well enough alone.

    Personally I don't like C programming and much prefer C++/Java.

    Perfectly reasonable. I like C++ with the STL more then I ever liked C, and Java was a pretty nice language for the few things I have done with it.

    Thus I use Qt. If you want to use C, use GTK+.

    This doesn't follow. I really urge you to check out Gtk--, if for nothing other then to see how much nicer the slot/event model is implmented.

    There may be other reasons to use Qt. There may be other reasons why KDE might be better then GNOME. But this just isn't a valid reason.

    Down on the farm, we call that having a choice and that is a good thing.

    Indeed it is.

  11. Re:Why stop at GTK themes? by Outlyer · · Score: 4

    Well, it's not quite that simple. QT and GTK both use different mechanisms for communication between windows. Not the least of which is the fact that GTK is a C library, while QT is C++. Yes, I know that there is a C++ wrapper for GTK, but the interfaces are really different.

    While your somewhat anecdotal assertion that QT is inferior may be true in some regards, many programmers prefer it's models, while others (like me) prefer GTK. To move everything to one toolkit denies freedom of choice, even if it might make things easier. Just use a GTK theme in KDE so you can have the look, and you don't have to force people to use the same toolkit.

    --
    ----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
  12. KDE guys are kind of twisting words by battery841 · · Score: 3

    I was looking at the program to import the GTK themes. It's called Legacy Theme Importer. I read the description. It says something down the line of:
    "...the most common legacy theme is GTK..."
    We can argue all day about who has better themes, thats not the issue here. The issue is the wording. If anything, you'd think that legacy would be something down the line of KDE1 themes, as they're out of date basically, with the new KDE2 engines. But theres still plenty of GTK themes being created, and it's not out of date. I like both KDE and GNOME, but I don't feel that their wording is appropriate at all. I see it as a subtle insult to GNOME, geared towards new users, to steer them away from GNOME.

  13. KDE developers like NP by 11223 · · Score: 3

    In this image, we clearly see three folders in a browser window - one named Natalie, one named Portman, and another named StarWars. What can this mean? Obviously it means that osm is a KDE developer!