Menu Shadows in GTK2

unmadindu noted that there is a now a gtk shadow patch which does what it says for GTK2 applications. You can see a screenshot, or another or yet another. And if you're lazy, here are some RPMs with the patch. One more piece of eye candy to brighten up your weekend.

Comments

It shoud be from the...

[acxr is wasted]

save-it-for-a-slow-news-day dept.

I cant read the text in the pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

But I hope they arent calling for jihad.

Re:I cant read the text in the pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

But I hope they arent calling for jihad.

Yes they are. Soon Redmond will be engulfed in flames!

Re:I cant read the text in the pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah... It's a beautiful character set. Not sure it's an Arab language. I don't recognize it, but it's gorgeous.

Re:I cant read the text in the pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll probably find that not all people who write in languages and scripts other than US English are referring to holy wars. Racial and cultural stereotyping at its worst, by which I mean that you say it in an off-hand, casual manner - very difficult to re-educate that kind of attitude to other cultures.

I was trying to get RID of this in GTK OSX apps!

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose now I don't have to feel it's a fault in the OSX X11 implementation that forces shadows on everything, including GTK menus, windows, tooltips, KDE cursors, taskbars and the rest.

I feel accepted now!

Save the eye candy

[legcramp]

I think the Linux community should stop trying to emulate the bloat of XP. What are they smoking? The point of Linux is to be alternative. And if the alternative is the same, looks the same, and takes the same amount of memory to run. Then whats the point? Arg.

Re:Save the eye candy

[yobbo]

It's free.

Re:Save the eye candy

[geekster]

No, the point of linux is to do what you want.

Re:Save the eye candy

[kenthorvath]

And if the alternative is the same, looks the same, and takes the same amount of memory to run. Then whats the point?

The point is that the alternative isn't the same - it's not proprietary, it's source is open, there are no licensing fees, the community spirit of the developers is reflected in 98% of all software developed for it (iow, it's also open and free). There is an alternative, and it is better.

Even if there was a 100% compatible open sourced version of WindowsXP that had no licensing cost, which would you use? Now imagine if the "freeXP" had no anti-aliasing, onlyh ran in 8-bit color mode, and looked like Windows 3.1, would you still rather use that than the real McCoy? Emulation of an already successful product is not a bad thing, in many ways GTK has already surpassed MFC, now they are filling in the holes.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Speare]

To some people, "alternative" means:

not spending their money for Microsoft,

not being vulnerable to viruses made for the mainstream platform,

has source code available so you can tinker or learn,

has public bug reporting so bugs you discover have a chance at being fixed,

experiment more openly with Human-Computer Interface concepts.

Some people like the look and feel of XP (though I don't). Some people like the product but despise the creator. Some people want to recreate effects they've seen in code, because they wonder if they can reverse-engineer it accurately.

I saw this and wondered, "what if the mouse pointer were the light source for GUI shadows hanging off menus and window frames; would it be horribly distracting or helpful for tracking the mouse pointer intuitively?" I value experimentation over one-size-fits-all, so that's one reason I choose Linux.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Ender Ryan]

It's also free.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Amorpheus_MMS]

Some eye candy features hardly qualify as bloat. And anyway, this is the 21st century, why should the GUI look like it's been designed for a 486?

Re:Save the eye candy

[phelddagrif]

Sure they are alternative now, but if everyone wants the fan-tabulous linux revolution, where linux has a significant market share among non geeks, then things like menu shadows are a step to being more 'graphically pleasing' then I think it could be a good thing. If you don't like it then don't install the RPM simple as that.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Rock Ridge]

It isn't free. When I got enlightenment (realized that gnome was all i-candy), went back to twm. No joke, it is alright and not so resource hungry -- now CDs play with fewer dropouts, too. Plus, why is it a patch? Shouldn't things like this be designed-in? (He who lives by the patch dies by the patch).

Re:Save the eye candy

[jester]

Moreover, whats the point in putting this as a news item on Slashdot ? Is it so radical ? Its old technology ... save it for something that really changes the interface.

Re:Save the eye candy

[pyite]

Designed in? Way to talk about something you don't have any experience with. Open Source is ever-evolving. There is no one person who "designs in" everything. Run along now and let us big people talk.

Re:Save the eye candy

[kasperd]

Plus, why is it a patch? Shouldn't things like this be designed-in?

Seems you don't know what a patch means in the open source community. A patch is simply a listning of the source lines differing in the old and the new version. There is a program called patch, which will then perform the changes. This is often a more space efficient way to distribute small changes, and it is also often a good way to merge different changes.

Re:Save the eye candy

[kasperd]

The point is that the alternative isn't the same

Surely not, but why all that talk about the look? It isn't the look that makes the difference. To me the design of the underlying system is much more important. I happen to like the Unix design, and the commandline. That was really my reason to start using Linux. The open source was an extra bonus, and I'm surely not going to let go of that. We all know, that sometimes computer systems behave strange. But with Linux I actually have some possibilities to find out, what is going on. Finally though the look of some of the Linux environments are similar to Windows, and some of them are a lot more primitive, I prefer the functionallity of the Linux window managers. A few of the functional differences I like are:

• Independend vertical and horizontal maximization of windows.
• Easier cut'n'paste.
• More freedom to switch and place windows as I like.

Some problems I have experienced with the Windows GUI is:

• Sometimes a window is forced on top, and I can do nothing else before it has been closed.
• I am forced to have the active window on top.

If I am to choose between look and functionality, I choose the functionality any day. If the window manager behaves like I want, I don't care how ugly it might look. Sure if it can be configured to behave like I want, I choose the best looking solution unless I have other reasons to choose the different like stability.

Re:Save the eye candy

[CableModemSniper]

Just one little piece, of info, you can have X-style focus models, if you install MS's tweakui control panel applet.

Re:Save the eye candy

[TWX]

"I think the Linux community should stop trying to emulate the bloat of XP."

They're not trying to emulate the bloat of XP. Nowadays, the company leading GUI development is Apple. They were the first ones to build a well-honed mass-market GUI that has all of the bells and whistles, like anti-aliasing, on-the-fly graphics scaling, and the like. By description, a lot of what they have for just their UI is the same stuff that 3d first person shooters were touting as features, for a while. Microsoft has totally fallen behind, and colour changes to the GUI are a sad way to hide that.

"What are they smoking?"

I donno, but if allowed me to code stuff like this, I'd want some...

"The point of Linux is to be alternative."

Who ever told you that? I thought that the point of Linux was for hobbyists. People who wanted to dig around in the guts of their computer software from time to time, and who liked UN*X...

"And if the alternative is the same, looks the same, and takes the same amount of memory to run. Then whats the point?"

Looks the same? I haven't noticed that, unless you're talking about that new 'made to looks like XP' window manager, for hiding what you're doing to your boss. Takes the same amount of memory? Hardly. The Linux kernel will boot on four megabytes of memory, if you desire. I've seen modern X implementations run on 32MB fine, and advanced window managers running on 48MB as long as there's a decent graphics card in the system. Hardly the same requirements as Redmond demands. In fact, Linux, given a large amount of RAM, like the gig and a half in my workstation, runs better that anything Microsoft has ever done for memory management, due to smart memory caching and the like. Once applications are touched from the disk, they don't have to be fetched off of a platter again. Thus, the speed is improved greatly.

"Arg."

No comment...

Re:Save the eye candy

[vinays]

if it looks like XP, feels like XP, sounds like XP .. then it is XP!

but, without the cost, and with other bonuses you get for free like thousands of developers working on your operating system...

the way I look at it ... if it "has the capability" to clone XP, then it can replace XP for your average user

so i dont have to hear my mom say things like "Why dont you just use the same programs everybody else does?"

Re:Save the eye candy

[93 Escort Wagon]

> I saw this and wondered, "what if the mouse pointer were the light source for GUI shadows
> hanging off menus and window frames; would it be horribly distracting or helpful for tracking the
> mouse pointer intuitively?"

E-17 had a demo that did exactly this. It looked really cool, and probably would be horribly distracting. I can imagine opening up a menu but then forgetting what you were planning to run because you'd get too caught up in playing with the dynamic shadow effect.

Of course we're talking E-17, so there's no danger of this actually happening in real life.

Re:Save the eye candy

[orpheus2000]

It does, however, have the unfortunate requirement that you have the source and that you re-compile the code in question. Not a good choice for those who wish to be vendor-clean; meaning that everything on the system came from the vendor, or in the vendor's package format.

For example, Red Hat 9, you're out of luck unless you want to go through the hassle of rebuilding the source RPM. Gentoo, you're in luck, just pop the patch in at the source tree's trunk and emerge. This wouldn't do well in a corporate production environment where the standard must be upheld as part of the service contract.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Overly Critical Guy]

Menu shadows are bloat?

Seriously. Explain how on earth shadow menus could be "bloat." In your obsessive need to feel "alternative" by using Linux, someone adds a feature that other GUI operating systems have had for at least three years, and all you can do is rant and rave about emulation, about your declaration of the "point of Linux," and so forth. Geez, just don't use it then. Remain in your ugly, visual feedback-less fvwm95 environment because it has "no bloat."

Honestly. Shut up.

Re:Save the eye candy

[SCHecklerX]

And the time would be much better spent making an interface that is efficient. I like to WORK WITH my computer, not look at pretty drop shadows and such. They can be added later, but there is much more that could be done to make a GOOD OOUI. They should NOT be chasing the horrid UI that is windoze. They should be refining and making it more efficient, more consistent. GUI's don't have to be inefficient compared to command line. It's just that everyone keeps #!@#$% copying that M$ pile of dung.

Re:Save the eye candy

[NanoGator]

"I think the Linux community should stop trying to emulate the bloat of XP. What are they smoking? The point of Linux is to be alternative. And if the alternative is the same, looks the same, and takes the same amount of memory to run. Then whats the point? Arg. "

So... it should be behind then? XP should look like it's a generation ahead of Linux? Brilliant. *eyeroll*

Menu shadows are helpful, incidentally. They're not going to save the world from alien invaders, but they do provide a nice extra visual cue to let you know that help you figure out where you are. This 'eye candy' lets you know that a dialog is on top of the parent app.

Nothing wrong with that. Computers are fast, and it can be disabled.

Re:Save the eye candy

[axxackall]

It's better designed. As a result it's more secure, more flexible and more network friendly.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now CDs play with fewer dropouts"? Christ, man, what kind of circa-1995 computer are you using? Here's a hint - if the CD-ROM drive plugs into your sound card, get a new computer.

I mean, I'm all for preserving old hardware as long as it's useful, and not upgrading "just because this one has a higher number", but damn, son - I haven't heard a CD dropout playing back on a computer since Pentium clock speeds were double digits.

Re:Save the eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

Free?! That the lamest excuse around?

I wouldn't mind spending a bit for all the third-party addons, beautiful integration and seamless working. Linux has it's share of problems which I don't see getting done anytime soon.

It being free is no more an excuse.

Re:Huh?

[Spellbinder]

you should notice the shadows under the menus..

Slow news day?

[m00nun1t]

If this was a post about Windows getting shadows, there'd be dozens of posts listing the zillion OSes that already have shadows and bitching about Microsoft's lack of innovation.

When GTK2 gets it, it's cool.

Such is life.

Re:Slow news day?

[Tony Hoyle]

Especially since it's been in KDE since v3 :)

Old news... yawn.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't say youre COMPARING KDE with GTK! I don't know where to start... you must obviously be a gentoo user... JUST DIE!!!

Re:Slow news day?

[geekster]

Today we are treated to the bitching's about GTK2 getting menu shadows...

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

This shadow patch now comes with 80% more boogeyman space for your worst nightmare to hide in (been watching Rose Red).

Re:Slow news day?

[squiggleslash]

All I see are posts bitching about it, so far.

But, personally, yes, I do think it looks cool. It's also a useful visual cue. And, no, I wouldn't complain to see it in XP. Indeed, a friend downloaded a set of tools to make his XP look a bit more like OS X, including shadows. They weren't as good as OS X's of course (OS X lengthens and shortens the shadows depending on how "high" the windows are above whatever they cast a shadow upon... the aim is to make the shadows a visual cue so you can easily see what windows are above what others, etc), but we both agreed the affect was pretty good.

If machines have the power for it, I say do it.

Re:Slow news day?

[SavingPrivateNawak]

But menu shadows are already there in XP! No theme needed!

Re:Slow news day?

[13Echo]

This *is* old news. However, this was implemented as a GTK patch sometime last year, about the same time that it got into KDE 3. Of course, maybe this is officially *stable* now, because I wasn't too pleased with the results when this was first implemented.

Re:Slow news day?

[smartin]

What's your point?

Re:Slow news day?

[FooBarWidget]

What the hell are you smoking? Just look at all the comments! Zillions of posts about how we should not emulate Winodws XP or posts about that Linux doesn't innovate!
And back when a Slashdot article was posted about XFree86 getting XRandR, there were tons of posts about how XFree86 === Windows 95 and how Windows already had it for years etc. etc.

And now, somebody like you suddenly jumps in, claims the opposite, and immediately gets modded up to Insightful just because you're not anti-MS. *sigh*
Slashdot is not an anti-MS site anymore! How else do you explain that people like you always get modded up, even though you claim that Slashdot is an anti-MS site?

Re:Slow news day?

[squiggleslash]

Sorry, I meant window shadows. I didn't make that bit clear in my message, so my bad.

At this point, I'd usually post, but Slashdot believes I haven't thought enough about this post given it's been ONE MINUTE since the last time I posted. So, to explain the concept a little further: Basically, OS X has shadows around both menus and windows. My friend wanted to get as much like OS X as possible in XP, and downloaded a whole bunch of tools to do so. This included a window shadowing thing, and a "dock" - though this "dock" is basically just a program launcher. It looks cool, and is semi-transparent, which was nice, but that was it.

The point is we both thought the effect was cool.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

and gnome/gtk got it in v2, so who's ahead of who, hmmmmmmmm .... ;-)

Re:Slow news day?

[Doug Neal]

Do you actually read the comments, then?

It's more like this:
- GTK has only just got shadows? Windows and MacOS have had this for ages! Linux needs to do better than this!
- What's the point, it's bloat
- Linux needs to focus on being more user friendly before worrying about eye candy
- A few awful jokes ...and maybe the occasional post about how cool it is, or some intelligent discussion about how it's done. But not much.

Re:Slow news day?

[Vann_v2]

I think you're confused. Slashdot has long since moved on from the anti-MS days. Now most of the comments in stories similar to this one are like yours (that is, anti-anti-MS). Obviously this can regress as far as we want, so a much better way to deal with these sorts of stories is to post if you have something pertinent to say or else just don't post.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

so who's ahead of whom

Re:Slow news day?

[_Sprocket_]

And now, somebody like you suddenly jumps in, claims the opposite, and immediately gets modded up to Insightful just because you're not anti-MS. *sigh*
Slashdot is not an anti-MS site anymore! How else do you explain that people like you always get modded up, even though you claim that Slashdot is an anti-MS site?

People do the oddest things.

Back when the Browser Wars were just beginning to heat up, I had a friend who was a big fan of IE. He expressed his preference with the zeal of a fan of an underdog. In fact, he very much thought IE was the underdog compared to Netscape. Netscape unfairly controlled the web - IE was a welcomed alternative. His web site read "escape the Net".

I asked him if he knew who Microsoft was.

Slashdot is fairly well known these days - its almost a given as it gets mentioned more and more in the mainstream press. Its also a given that this will attract more mainstream computer users / IT types. It shouldn't be any suprise that at least some of these new readers will be fans of the dominant desktop OS (and its producer).

What's amusing is seeing a pro-MS mentality getting an underdog treatment.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, personally, yes, I do think it looks cool. It's also a useful visual cue. And, no, I wouldn't complain to see it in XP. Indeed, a friend downloaded a set of tools to make his XP look a bit more like OS X, including shadows.

Yeah, that's a laugh. Especially as XP includes menu shadows in the stock install, and turns them on by default. They're also live and hw accelerated, like window transparency. How much you wanna bet the KDE ones are static, like the lame 'transparent' xterm windows? Haha, yeah, that's always a good joke, and I never get tired of pointing this out to Linux weenie who proudly (and ignorantly) show off their transparent windows.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted this several hours after two other people made the same point, and I explained I'd been refering to shadows in general, not menu shadows.

Next time, read.

Idiot.

Re:Slow news day?

[FooBarWidget]

Yes, I completely agree. All the anti-anti-MS people get modded up even when they claim they will get modded down.

Re:Slow news day?

[rusty spoon]

XP has window shadows - menus *are* windows.

The shadow is activated by a window class style you use when registering the window type with RegisterWindow(Ex).

Also, it appears on system tooltips on XP but as I said it can be used on any window type you choose to register.

FWIW: Slow news day for sure.

Re:Slow news day?

[nathanh]

If this was a post about Windows getting shadows, there'd be dozens of posts listing the zillion OSes that already have shadows and bitching about Microsoft's lack of innovation.

When GTK2 gets it, it's cool.

Such is life.

Actually, last time it got mentioned w.r.t Windows there were people arguing both for and against it. Now, that it's available for GNOME, there are once again people arguing both for and against it. I know it's fun to pretend that Linux advocates are hypocrites, but the reality is that DIFFERENT PEOPLE have DIFFERENT OPINIONS.

Re:Slow news day?

[Shadowlore]

Heh, it took KDE THREE versions to get to it?? Clearly GNOME must be better, they did in only two versions. ;^)

Seriously though, you act as if KDE3 is ancient. KDE3 is current. KDE2 and KDE1 are old. Just as GNOME1 is.

Sure you've got *minor* releases (like 3.1), but so does GNOME (like 2.2).

Essentially, they both got this in their *CURRENT* versions and you are trying to act as if KDE had it forever. In fact, if you go look, kde.org shows it in the *new* feature list for 3.1. Meaning they "just got it" too.

*That* is old news. That and you are trying to brag about copying someone else first. What's next calling the KDE menu drop shadows "Authentic copies"??

What makes it old is that this patch existed back in February.

Score 4 informative, my eye.

Re:Slow news day?

[Soothh]

Problem is, KDE is crap, clunky, and retarded looking.

Re:Slow news day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Score 4 informative, my eye.

That's right. It's +5 Informative, punk.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you are dense. And I hope you get modded down.

There are "shadows" on the right and bottom of the menu - shaded areas giving visual cues to indicate that the menu is on top of the window contents below.

See them now?

Bengali script

[yerricde]

The text appears to be written in a Brahmi descended script, namely Bengali. Such scripts are used widely in India and surrounding areas, where the predominant religion is Hinduism rather than Islam.

Re:Bengali script

[gantrep]

You know way too much. I am reporting you to Total Information Awareness.

Re:Bengali script

[The Cydonian]

Hate to point this out buddy, but there are more Bengali Muslims than Bengali Hindus. Think Bangladesh, not just India. :-)

Great link though, fantastic website that.

Re:Bengali script

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical US'ian attitude. Apparently the predominant impression is that there are two languages is the world: English and "foreign". Foreign being a language that sounds just like english, but with an accent, and is written using random strokes.

Everybody should be able to tell arabic from bengali. However, telling the latter apart from devanagari is harder, and can be excused.

Re:Bengali script

[frodo from middle ea]

Almost correct,
The script is indeed Bengali, which is the native script of Indian State of West Bengal, and India's neighbouring country Bangladesh.
The indian state + bangladesh , together were known as Bengal before india's independence. The West Bengal part was predominantly hindu , while the bangladesh part being predominantly Muslims
At independence The indian sub continent was split in to two countries India, and Pakistan based on religion. The hindu mejority places formed india while the muslim mejority placed formed Pakistan. Pakistan was geographically located on two opposite sides of india, The current Pakistan being west Pakistan and the current Bangladesh being East Pakistan. West and East being in respect to india
East Pakistanis were always dissatisfied at the treatment they received at the hands of West Pakistan. One Pakistan was dominated by shiya muslims and another was sunni muslims. Thats like catholics and protenstants , but with even more hate for each other.

So East Pakistan went to war with West Pakistan in 1971/72 for their independance. It was never strategically convenient for india to have two pakistans on either side, so india helped east pakistan in the war. Thus was born banglaesh.
Now both west bengal (mostly hindus) and bangladesh (muslims) have bangali as their official script.

Re:Bengali script

[Anonymous Coward]

I got curious - what does that text say in the picture?

Re:Bengali script

[caluml]

I have no idea, but searching for the name of the PDF (rupashibangla) on Google gives some hints. "More Progress on the Bangla Opentype font issue...."

Re:Bengali script

[be-fan]

Bangladesh is predominantly Muslim, as is Indian's West Bengal. In total, there are about 200+ million Muslims living in the area.

Re:Bengali script

[be-fan]

It is indeed Bengali. The second screenshot shows an excerpt from something written by a famous Bengali poet.

More than visual fluff

[puckhead]

Shadows provide a visual clue that should speed up the users analysis of what's happening on the desktop. This isn't earth shattering news but is an improvement.

Re:More than visual fluff

[suntse]

Yes, I never "knew what was happening" when I pulled down a menu before. Now, with the help of shadows, I finally understand what's happening when I click on the pull down menu.

Re:More than visual fluff

[puckhead]

Yet another life improved by shadow technology!

Re:More than visual fluff

[Anonymous Coward]

Shadows gets rid of another 1px black line. Ever notice how MacOS windows don't need a high-contrast window border? Shadows create a less cluttered look without sacrificing usability. I don't like menu-shadows, but that's mostly because they're usually done in a very bad way: High contrast shadow, only to the bottom right and only 3 or 4 pixels wide. Instead it should be a smooth shadow under the whole menu panel, offset slightly to the bottom right.

Re:More than visual fluff

[inode_buddha]

But.... my desktop background is #000000. Black, in other words. How does a shadow look on black? So is my panel, and I like it that way. The patch sounds cool, but I doubt I'll be using it. Regardless, I'll go bag a copy just in case I ever want to change things a bit.

Re:More than visual fluff

[quantum bit]

Yet another life improved by shadow technology!

This message brought to you by the Psi Corp?

Great!

[wfberg]

Now everybody who uses a mac will switch over immediately!

Re:Great!

[rampant mac]

"Now everybody who uses a mac will switch over immediately!"

Sorry, this just doesn't have the same appeal as the Steve Jobs's Reality Distortion field. Please think of the mock turtle necks and Birkenstock's for Christ's sake!

A Waste

[Mark_MF-WN]

This was more important than, say, making Gnome stable? Phht.

Re:A Waste

[jimmy_dean]

Have you heard that Gnome is open source!? Anybody can make anything for the project and submit a patch. You automatically think that this was the core team of developers (you might not have said that directly but your remark was sure pointing that way). Please think before you direct such a "witty" comment towards Gnome.

Re:A Waste

[prepp]

yes gnome is so unstable it hurts...

Seriously though stop smoking whatever it is you trolls smoke...

Re:A Waste

[__past__]

Have you heard that Gnome is open source!? Anybody can make anything for the project and submit a patch.

Sure, everybody could just spend some years getting up to speed with the millions of LOC that make up Gnome, not to mention all other apps they could want to use, so they can fix stuff themselves. On the other hand, there's this new methodology called "division of labour" that has been gaining popularity lately. Maybe the OS movement should look into that.

Re:A Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2.2 is very stable, you insensitive clod. It certainly crashes less than XP does.

Re:A Waste

[Dr. Spork]

It's not more important, but it sure is easier!

Re:A Waste

[diamondc]

wow.. don't go overboard on the details, buddy.

Re:A Waste

[FooBarWidget]

Who modded this up as Insightful?

May I remind you that GTK+ and GNOME are *open source* projects? Anyone is free to do whatever he wants.
There are already tons and tons of people working on fixing bugs in GNOME. Why are you so upset just because one single person jumps out and and does what he wants (making menu shadows)?

Re:A Waste

[kasperd]

Sure, everybody could just spend some years getting up to speed with the millions of LOC that make up Gnome.

You missed the point. Nobody are forced to work on the code. But those who do are free to work on whatever they want to. Don't tell them what to do, just because you think it is unimportant, and something else is more important, those who actually want to spend time working on it don't have to agree with you.

Re:A Waste

[__past__]

Oh, I mostly agree with you.

I just think that the "here's the source, go fix it yourself" attitude is not that much better than the "your software suxx, go fix it" one. Personally I consider user feedback not much less important that actual code patches - and of course, I reserve the right to reject either in my own projects. It's basically a matter of mutual respect, I guess.

That said, the Gnome project certainly has made itself an easy target for some snide remarks regarding user demands when they decided that their target audience are recent windows converts and computer-iliterates ;-)

stay tuned...

[houseofmore]

rpm -i ms-paperclip-1XP.rpm

Re:stay tuned...

[spydir31]

seen Vigor?

Re:stay tuned...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have now, just when I decided against hurling myself from the roof you had to post thhhhhhiiiiiiiiiissssssssssss

Re:stay tuned...

[locohijo]

seen Vigor?

Evil .. just plain evil.

Wow, must be a slow day

[brunes69]

GTK gets another feature that KDE has had for over a year. Wait itll they get window shadows in 2005. Will that also make the front page?

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[IamTheRealMike]

That's not going to happen for some time. This GTK patch won't be going into the mainstream releases most likely, it was purely a wet-afternoon hack (it's been around for a while btw).

Proper non-sucky transparency requires support from XFree, which doesn't exist yet. Until then both this unofficial patch and the broken support KDE ships with will just be a quick hack.

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[Anonymous Coward]

re-write kde in c and i'll start using it, until then keep gtk2 news on the front page where it belongs.

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[13Echo]

This has been a patch for about as long as KDE's has been in 3.0. It just wasn't widely known. I used it last year, and frankly, I wasn't too impressed. Just because it isn't implemented into Gnome 2 by default doesn't mean that they didn't have a good reason for leaving it out. Gnome 2/GTK is still more lean than KDE/QT, and I think that they want to keep it that way. It's not that I have a problem with KDE, and the options can be turned off.

I must agree, though, that this isn't news that is worth making the front page.

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[windi]

GTK has nothing to do with window shadows, the WM does them.

GTK is a GUI API only. If you want window shadows in GNOME (the desktop environment that uses the GTK API), you need a WM that supports them, so suggest window shadows to the sawfish and the metacity teams, since those two are the WM's most commonly used with GNOME.

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding XFree support: isn't Render supposed to be for things like this?

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[FooBarWidget]

Render is for transparency *inside* a window. Transparency *between* windows is much more difficult. I don't know the status on the translucent windows extension.

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish someone would do a follow up on the status of Keith Packard ...

Re:Wow, must be a slow day

[IamTheRealMike]

OK. Transparent Windows require driver breakage (ie drivers have to be altered), so it's been put off until XFree 5. Luckily, XFree 5 is the next release, and transparent windows are explicitly on the TODO list. Unluckily, it's not been that long since 4.3, and XFree has a long release cycle. Check back next year?

Re:Huh?

[linuxci]

Phoenix (now renamed Mozilla Firebird) uses its own menus (defined in XUL) rather than using the native menus of GTK or any other Linux toolkit. Changing to a different theme will get rid of the shadows if the theme in question doesn't use shadows. You can download new themes from Mozilla Firebird Help

The only OS where Mozilla based XUL apps use native menus is on Mac OS because on the Mac the menus are displayed at the top of the screen not at the top of the application like they are in Windows and Linux apps.

This is Soo Incredible!

[Brad the Informer]

Linux developers form confederation, offer first serious challenge to Microsoft! Promise pay-for-support cooperative to corporations! Gates reported in tears!

Oops, no, they just added shadows to the menu bars. Oh well, maybe Apple will get its head out of its ass and offer more competition to make MS improve its products.

Re:This is Soo Incredible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft seems to take stability and security more seriously now. They are also adding commands for the textprompt, to make it easier to do little scripts for different problems. I would say that the competition from Linux is what makes Microsofts products better at the moment.

Re:This is Soo Incredible!

[Anonymous Coward]

They did. It's called the G5, and it blows the doors off anything in the PC world when you run real-world apps and stop listening to sore-loser SPEC weenies.

Hmmmm, might be bad.

[Krapangor]

My experience with shadow dropping menus is that the overall usuabily and visual quality degenerates. The underlying text structures are worse to read and after 16 hours in front of the screen your eyes start to hurt. And it seems to me that it reduces the menu contrast, which I personally don't like, too.
It's rather strange that people always want to add this feature. In real live you wouldn't read a news paper in blinding sunlight just to see the pages drop a shadow, would you ?

Re:Hmmmm, might be bad.

[geekster]

Yeah I would, if a newspaper had menus...
Sure it's not super important, it's eyecandy. I would love for windows to have shadows too like Mac OS X. But that's not possible in X yet is it?

Re: Hmmmm, might be bad.

[Black Parrot]

> My experience with shadow dropping menus is that the overall usuabily and visual quality degenerates. The underlying text structures are worse to read and after 16 hours in front of the screen your eyes start to hurt. And it seems to me that it reduces the menu contrast, which I personally don't like, too.
> It's rather strange that people always want to add this feature. In real live you wouldn't read a news paper in blinding sunlight just to see the pages drop a shadow, would you ?

Related notion, now that I'm finally running versions of stuff that supports the much-touted anti-aliasing, I find it annoying as hell that my cursor has a fuzzy cloud around it whenever it's over a bright white background. Is that an inherent drawback of AA, or just a poor implementation?

Re:Hmmmm, might be bad.

[archen]

After 16 yours you should be taking a break anyway. The amount of eye strain you are probably experiencing is likely hurting your vision. I somehow doubt you look away from the screen every 15 minutes or so like your supposed to either (but who does that anyway? :) . I don't really see how this would make things that much harder to see than say, making an application look "3d" instead of strait black lines.

I think if there is any tragedy in Linux eyestrain it's anti-aliasing fonts, where I get the choice of: 1) looks like an ass (normal) 2) looks like a blurry mess (aliased).

Re:Hmmmm, might be bad.

[Jugalator]

I like drop shadows like this since I actually think they more clearly separates the meny from the background that can just as well be filled with text and other GUI widgets. I think drop shadows help against that problem by improving the menu outline.

I'm not sure where the "read news paper in blinding sunlight" comes in, and how I would possible be able to compare a menu with a newspaper. First, my computer screen isn't using a contrast comparable to blinding sunlight. :-)

Re: Hmmmm, might be bad.

[lokedhs]

You probably run XFree 4.3.0. RH9 by any chance? It's the mouse shadow! Yet another amazing(?) "innovation" that found its way to Linux.

Re: Hmmmm, might be bad.

[turgid]

Unfortunately, that's exactly what antialiasing is designed to do, to "smooth out" the sharp changes between light and dark to disguise individual pixels. If you have good eyesight and a high-resultion display, antialiasing makes things look blurred.

Re: Hmmmm, might be bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

And look! You can turn it off, configure it, and do all sorts of things that you'd never be able to do in Windows! My god, what will they think of next!?

Re: Hmmmm, might be bad.

[be-fan]

You hit a point where AA is absolutely critical. My screen is very high res (133 dpi). non-AA text looks absolutely terrible, because most hinting algorithms make strokes 1 pixel wide, which is nearly invisible on my screen. Most AA algorithms, on the other hand, try to preserve the actual shape of the letters. This results in strokes being at least a couple of pixels thick, which makes things look very nice. The gray pixels used to do the AA are so small, you can't see it unless you look really close. For the next wave of high-res screens (there are 140 dpi laptops at normal prices, and Viewsonic and IBM have 200 dpi LCDs) AA is going to be absolutely critical, because they're high-res enough to make effective use of it, but not high res enough to look good without it.

Re:Hmmmm, might be bad.

[cowbutt]

Sounds like you need to either try some better fonts (The Bitstream Vera series are good) and/or recompile Freetype with the bytecode interpreter enabled. Most distros ship with the code disabled as it may have patent liabilities.

--

QT had shadows last year

[salimfadhley]

KDE had shadowed windows and menus a long time ago (at least it did on my distribution) - shouldnt the title of this article read

"GTK/Gnome finally catches up by implementing usless feature copied from OSX"

Yes, shadows are nice - they stop windows smelging into each other... but this is so NOT NEWS.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[scrytch]

I dunno, I feel as though I got something useful out of this article. I learned a new word, "smelging" for one.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[mcgroarty]

"GTK/Gnome finally catches up by implementing usless feature copied from OSX"

Yes, shadows are nice - they stop windows smelging into each other... but this is so NOT NEWS.

Windows had it before the Mac, there was a hack to do it with Amiga Workbench before that, and it was in countless Hollywood computer displays before that, etc.

It's a slow news day, this does look kind of cool, and there are going to be people who enjoy it. Meanwhile, you spent an order of magnitude longer in complaining about the article than you would have in just skipping past, so -- what's your point?

Re:QT had shadows last year

[damiam]

This isn't implemented in GTK, it's a very hackish patch that has virtually zero chance of getting merged. The official GNOME position on shadows is that they won't be done until it's possible to do them right, through proper X11 transparency support.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[Anonymous Coward]

Your worthless comment makes it seem as if window manager crap is some sort of race or competition. Go back to your games.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[Daimaou]

The old DOS library C-Worthy provided shadowing on old DOS applications (other libraries provided this as well). Before that God equipped every thing on the Earth with a nice shadow to keep everything from blending together. It's not like Windows, Mac, KDE, Gnome, etc invented shadows.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[73939133]

"GTK/Gnome finally catches up by implementing usless feature copied from OSX"

OSX did not pioneer the use of shadows in user interfaces; it is actually decades old.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[Crazy Eight]

How does the official GNOME stance on drop shadows square with the use of a toolkit that provides anti-aliased text? I thought GTK2 taps XRENDER and assume drop shadows would too.

Re:QT had shadows last year

[damiam]

GTK2 taps Pango for fonts, which in turn taps Freetype and XRender. As far as I can tell from skimming the source of the original patch, this doesn't use XRender, but does a screen capture, calculates the shadow, and displays the resulting static images as the shadow (KDE does the same thing, IIRC).

I'm not too clear on the exact capabilities of XRender, but presumably if it was possible to do shadows with it in its current state, someone would have done it. Real shadows are definately possible in XFree86, and it has it's been done, but I think it'll be a while before such things are working reliably and integrated into XFree86.

I'm not so sure...

[nepheles]

It might be of more benefit to everyone if the GTK people focussed instead on overall useability, which is lacking in many places. Once the interface is as refined as, say, that of OS X, we can concentrate on the eye-candy.

Re: I'm not so sure...

[Black Parrot]

> It might be of more benefit to everyone if the GTK people focussed instead on overall useability, which is lacking in many places. Once the interface is as refined as, say, that of OS X, we can concentrate on the eye-candy.

While I don't dispute the underlying sentiment, wouldn't that actually be an issue for the appplication people rather than the GTK people? Aren't there enough people hacking on FOSS software that individuals can afford to scratch an itch?

Re:I'm not so sure...

[dizco]

Once the interface is as refined as, say, that of OS X, we can concentrate on the eye-candy.

Who is this "we" you speak of?

Reminds me of Mac OS X

[Znonymous Coward]

It looks good. I wonder if it will become part of the next stable release of GNOME.

Re:Reminds me of Mac OS X

[KeyserDK]

It won't. It is still a hack since X does not support alpha channels.

Gtk/gdk on directFB does have real alpha transparency, so it is supported by gtk, but not X.

Re:Reminds me of Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried my Windows and it doesn't have shadows? How do I install this patch on windows?

Re:Reminds me of Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks good. I wonder if it will become part of the next stable release of GNOME.

"Stable release of Gnome" -- the perfect oxymoron.

Re:Reminds me of Mac OS X

[axxackall]

I wonder if it will become part of the next stable release of GNOME.

Then it will be called GNOME X... wait, Gnome is already X ! Moreover, it's X11 ! I guess OSX has a long way to catch GNOME before it will be called OSX11 :)

One and for ALL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE == Window Manager

GTK == GUI tool kit

you may consider comparing QT with GTK instead of "KDE with GTK"

WOW! If this isn't insightful!!!

Re:One and for ALL!!!

[suntse]

If you're going to be sarcastic and condescending, you might want to actually get your facts straight. KDE is not a window manager. KDE is a desktop environment. The window manager which comes with KDE is KWM.

Re:One and for ALL!!!

[nickos]

Sorry mate but that's not quite right. KDE is not a window manager but a desktop environment (the DE part of KDE). KDE by default uses a window manager called KWin.

For alternatives to the bloat of KDE and GNOME, look here

Re:One and for ALL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, current KDE's window manager is Kwin.

Re:One and for ALL!!!

[fzammett]

Allright asswipes, let's get this straight:

It IS correct to compare C++ with KDE
It is NOT correct to compare Qt with Quicktime
It IS correct to compare KWin with DOS
It is NOT correct to compare Gcc with VC++
It IS correct to compare the Lindberg baby with Monica Lewinsky
It is NOT correct to compare Kato Kaelin with a white Ford Bronco
It IS correct to compare herpies with Apples (if you are an Orange)
It is NOT correct to compare Bill Gates with a philanthropist

Does that clear this mess up for everyone?!?

Re:One and for ALL!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is a bloated piece of crap for people who want to turn linux in to some kind of pathetic linux emulation. I still use fvwm1 because I've written my own config file ONCE and never needed to change it again.

What you mean to say is...

[Dashmon]

You can't see the difference between arabic and brahmi scripts?

Re:What you mean to say is...

[Dark Lord Seth]

No, and neither can allot of other people. It's a joke, don't overanalyze it please :P

Re:What you mean to say is...

[Dashmon]

Sure, I wasn't being overly serious myself. :P

another shadow patch was rejected in February

[mandreiana]

mailing list thread:
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/desktop-d evel-list /2003-February/msg00641.html

It was very hacky as X lacked transparency support. Don't know about the one posted here.

Linux XP

[bazik]

One more step towards Linux XP ;)

Plus for corporate adoption

[Stiletto]

Wow!!! SHADOWED menus??? I can just feel my productivity being enhanced already! This will probably be the killer feature pushing forward Linux on the corporate desktop!!!

Soon we'll have a shadowed mouse cursor, almost guaranteeing Linux's adoption by the pointy haired manager types. The future is now!

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[bazik]

Soon we'll have a shadowed mouse cursor,

I have this since I used the Nvidia drivers for the first time ;)

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[tkarhu*]

Soon we'll have a shadowed mouse cursor, almost guaranteeing Linux's adoption by the pointy haired manager types. The future is now!

I'm running X 4.3.0 woody backport on Debian and i'm using the _xf86's_ 'nv' nvidia driver: transparent and shadowed mouse cursor. By default.

--
*Timo Karhu

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[Anonymous Coward]

Mouse shadows already implemented for XFree 4.30 and above... http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5 507

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[damiam]

You don't even need Nvidia drivers - customizable (shadows and alpha) cursors are built into XFree86 4.3, and work just fine with my Radeon 9700.

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[RdsArts]

Soon?

We already do. Just have to get the right theme.

XFree 4.3 even comes with some default cursor sets that are shadowed. The development versions even used them as defaults on my Gentoo box, and look great on my Free BSD laptop.

Re:Plus for corporate adoption

[axxackall]

Wow!!! SHADOWED menus??? I can just feel my productivity being enhanced already!

I could never understand how a shape of menu could improve my productivity.

I understand how hyperlinks, topic maps, listboxes, menu by itself can make my work more productive as it improves my navigation. I understand how colors and font styles can make my work more productive as the carry additional semantic information with the text or graphic elements. I even understand how semi-transparent windows (if a semi-transparency is implemented in real-time) helps me to see what's going on behind to catch alert, which would be missed otherwise, or to read the text, which would be hidden when you need it.

But shadows of borders do not improve any navigation, they do not carry any semantic and they do not let the text behin more accessible.

What is so special with shadows that helps to improve the productivity?

Official Song of Linux

[gantrep]

Do What Ya Like

Oh good....

[nickos]

...now GNOME applications can run as slowly as KDE ones.

Now I'm not deliberately trolling here, but I just upgraded from SuSE 6.2 to SuSE 8.1 the other week, and KDE is so much slower, I've gone from using mostly Qt apps to GTK ones. At this rate I'll be using all Xaw programs soon.

Sigh.

Re:Oh good....

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is not slow on my 2.8Ghz machine.

Re:Oh good....

[AntiOrganic]

KDE's not slow on my 500 MHz Celeron either.

Re:Oh good....

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE merely needs an amount of RAM that is standard on *modern* PCs.

Re:Oh good....

[nickos]

My PC is not exactly modern, but what exactly are Qt apps doing that makes them so slow? I mean, it's only a toolkit/widget set. Why does a simple text editor for example take so long to load? (and don't blame C++ - previous versions of Qt/KDE were significantly faster)

Re:Oh good....

[Anonymous Coward]

Kate takes about a second and a half to load on my machine? What the hell are you running?

Re:Oh good....

[nickos]

A Cyrix 233. It's probably the equivalent of a Pentium 150. Classy!

Re:Oh good....

[Anonymous Coward]

err ... by all means, do blame c++ ... rather ld that's so lousy at loading c++ symbols from shared libs. the point is newer versions of qt/kde have a lot more things like virtual functions and other OO goodies that make ld choke on its deathbed (older ld versions are worse). the hack of using kdeinit requires more memory - so you're caught between a rock and a hard place if your machine is too old.

on the other hand, on an old machine gnome2 is WAY too slow, so there you are, nothing special.

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because everyone that doesn't use [A-Za-z] in their language is a terrorist.

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You used punctuation! You must be a terrorist!

Comments

[big.ears]

• This patch has been around for months. The latest bugfix release was two weeks ago. This didn't just happen, and I'm surprised to read it here as news.
  
• For those of you who are waiting to get it into your distro, don't hold your breath. It is a self-proclaimed ugly hack that works reasonably well but will not be part of the main GTK. But, a similar hack is used for QT/KDE, which gives you an idea of where GTK hackers priorities are. You'll have to wait until true alpha transparency makes it into X for this done right.
  
• Despite the many comments about this just being eye-candy, this probably benefits usability as well (like Anti-Aliasing). Shadow is an important depth cue, which helps segregate the menu from the background. This probably makes it slightly easier and faster to find the proper menu item (tens or hundreds of ms), which over a lifetime or across an organization can add up to some real money.
  

Re:Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

This probably makes it slightly easier and faster to find the proper menu item (tens or hundreds of ms), which over a lifetime or across an organization can add up to some real money.

Thus giving employees more time to screw around on Slashdot... now I get it :)

Re:Comments

[fzammett]

I don't think anyone would argue that shadowing really is more than simply eye candy. On the gripping hand, there really are far more important things that effort could be going into.

One of the greatest benefits of open-source, that each person can work on what they want to when they want to, is also one of it's biggest failings: stated another way, it's just an unorganized mess. I have to say, it's amazing that it works as well as it does!

Re:Comments

[dumol]

I've been using this GTK-shadow patch for some time now, it was included in the 0.22 release of Garnome that I've installed several months ago. My experience with it is that it's nice, it looks impressive but there are two things I really hate about it. When the shadow covers a window with a movie (played with MPlayer) or TV (from my tuner with Zapping) the shadows are not drawn and where the shadows are supposed to be you can see the blue background of that Xv window. Another not-so-important thing is that tearing off a menu completely destroy the effects because somehow the shadows stay in the same place when you move the menu around. The only way to fix that window again is to close the tear-off menu and to open and close it again without tearing off. Other than that it rocks. It even looks great with dark themes (for which I care a lot).

Previewing my comment in Galeon 1.3.5 I've discover a third problem... If you have a menu with shadows that gets covered by a pop-up window (I set Gaim to pop up the replies from my buddies) a certain area around the shadowed menu overwrites portions of the pop-up window. Hmmm... I guess there are enough reasons to not include this sweet patch in the main GTK sources...

Re:Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

This patch has been around for months. The latest bugfix release was two weeks ago. This didn't just happen, and I'm surprised to read it here as news.

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot!

For those of you who are waiting to get it into your distro, don't hold your breath. It is a self-proclaimed ugly hack that works reasonably well but will not be part of the main GTK. But, a similar hack is used for QT/KDE, which gives you an idea of where GTK hackers priorities are.

Absolutely. They are willing to put off a feature people want, and that loads of other environments under the same constraints offer, on some vague notion of code aesthetics. You know what? There's a reason why GTK is considered to always be catching up to Qt.

XP tools?

[zumbojo]

Every copy of XP I've ever seen/used has had shadows, and I have never needed a special program to produce them.

Phew

[archonon]

Developers could waste their time for something useful--- For example making GUI better. Right now KDE & GNOME's biggest flaws are UI usability. Sure, there are tons of options and buttons, but they are poorly categorized and organized "just thrown into". Sooner or Later(TM) they have to do something about it. Make it look good right after user have installed, not requiring newbie Linux user to know how to compile kernel etc. It really makes me angry when I try to use KDE or GNOME and later go to use Win98 (sister's pc), witch is far ahead of usability than any of Linux WM. And it's even faster. :(

Re:Phew

[CheeseCow]

OMG.
There is no need to compile a kernel, you can use binaries of anything you want. Get a generic kernel for RedHat, Slackware, Debian or whatever distribution you install.

I can undertand this comment when it comes to KDE, or GNOME 1.4. But the GNOME 2.2 desktop's greatest advantage is its streamlined interface, and ease of use.

I'm amazed by how GNOME now "just works", and EVERYTHING on my desktop is useful. My menus aren't cluttered with a million "rar this" or "zip this folder and e-mail" entries.

And read about the Human Interface Guidelines which have gotten a large following in the Linux world. They are strictly followed by many GNOME developers(and others).

GNOME is easier than all versions of Windows, except Windows XP, IMHO. And there aren't many steps now required to install Mandrake og Redhat these days.

Re:I know this is totally offtopic.....

[Black Parrot]

> But is there any way of making gtk+2 look like gtk+1's default theme? Everyone seems more interested in making really fancy themes. But I rather like gtk+1's old grey theme, whereas gtk+2's default is vomit-inducing.

What is the GTK2 default theme? I know Red Hat 9 comes with a v-i theme that's hard as hell to change ("hard" as in "unintuitive", it comes up as a common question on Usenet); is that what you're talking about?

At any rate I've been able to make several nice GTK1 themes work under GTK2 by simply copying $WHEREVER/$THEMNAME/gtk recursively to $WHEREVER/$THEMNAME/gtk-2.0. That may not work for everything, but it worked for a couple of my old faves, one of which I'm using under GTK+ 2.2 even as I write. Pick your theme and give it a try.

Getting RH9 to see them is another problem altogether...

That's the point I was making.

[gantrep]

joke
n.

1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal.
1. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
2. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.

Re:That's the point I was making.

[Anonymous Coward]

Understood, and please accept my apologies. I guess the message still applies to the OP though. I just can't stand ignorance.

Re:That's the point I was making.

[Nutcase]

Nothing wrong with ignorance. It's the default state of knowledge for everyone on just about every topic.

The thing you should get upset about is willful ignorance. Choosing, and indeed working, to remain ignorant is unforgivable. Doubly so when that ignorance creates intolerance of others.

Re:That's the point I was making.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, you hate ignorance, except when it's your own. Typical lame, pathetic, slashdot hypocrite piece of shit.

Re:That's the point I was making.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly where was I ignorant?

I did fail to spot a joke, but I blame the text medium rather my own ignorance for that.

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someday they will actually have a usable file selector dialog as well.

Yes I know its not fair to point out one little thing someone worked on and complain why X wasn't done first, but really there are certain things that REALLY need to get done first.

Like how the Gnome project continues to not fix the basic flaws in Nautilus. I mean really this thing does everything but manage files well. They keep adding more and more eyecandy and yet when you do something basic like browse a remotely mounted directory Nautilues chokes bigtime. I simply don't have all day to wait while Nautilus "thinks" before displays my files.(yes preview etc is turned off).

It seems like the Gnome project is getting ahead of itself without fixing basic flaws that should have been fixed by version 1.0.

And No I'm not Trolling. I'm a fulltime Gnome user, have been since 2.0. Coming from KDE the unpolished parts I've mentioned really stand out though.

Re:Great

[diamondc]

a new file selector is coming along with gtk 2.4... this has been discussed to death already.

Re:Great

[reaper20]

You do realize that the Ximian file selector comes with this patch right? It has the Home, Desktop, and Network shortcuts on the left, etc. etc.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

no, owen taylor has re-sheduled it to 2.6

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

He said GTK 2.4, not gnome 2.4.

Wow!

[MoThugz]

... and i thought the Gnome/GTK movement died for a few years ago, at least!

Well, the only thing worse than a slow news day might be a slow dev year... or two.

It *is* useful.

[popeyethesailor]

Lots of posts say this is a wasteful development etc. I am a KDE user (since 2.2) and I find this incredibly useful.

As a rule, I use very little eye-candy, I prefer a subdued looking desktop. I turn off all that whiz-bang borrowed-from-Apple features like gleaming scroll-bars,flashy window decorations etc.

However, these little changes like font smoothing,sub-pixel rendering(cleartype),and menu hinting make KDE a lot more useful.

Specifically, the Dotnet style.

Nice to see this turn up in Gtk/Gnome.

Re:It *is* useful.

[axxackall]

In your post your repeating that it *is* useful. I hear you. No need to repeat it again and again. Just give me three reasons *why* it is useful. Two reasons? Just one? Cannot find any? That's what I thought...

The windows already had shadows...

[oliverthered]

What's the dark line around the windows if they arn't shadows?
I think the UI should make the 'shadows' harder if the window has the focus and softer if it doesn't. A bit like when a scroll bar gets the focus in windows.

Re:The windows already had shadows...

[Dave2 Wickham]

Borders?

Re:The windows already had shadows...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the other two edges of the window are white. It's "shading", not a shadow which is cast onto other objects.

Wrong attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

If you tell users, "Here, use Linux," you have to give them as many incentives to switch from Windows as possible, and goofy little things like menu shadows really do matter to end users.

If you want to ignore those things and make it that much easier for MS to maintain its stranglehold on the desktop, go right ahead. But don't come crying to everyone here when Windows is still a virtual monopoly on the desktop in 2008.

Re:Wrong attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

you have to give them as many incentives to switch from Windows as possible, and goofy little things like menu shadows really do matter to end users.

which, I think, is essentially implying that linux has to become "better" than Windows if linux were on a crusade to win users over. Still, M$ could put the linux-developed features back into Windows to keep the Windowphiles hooked.

MOD UP PLEASE

[Anonymous Coward]

This is quite insightful.

I like a lot of things about Gnome, but the guys really need to get their act together with Nautilus. It's not asking for much -- just freeze the features for a while and work on stability. It's a great file manager, and it's a shame to be irritated by bugs on the first few minutes.

This is positive criticism. I'd like to use Nautilus instead of Konqueror (which is really improving BTW), but for now it's not even a choice.

how depressing

[hmatt]

why not use Qt, already.

Re:how depressing

[FooBarWidget]

Ah, so you're volunteering to port the entire GNOME library and all applications to QT? Great! Get started! I'll be waiting to see your excellent results. I'll come back after 10 years and see how you're doing.

Idiot..

[Anonymous Coward]

So everytime you see a non-Roman based alphabet, you gonna think it's some un-American thing!? What an asshole. That is not a funny post either! Jerk.

Bad implementation

[2nd Post!]

I suspect you're a victim of bad implementation more than anything else.

The shadows in OS X don't suffer from the problem of 'overall usability and visual quality degenerates'

Shadows are subtle, and you won't notice them unless you look for them, but they do make it so you can *easily* see the difference between foreground and background windows, since each window has a different depth shadow. Not only that, but shadows composite, so that when two window shadows overlap, they do get darker as you would expect.

Important stuff

[marvin2k]

Good to see that people are focusing on the important stuff and not some crap like usable file dialogs or actually making gnome a true integrated platform.

Re:Important stuff

[fzammett]

Only on Slashdot is someone pointing out the painfully obvious moderated as a troll.

Come on people, it's a valid point. THIS is the biggest concern someone had?

Re:Important stuff

[Shadowlore]

Good to see that people are continuing to just b*tch about things and whine about the choices of other individuals as opposed to getting of their figurative arses and *doing* something.

Lovely how so many things are *so* important people will just sit around and wait for others to do them. After all, how many Linux users would there be if Linus just sat round and waited for someone else to do it?

There wouldn't even *be* a choice between GNOME and KDE if Linus and many others invovled decided these things were *so* important that they should just sit around and whine on the net about them.

Yes!

[dreamchaser]

This is exactly what Linux needs to overtake Windows! Now it's only a matter of time!

This was newsworthy how? Maybe I just need more coffee.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you.

Re:Yes!

[fzammett]

Wow, what a great example of the vaunted Linux community.

Yeah, replies like that make me as a corporate purchaser want to rush out and put Linux on all my desktops.

Of course, since it now has drop-shadows, there's a real value to doing so, isn't there?

Uh.

[Eudial]

More or less working shadows-in-GTK2 patches have been circulating the net for months... what's the point?

And why add all this bloat? Like if GTK2 wasnt slow enough already?

Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[aussersterne]

Is there anywhere out there a configuration applet for GTK2? You know, something to configure the colors and fonts and manage odd things like drop shadows for menus without having to choose somebody else's idea of a nice desktop in a pre-built theme?

As a longtime KDE user, I'm used to just popping up the control center and configuring such things. KDE has always somehow taken care of the GTK applications' appearances as well. Some recent GTK2 applications, however (i.e. Ximan Evolution) began ignoring KDE's configuration. I got rather tired of seeing these sticking out like a sore thumb on my desktop and decided it was time to configure them to match my colors and fonts using a native GTK tool, instead of "cheating" by using KDE to configure my GTK applications.

Ummmm, where to start, that was the question.

I couldn't find anything but the theme selector in Red Hat 9's GNOME desktop. That let me choose other people's ideas of a nice desktop, but not my own. I tried the old "gnomecc" tool from the command line, but it wasn't there. Finally using an strace I figured out that the appearance of gtk was controlled in .gtkrc.mine and .gtkrc-2.0.mine. Great! Apparently this is how KDE controls the appearance of GTK applications -- it edits these files for me. But now some applications are not getting the hint properly. Okay, I'll edit the files by hand, no problem. I looked at the existing files... Not so great. Not intuitive.

Color format looks like the odd (0-1,0-1,0-1) tuple used by some GTK apps (notably The GIMP) in alternate color palette dialogs. I start up the GIMP and start trying to construct matching colors using that format, and then inserting them into .gtkrc-2.0.mine. After changing a few of the color options by trial and error, more gtk2 widgets do indeed match my KDE colors. Unfortunately, many do not, and the font still sucks.

Since there's nothing helpful in the .gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 files themselves, I start looking around for documentation. Back in the old days, X Resources for dotfiles were always documented in application manual pages. Maybe GTK apps do the same thing?

No dice.

So I get on to Google Groups and start looking. I find references to a file at gtk.org. Pretty soon I am digging through this little gem at developer.gnome.org, among others.

I couldn't believe that changing the appearance for a few GTK applications was orders of magnitude more complex and user-unfriendly than editing my old .Xdefaults or .XResources files had been. After another hour or so of studying, and some more trial-and-error, I was finally able to get my GTK2 applications to completely match my simple KDE colors and fonts -- which had taken me all of two minutes to select when I chose them way back in the KDE2 days and which I've been using ever since.

So... now we have GTK2 drop-shadows... Who the hell will ever figure out how to turn them on? Before we add yet more GTK2 appearance options, wouldn't it be prudent to get an application into GNOME to configure them all? Is there already one (other than KDE control center, which doesn't yet seem to completely work with GTK2) and I've just missed it?

In any case, for a while after Red Hat 9 came out I wondered if there was any real reason I was using KDE over GNOME... This episode gave me my answer!

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[damiam]

So... now we have GTK2 drop-shadows... Who the hell will ever figure out how to turn them on?

No one needs to know how to turn them on, because this patch is not part of GTK and never will be. The GTK philosophy is to do things right and have them "just work", which means no shadows until X11 gets native alpha support.

Before we add yet more GTK2 appearance options, wouldn't it be prudent to get an application into GNOME to configure them all?

All GTK appearence options are configurable by GUI (or gconf, in a few cases) There is no longer one application for GTK configuration, but there are control panels for fonts and themes (GNOME no longer has one integrated control center, it's separate apps for everything, like MacOS). Unfortunately, I don't think colors are officially configurable separately from themes - you have to edit the theme directly.

GNOME does a really good job with making obscure prefs available in gconf, but this is one of the few things that aren't configurable. On the bright side, most GTK themes are available in multiple color schemes - Bluecurve and Greencurve, for example. Also, if you're using the Keramik KDE theme, you might try the Geramik GTK theme, which should automatically import your KDE colors.

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[IamTheRealMike]

Somebody was working on a colour theme control applet for Gnome2, but I haven't heard anything about it for a while.

There isn't really great demand for it. If you want consistancy in your desktop, you're already using BlueCurve/Galaxy/Geramik etc, which do colours for you.

Setting GTKs colours, themes, fonts and so on should be done via XSETTINGS. Unfortunately the lack of a standardised colour format prevents this from happening currently, believe me, I'd like it too as then Wine and KDE could sync to *my* colours. But it's not done yet. Volunteers, as ever, are welcome.

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[ElGuapoGolf]

Well, if you really want to make your GTK/GTK2 apps look like QT apps (colors, fonts, widgets) use the QTCurve or Geramik themes. They're QT/GTK/GTK2 themes that read your QT/KDE configs and make GTK apps use the QT/KDE prefs.

So, basically, you can use the KDE Control Center to configure your GTK apps. Nice stuff that.

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[aussersterne]

Actually, this is what I have always done in the past! But in Red Hat 9.0 some GTK2 apps ignored the KDE colors no matter which GTK/GTK2 theme I was using.

That's what led to this problem. Specifically, the fact that the new Ximian Evolution's menus wouldn't abandon the current GTK theme colors no matter what I did. While many of my other GTK apps (and indeed the rest of Evolution) used the correct colors that I set in KDE, the menus of Evolution continued to be rendered in the current GTK theme's native colors no matter what I did. I had a nice reddish Evolution window (set from KDE control panel), and I would click File and get a blue and grey bluecurve popup menu. I could change the appearance of the menu to other GTK theme appearances, but I just wanted the @#$%^ menus to match the color of the rest of the application.

This is why I figured I needed a "native" GTK color configuration app... I assumed that it would "get" the bits that the KDE control center had missed.

It all came down to defining a whole bunch of style{} classes and then widget_class declarations in .gtkrc, if I remember correctly. I hope I don't have to do it again because I'll probably have to grok it all again. :-(

Another poster said that you can't easily configure colors in GTK because GTK wants to do things "just right" to begin with. Well, blue and grey are not "just right" for me!

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[ElGuapoGolf]

What theme were you using?

I seem to recall that BlueCurve doesn't work as well in the prefs sharing as Geramik and QTCurve do.

Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).

[Vrihad Shoonya]

So... now we have GTK2 drop-shadows... Who the hell will ever figure out how to turn them on?

From the same URL posted in this article:


There are a couple of parameters that can be adjusted using the gtkrc file (either from a theme or from $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0)

gtk-menu-drop-shadow : When set to 0, menu shadow will be turned off. Any non-zero value enables menu shadow (default value: 1)

gtk-menu-shadow-delay : The delay before the shadow appears. The shadow is delayed to give some time to the underlying application to refresh its window. You can increase or decrease this value to adjust the shadow to your system (default: 100)

Re:I know this is totally offtopic.....

[bailout911]

> Getting RH9 to see them is another problem altogether...

Uhhh, untar-gzing to /usr/share/themes or ~/.themes is hard?

Apparently so is Applications->Preferences->Theme
(in Gnome, which is what Redhat is targeted towards).

If it's difficult to find in whatever *box or *wm is the "in" thing for people who claim Gnome and KDE are both slow, then that's a problem with that wm, not Redhat.

Re:Huh?

[carpe_noctem]

I don't care what anybody says, It'll ALWAYS be called "phoenix" to me!

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my God! I was coding earlier and I used the number "0"! I'll have to go turn myself in now..

XD2 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Be careful installing this if you're running XD2. I installed the RPMS on the page and then restarted X to find gdm complaining that my gdmgreeter theme file was corrupt....

After a few hours trying to fix my config files, i just went to ftp.ximian.com and got the older copy of gtk (2.2.2-0) and did an rpm -U --force to have it overwrite this 'prettier' version

hope someone else finds this useful

Re:XD2 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same issue with my Mandrake Box. U basically need to install the RH 9.0 RPMS for glib2, gdk-pixbuf and libpng as well....

Re:XD2 issues

[tato22]

The errors you get are becuse gtk2 fot rh9 and for xd2 use different prefixes during compilation. You could download the source patch and compile it with the right prefix for xd2

Don't apply to XD2

[NetGeek]

Don't install over Ximian Desktop 2, GDM will give you errors.

yeah, great, thanks

[CySurflex]

Great- you just made me notice that my Windows XP menus has shadows. I don't know how long its been there, but now it's disturbing me and I want the shadow OFF!!! Thanks a lot slashdot.

Re:yeah, great, thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

Download Tweak XP from the MS download site (just search for it on Google or whatever). Lots of things you can turn on and off.

All we want is to metacity support ALWAYS ON TOP

[Anonymous Coward]

bah

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" Oh my God! I was coding earlier and I used the number "0"! I'll have to go turn myself in now.."

Don't worry, at least one person (me) knew enough about the history of mathematics to get the joke...

graspee

A Drop Shadows Is a Great UI Cue

[EXTomar]

Drop Shadows are simply a great UI indication of "depth" and "boundry". I wish more UI primatives had it. Given a jumble of rectangles which one is the top most? So far the answer has been to highlight or focus the top one differently than the others (ie. title bar is a different color to stand out from the rest which may not work if your focus is different than your top most). Drop Shadows enhances this distinction since your brain has already been looking for the most contiguous rectange and assuming that is the top most. Sometimes that is hard to spot but things like Drop Shadows can help flag where windows end and at a glance show their stacking order.

Its great that UIs have Drop Shadows but I wonder why they aren't applied to even more primatives? Why don't entire windows have drop shadows?

Re:A Drop Shadows Is a Great UI Cue

[AYEq]

kde-cvs has window drop shadows. One can argue weather or not it's a hack.

I stand corrected

[yerricde]

OK, so you might be right about the religion of Bengali speakers. But are Islamic fundie groups strong in Bangladesh?

I belive they are...

[efextra]

News from Bangladesh

actually

[LittleBigLui]

it calls for a crusade.

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I read somewhere, actually, that ancient Indians had a representation of zero before Arabs did. I don't know if it's true or not.

"Funny?"

[aussersterne]

How about "-1, In Bad Taste" or "-1, Uninformed"?

Sheesh.

Quit Trolling

[erikharrison]

You know, at this point it's probably not worth posting this, but . . .

For all of you trolling out there about how GNOME should get off it's ass and fix this or that before resorting to implementing this sort of eye candy, or for those of you trolling that KDE had this first, a couple of facts:

• This was not done by a GNOME developer, or is in any way part of the GNOME project. This was done by Olivier Fourdan, the head developer of the second most popular GTK+ based desktop environment, XFce [1].
• Drop shadows in X11 are a hack, Qt or GTK+. Hack, hack, hack. No alpha blending.
• Olivier know's it's a hack. And that is why he did it. It was fun. It was a side trek from his over a year of work on the GTK+ 2 rewrite of XFce. It will not be a part of the standard GTK+. It does class up my desktop however, so I like it.

-Erik

[1] Yes, there are DE's other than GNOME or KDE. XFce (xfce.org) is currently finishing up it's GTK+ 2 development branch, XFce4 (it's in BETA 2). ROX (rox.sf.net) just finished it's GTK+ 2 branch. Wanna good winning combo, to have the best of 3 worlds? Take GNOME, replace Metacity with XFce4's window manager (xfwm), replace Nautilus with ROX's file manager (ROX-Filer), and be amazed.

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll of the day.

exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

that's it exactly, just because you can add a silly hack to get some eye candy doesnt mean you should hastily roll it into your main distribution. The GTK+ folks are smart and arn't going to include such a hack as the one in KDE (and this one for GTK), they'll wait for the X Server to support inter-window transparency and do it right. power to 'em.

Re:exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll wait for the X Server to support inter-window transparency and do it right

ahem ... and die of old age maybe? the way X is 'evolving' lately it's not going to bloody happen in your lifetime

STOP THE PRESSES!

[fzammett]

Linux desktops now have DROP SHADOWS!!

Wow, isn't the advance of technology just grand?

Geez, how long before Microsoft "borrows" this idea I wonder?

Huh? Wait... ummm... Damn, Redmond's theft army is FASY!!

And they lived happily ever after

[melted]

Come on, guys! Will someone fix the main problem with GTK? Its controls are HUGE. What's the point in having tons of empty space on the toolboxes? What's the point in those huge menus slowly but surely eating away the space on my monitor? I mean. come on, there's a bunch of work that needs to be done BEFORE implementing all this stupid eye candy. Just pure usability work.

Bastards.

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect an apology from every Linux snob who derided Mac OS X as "bloated eye candy."

Seriously, though, I'm in complete agreement with those who (affectionately) charge Slashdot's editors with favouritism and slow-news-day syndrome. Next you'll be breathlessly telling us that someone has figured out how to give X11 semi-transparent windows.

Yeah You're Right!

[Greyfox]

I don't have menu shadows and the only thing I get after 16 hours in front of the screen is blood clots in my leg, which migrate to my lungs and kill me. This has happened four or five times now. I believe my GUI windowing system is to blame.

Screenshots aren't in English

[Anonymous Coward]

I know all us slashdoters are LOTR fans, but really ...

Do these 2 screenshots have to be in Elven?

http://www.bengalinux.org/screenshots/gnome/imag es /Screen_Gedit_spellcheck.jpg
and
http://www.beng alinux.org/screenshots/gnome/images /Screen_GPDF.jpg

Woo...

[Mattsson]

Just what I need in my gtk... One of the worst features of windows. =)
What will they come up with next? Bluescreens at kernel panic?

Hidden Message

[ArchAngel21x]

I swear that looks like a Ji-Had message. Remember, sometimes the best place to hide something is in plain sight.

Even Java had this already

[grungeman]

Even Java had this before. Take a look at the demo of the Alloy Look and Feel and look at the menus. At least here (Win2k) are shadows.

Taking into account that Java-Swing framework is not the most effect-loaded GUI-framework around (but it is still unbeaten flexibility wise), I would say: It was about time that GTK got those shadows.

More useless additions

[SCHecklerX]

Why don't they focus on making GTK lightweight and consistent first? I mean, OS/2's WPS ran on 486's with 16MB of ram or less, and GTK apps and the like STILL don't have the intuitive object oriented design enjoyed way back in the early 90's.

Wow, must be a fast year.

[Shadowlore]

Then perhaps you can explain why it was listed in the "What's new in KDE 3.1" dated in January of 2003 on kde.org.

Last I knew we were still in 2003, making that less than a year. See here: the kde 3.1 feature guide

buzz off

[Anonymous Coward]

people said exactly this about getting AA fonts on linux, they all have egg on their face about that. it'll happen, it'll get done right.

Breaks Pan

[1stflight]

Looks like it also breaks PAN's image displaying ability, a facet of GtkHTML.... drat

Re:The screenshots prove it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh Christ, well, you'd better hurry and tell that to the NSA, US Navy, US Army and Boeing since they're all apparently terrorists.