Unifying GTK & QT Theme Engines

Unification in the *nix world by W32.Klez.A · 2004-01-04 04:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

While this may seem like a minor thing to some people, every bit of interoperability and unification helps. Naysay as much as you want regarding Microsoft, but the reason why they have the market share is because of the unification present (at least in appearance ;-). If OSS projects (and non-OSS friends of them) can't come together, they should at least work together.

Re:Unification in the *nix world by polyp2000 · 2004-01-04 04:50 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Dip Shit ... ...every bit of interoperability and unification helps. Naysay as much as you want regarding Microsoft, but the reason why they have the market share is because of the unification present(at least in appearance. ..

What interoperability ? sure Windows has great interoperability ... WITH ITSELF... Just like MacOS or Linux Or BSD, they interoperate perfectly with themselves. The difference is with the *nixes you have choice. Since when did Windows offer you a number of different Window managers? And guess what... OpenSource by definition provides better interoperability with other operating systems than your proprietary windows fluff. How may open source programs have been ported to other Operating systems? And how many windows programs have been ported to Open Source platforms? I suggest you reconsider your understanding of the word Interoperability, and as for Unification? it has no place on windows because you only have one window manager anyway.

--
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Christopher+Whitt · 2004-01-04 05:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

What interoperability ?

I think you mistook the OP comment on interoperability between apps written for different window managers to mean cross-platform portability.

The OP didn't claim windows was interoperable in a cross-platform sense. They were pointing out that on Windows, all apps have the same look and feel.

To achieve that result on Linux, across several common UI toolkits and window managers requires interoperability between apps written for the various toolkits.

--
Mozilla
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Xabraxas · 2004-01-04 06:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Naysay as much as you want regarding Microsoft, but the reason why they have the market share is because of the unification present
Nope. That is not even close to the reason why they have the marketshare that they have. First of all Mac has a very good unified theme but they have next to nothing in marketshare. If that's not enough to blow a hole in your argument then my next statement will. Third party apps for Windows often use themes that are not anywhere close to the Windows theme. Take Winamp for example.
Windows has their marketshare because of apps, vendor lock in, propietary formats, and a whole bunch of other things that have nothing to do with a unified look and feel.
With that said, I do think this is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day KDE and Gnome will have unified libraries and a unified interface. I only hope for this so the community doesn't lose one desktop completely in favor of another.

--
Time makes more converts than reason
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Great_Jehovah · 2004-01-04 06:13 · Score: 1

I wouldn't argue with you that interoperability and unification helps but it has had only a minor role to play in Microsoft's dominance. They were handed the DOS platform monopoly by IBM and they've been aggressively maintaining it ever since.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by B'Trey · 2004-01-04 06:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

You seem to be under the impression that choice is always a good thing. It isn't.

It doesn't really matter which side of the road you drive on. But it damned well would matter if it changed every time you crossed from one city to another.

The fact is that most users don't WANT to choose which windows manager they use. They want to be able to sit down at a machine and have it look and act in the same way they're used to it acting, whether it's their home machine, the machine on their desktop at work or the one at the corner Internet cafe. For power users and geeks, all this choice is a wonderful thing. For average users, it's a pain in the ass.

If we want Linux to move to the desktop (and that's a genuine "if" - it certainly isn't a given that that's necessarily the best future for Linux) but IF we want to move Linux to the desktop, it needs to be standardized. You can leave all the choices there, just as there's actually quite a bit of customization you can do to Windows if you get under the hood, but there needs to be a standard Linux "look and feel" that is a uniform default across distributions.

--
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 07:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

You seem to be under the impression that choice is always a good thing. It isn't.
I beg to differ. Choice is, in fact, always a good thing. I'd think you were an MS supporter trolling, except for the fact that you're conversant with terms like "window manager," so it would appear that you're actually a slightly misguided Linux supporter, thus you merit an answer :-)
The reason why choice is always a good thing is that while you may be right that most users don't want to choose (and would almost certainly be right if you modified that to "many users don't want to choose), the fact remains that a significant percentage of us *do* want to choose. That's a major reason why we are using Linux (or *BSD) in the first place: we want to choose.
I'm sure you've noticed that your distribution whichever it is, comes with some set of reasonable defaults. It could be Gnome, it could be KDE, it could even be Fluxbox, IceWM, or something else. If a person using that distro wishes to customize nothing, it will work just fine as-is. However, if another person using it doesn't like any of the defaults and wants to change them all, that is possible and it will still work just fine. This is why choice is always a good thing.
It isn't even necessary that there be a single cross-distro standard, nor is it even desirable. A high degree of integration between KDE and Gnome is desirable, and having all KDE apps adopt the theme of Gnome if you are running under Gnome, or all Gnome and other GTK apps adopt the theme of KDE if you are running under KDE, is certainly a good thing. This doesn't need to (IMO) include any other window managers, since people using those are generally going their own way anyhow, but tight interoperability between Gnome and KDE is clearly a Good Thing.
This would enable developers to write either for Gnome or KDE, knowing that their app will look appropriate on either. As it stands now, though, you can already write for one or the other and your app will still work, all the user needs is libraries for both installed, something most (all?) distros do.
Linux was never meant to be "one size fits all" and not being that way is what has led, in large part, to the great amount of success it has had. I'm a former Red Hat user. I mostly chucked Red Hat after they came out with their "one size fits all" interface, Blue Curve, and the cracked logic behind it: you shouldn't choose Gnome or KDE based on what they look like or how they behave (rough quote of Havoc Pennington, from his explanation of Blue Curve). On the contrary, those are exactly the type of criteria on which people choose, and they are totally reasonable. When they came out with their "one year to EOL" policy, I completely my move to Debian and have never looked back. Indeed, it's so good I should have done it sooner.
Whether or not we want Linux to move to the desktop (and if "desktop" is defined as "the sort of people who really shouldn't even have a computer but are nevertheless dabbling in Linux with distros like Mandrake and Lindows" then the answer is a resounding "no!") - something I used to support very strongly five years ago but have now substantially re-thought, there's no need to make Linux one-size-fits-all. That would kill Linux rather than help it. As for Linux on the desktop, the only argument I really have for it now is that I'd rather see anything other than MS on the desktop, and after Microsoft is will and thoroughly crushed, I can retreat into FreeBSD. It has an installer strong enough to keep away the computer-stupid. Already, the clue level in Linux has fallen so far due to the influx of newbies who are ignorant, want to stay that way, and don't want to learn the Unix Way, that I'm contemplating to jumping ship to BSD this year anyway.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 07:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's even simpler than that. MS has their market share because IBM gave it to them by choosing them as the OS vendor for the IBM PC. All of the lock-in via proprietary formats and engineered lack of interoperability and highly predatory and monopolistic practices came after that. If IBM had chosen CPM as their OS or had written one from scratch, MS today would still be just an application vendor among many. A large one, probably, but still just an application vendor.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by eurleif · 2004-01-04 07:19 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nonsense. Look at a lot of professional Windows apps (almost all games), they draw their own widgets. People want applications to look pretty, but not necessarily the same.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Saiai+Hakutyoutani · 2004-01-04 07:56 · Score: 1

I agree completely.

I've already learned to program in GTK+ 2, yet use KDE as my window manager/ThingTM. One problem I can see with this is that I know of know way to change the GTK theme used on my machine.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Zirtix · 2004-01-04 07:57 · Score: 1

...apps written for different window managers...
Hopefully that was just a slip because the grandparent had it wrong, but anyway: Qt and GTK aren't window managers, they are toolkits. As you assuredly know, any Qt app or GTK app is equally capable of being used under any X11 window manager.
Neither KDE nor Gnome is a window manager either, although both projects include one. KDE and Gnome are 'environments'.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by B'Trey · 2004-01-04 08:12 · Score: 1

I beg to differ. Choice is, in fact, always a good thing.

So you have no problem when Microsoft takes a protocol such as Kerberos and adapts it just enough that it doesn't work with most other implementations? After all, they're just exercising their choice in how they implement the protocol, and choice is ALWAYS a good thing.

I'd think you were an MS supporter trolling, except for the fact that you're conversant with terms like "window manager," so it would appear that you're actually a slightly misguided Linux supporter, thus you merit an answer :-)

I downloaded my first Linux distribution on a 14.4 modem. It was Yggdrasil (sp?) if I remember correctly, and consisted of around 15 or so floppy disk images. It took me almost two days to get them all from a BBS via zmodem. My first CD version was Slackware from Owl Creek. So I wasn't there quite at the beginning but I was definitely the first of the Johhny-come-latelys. I'm a long way from a *nix wizard but I compile my own kernels and use regular expressions in my perl scripts. I have a Debian box which runs qmail, mailman (I host a couple of mailing lists), apache and NATs my DSL connection to my home network. I used Debian unstable on my desktop for almost two years, but wanted something a little more up to date, so I switched to Mandrake about six months ago. I also run a Windows machine that I use for finances (because I can't wean the wife away from Quicken) and for games. In other words, I'm not a kernel hacker and there's undoubtedly more about Linux that I don't know than there is that I do know. But I'm not a Luser or a new comer either.

I said in my post that choice was a great thing for geeks and power users. That includes both me and you. If Linux was dumbed down to the point where we could no longer choose our own windows manager, I don't know for certain that it would kill it but something precious would definitely have been lost.

I also said that I'm far from convinced that moving to the desktop is the way Linux should go. However, a great many people ARE convinced. And IF that's to happen, Linux needs a standard interface.

Yes, every distribution works out of the box. Both KDE and Gnome work fine. But they don't work the same as each other. I use KDE, and I get frustrated sometimes if I sit down at a Gnome machine. Things don't work the way I'm used to. Things are in a different place. It's not that one is better or worse than the other. It's just that they're different.

Your argument is that Linux has no place on the commercial desktop. I'm not absolutely convinced of that, but I certainly won't argue against you either.

However, if the forces that be decide to disregard your counsel, and if Linux is too carve out a niche for itself in the desktop world, it isn't sufficient that each distribution function in its own right. Rather, there needs to be standard desktop which defines the desktop Linux user experience. A user who uses Mandrake at work needs to be able to sit down at a Suse machine at home and be just as productive. There's certainly room for "geek" distros which don't follow the standard. You could still run Debian with Fluxbox (or whatever your WM of choice.) But the standard, commercial desktops need a consistent look and feel IF Linux is to succeed on the (non-geek) desktop.

--
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Ender+Ryan · 2004-01-04 08:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

No friggin kidding *roll of the eyes*
How on earth he got modded to +5 for such a ridiculously false statement is a true testament to the level of knowledge of most /. mods these days.
Anyone over the age of 20 who knows anything about the industry should know that that(ie. consistency) is absolutely not the reason for MS's marketshare, and in fact isn't even true, nor has it ever been true.

--
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Re:Unification in the *nix world by cxvx · 2004-01-04 08:40 · Score: 1

As for Linux on the desktop, the only argument I really have for it now is that I'd rather see anything other than MS on the desktop, and after Microsoft is will and thoroughly crushed, I can retreat into FreeBSD. It has an installer strong enough to keep away the computer-stupid. Already, the clue level in Linux has fallen so far due to the influx of newbies who are ignorant, want to stay that way, and don't want to learn the Unix Way, that I'm contemplating to jumping ship to BSD this year anyway.

What kind of elitist crap is that?
How do clueless newbies using Linux affect you in any way? And how would using freebsd change anything? You'll be using the same KDE or Gnome with the same apps.

To me it seems as if you fear to lose some kind of "leet status" you're telling yourself you have for using something that not that many other people use. And that is a wrong reason to use anything.

I personally don't care if Linux is used a lot or not. I use it because I really like the programs, the flexibility, the philosophies behind it, ... (and none of those things are Linux specific, I theoretically could switch to a BSD kernel, and everything I use would still seem the same to me). It is of course easier to use something that is widely used, in the sense that you'll have less compatibility problems.

--
If only I could come up with a good sig ...
Re:Unification in the *nix world by caseih · 2004-01-04 08:41 · Score: 1

Nonsense. Look at a lot of professional Windows apps (almost all games), they draw their own widgets. People want applications to look pretty, but not necessarily the same.

That is completely true, although the results aren't always that pretty. Norton Antivirus (consumer edition), for example, has a custom widget set not used by any other software vendor that I know of. Does it work? Yes. Is it pretty? Well, not in this case.

Microsoft Office is the best example of custom-guis, though. Every version since 97 has had a new widget set. Sometimes the things they do end up as standard windows widgets in the next release of windows.

But the fact remains that despite what the usability experts tell us, the industry trend (which very well could have been started by the unix desktops) is to do custom widget sets and themeable interfaces. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing

I do think that theme-level integration (when running gnome apps in kde, or kde apps in gnome) is a very good thing. Already we have the gtk-wimp theme which does use Windows widgets to help give gtk apps an almost native appearance under windows and this is also a good thing.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-01-04 08:48 · Score: 1

They were pointing out that on Windows, all apps have the same look and feel.

Oh, like Winamp, MS-Word, Windows Media Player, and the Quicktime Player all have the same look and feel?
Re:Unification in the *nix world by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-01-04 08:53 · Score: 1

I was in agreement with you until you implied that Mandrake users are, "the sort of people who really shouldn't even have a computer". Lindows certainly deserves criticism for throwing away most of the *nix security model, but perhaps you could explain you disdain for Mandrake?
Re:Unification in the *nix world by be-fan · 2004-01-04 09:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

the reason why they have the market share is because of the unification present(at least in appearance. ..
----------
Are we talking about the same Windows? Where Internet Explorer, Visual Studio, and MS Office all use a different toolkit, and Windows Media Player looks nothing like a regular Windows app?

I'm sitting at a KDE desktop, and the only time I have to use an app with a different toolkit is when transferring songs to my iPod (gtkpod). Of course, to do the same in Windows, I have to add another look-and-feel too, either MusicMatch, EphPod, or iTunes, none of which look like Windows apps!

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Unification in the *nix world by be-fan · 2004-01-04 09:03 · Score: 1

There is a program called gtk-theme-switch. It'll let you change GTK+ themes and fonts without gnome-control-center.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Xabraxas · 2004-01-04 09:05 · Score: 1

I'd almost agree with that. The real problem surfaced when Gates cleverly decided not to sell his OS but to license it. When the PC clones came along it was all over.

--
Time makes more converts than reason
Re:Unification in the *nix world by shadow_slicer · 2004-01-04 09:10 · Score: 2

Or how about just having your own personal settings following you around so that every computer acts like yours while you're logged in to it.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by dave1g · 2004-01-04 09:29 · Score: 1

You do realize if all those idiots didn't have and want computers, you woudln't have one today either and Linux would have never been written.

If only the tech elite were allowed to use computers then it would have never been financially viable to sell personal computers.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by norsk_hedensk · 2004-01-04 09:33 · Score: 1

no this is regarding applications without "radical" changes in the UI; ie: winamp. the quicktime player DOES have the same look and feel as other OSX applications. MS-Word however, does have the same look and feel as windows explorer, and microsoft outlook. programs like GAIM, which dont have a drastically different UI (like trillian) SHOULD match with the rest of the GUI's apps, your mail client, and even though browsers other than the core OS's browser (explorer, konqueror ..) have different UIs, it is nice to have those match the rest of your theme as well.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by norsk_hedensk · 2004-01-04 09:39 · Score: 1

a reason (out of a few) to switch from linux to bsd, or simply to just use one over the other, its a preferance of unix style. i personally use linux because i like the SYSV boot method, and i like the concept of runlevels, which BSD dosnt have...or rather implements runlevels in a different way.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by SignificantBit · 2004-01-04 10:11 · Score: 2, Informative

3 words for you: "copy and paste"
Re:Unification in the *nix world by shaitand · 2004-01-04 10:19 · Score: 1

"As for Linux on the desktop, the only argument I really have for it now is that I'd rather see anything other than MS on the desktop, and after Microsoft is will and thoroughly crushed, I can retreat into FreeBSD. It has an installer strong enough to keep away the computer-stupid. Already, the clue level in Linux has fallen so far due to the influx of newbies who are ignorant, want to stay that way, and don't want to learn the Unix Way, that I'm contemplating to jumping ship to BSD this year anyway."

I fail to see your logic. There are more ignorant people using linux and so you want to move to BSD? Why? More ignorant people hardly means less competant ones. If you have 20 competant users and add 1000 incompetant ones, you STILL have 20 competant users, the number hasn't magically reduced. Although the odds in reality are that if change that to just add 1000 users you will get another 10 who are competant and now have 30 competant users.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-01-04 10:54 · Score: 1

You sir are a master of debate and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by eurleif · 2004-01-04 11:10 · Score: 1

I don't know much about Windows development, so I can't comment on whether it's possible to use native widgets, but hardly anyone complains that they don't. On WinXP, programs which don't have that manifest file thingy have native widgets, and people don't seem to mind that too much.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 11:33 · Score: 1

So you have no problem when Microsoft takes a protocol such as Kerberos and adapts it just enough that it doesn't work with most other implementations? After all, they're just exercising their choice in how they implement the protocol, and choice is ALWAYS a good thing.

Come now, I really expect better of you than to raise such a false argument as this. Choice is the fact that Kerberos is an open standard. You and without reservation, that is a Good Thing. That is the strength of free/open source software. That doesn't mean people can't use that freedom of choice to do bad things, such as fork it and break compatibility for their own selfish ends rather than add functionality and contribute that functionality back to the main tree, but the presence of choice itself doesn't make this a bad thing. I think most citizens of democracies (of whatever type) would agree that democracy is a good thing, even though politicians often use that freedom for their own selfish ends without regard to what's good for the nation as a whole, and people often make foolish and uniformed choices in the laws and/or leaders for which they vote. These lapses, however, do not make us regard democracy - that is, choice - as a bad thing.

I think perhaps we need to define "desktop" here so that we better understand each other. It has come to take on the common meaning of "home user system" even though somebody's computer at work is also a desktop. It is the "home user" meaning that I am referring when I speak of the desktop. Linux is certainly ready for the corporate desktop, and I don't regard its use there as a bad thing, either. On the corporate desktop, generally, there are professionals available to look after the workstations and servers, and to help users with problems. Linux is fully ready for this role and has been for a while, thanks to application suites such as Star Office/OpenOffice.org.

It's a lot less ready for the home user desktop, not only for reasons pertaining to ease of use (burning CDs on Linux is still far more complicated than doing the same on Win/Mac, although the 2.6 kernel will take care of those issues, and Konqueror in KDE 3.2 will support drag-and-drop CD creation) but for the same reason that Windows isn't really ready for that market either: the world of networked computing has become a very hostile place, far more than it used it be, and not only Windows but most Linux distributions as well, has a default install that is far to open for a computer that may be connected to the Internet directly, without even NAT standing between it and the blackhats. On this score in particular, I think Mac OS X is more ready for the desktop than any other system, but that doesn't surprise me. Macs have always been hard to crack, relative to most other platforms.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on the standard GUI argument. A user who uses Mandrake at work should be able to sit down at a SuSE machine at home and change the GUI to KDE if it comes with Gnome standard (could happen, now that Novell bought them) and then set to work. I will support your argument this far, though: distributors should not dick around with the default KDE or Gnome menus, they should use whatever the KDE or Gnome projects ship. If they want to add menus, OK, but don't remove or modify what's there by default. That's a bigger hassle for moving between distros than anything else I can think of. For example, my dad runs Mandrake and I run Debian Sid. We both use KDE, but his KDE looks a lot different than mine because Mandrake changes it quite a bit, and IMO they haven't made it better, just different. I'd like to see distributors all agree on that one point. Of course, Red Hat, via BlueTurd, remains the worst offender on that score.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 11:42 · Score: 1

Elistist crap? Not at all. Pardon me, but your ignorance is showing. *nix has been, for many years, a meritocracy. You gain respect in accordance with A) What you know, and B) Your willingness to learn and educate yourself. It is in no way elitist to expect people to do these things, and to expect people not wiling to do these things to continue using the operating system that encourages willful ignorance. I would be elitist if I said that being a Windows user means you are unworthy to try Unix, regardless of your intelligence or willingness to learn.

Nor is it unknowledgeable (call them clueless if you want, but everyone was a beginner once) newbies who bother me. All who seek clue are welcome. What I object to, as I made crystal clear in my original post, is the willfully ignorant. Those who do not know and do not wish to know, who want nothing but a handout. They commonly bring the attitude that "I tried this Linux thing, so you OWE me. When I demand help, you experienced people better hop to it, because if you don't, you suck and Linux sucks." If you participate in any newgroups, LUG lists, etc., you must surely have seen this attitude. It is that attitude that lead to a LUG of which I am a longtime member having to move to a nominally moderated list. The elected officers appointed two moderators, of which I am one, to assist the list master. Fortunately, when it became clear that those sorts of trolls would not be tolerated and anyone who did not cease and desist when warned risked being unsubbed, the trolls shut up and eventually went away.

How would moving to *BSD change anything? It's pretty simple. You don't find people like that using *BSD because they don't know enough, and will never know enough, to get the thing installed. You find few of them using Debian for the same reason. I like Debian's crufty installer because it keeps out the lazy and the willfully ignorant, and am less than thrilled about the project to make an "easy" installer for Debian.

Now you'll probably call me elitist again, but you'll be just as wrong as you were the first time.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 11:52 · Score: 1

OK, you're right. I'll modify that a bit.

*Some* recent Mandrake users are that type. It's the fault of the super-easy installer that makes it possible for any fool to get a working install of Mandrake on practically any hardware. Of course, some fools will try it.

An installer like that is, in principle, a Good Thing, but it does have some negative fallout. That happens particularly in the case of Mandrake because they have made a conscious decision to pursue that sort of user.

Why do I have disdain for Mandrake? Remember when Mandrake switched to CUPS? Remember how broken it was, and how it didn't start working well until 8.2 or maybe even 9.0? The Mandrake forums will filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth over that for a very long time. Many of Mandrake's users are beginners with Linux and the installer allows them to get something installed and working without any clue at all, and a lot of the *drak tools work pretty well, which encourages them to continue to have no clue. Mandrake encourages ignorance and doesn't encoruage learning the Unix Way. Without even going into the PITA aspect of dealing with people who have been so encourage, I'll just say that depending on *drak tools that you find only in Mandrake may allow you to work well enough when things are fine, that falls way short when things aren't fine. Things are more than occassionally not fine on Mandrake because they are so bleeding edge that they often ship broken stuff. My dad uses Mandrake, so I had a front-row seat to the CUPS debacle. I use Debian Unstable, and have found it to be consistently more stable and more bug-free than Mandrake production realeases. Pushing out stuff that broken in a newbie-oriented distro is unconscionable.

With that said, some of the sharpest Linux minds I've run across were using Mandrake, but on the other end of the spectrum, so are a lot of people who should have bought a Mac. If you don't know and don't want to know, a Mac is a great computer to have (with OS X, it's also a pretty great computer to have if you *do* know and want to know). Linux is not a good platform for the voluntarily ignorant, nor should it be made such.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 11:59 · Score: 1

Umm, no I don't realize that at all. I had a PC back when only the tech elite had them, and IBM and a good number of cloners found it to be quite financially viable.

If you go back even further, you'll find that even in the days when having a personal computer (they called them microcomputers then) meant getting a kit and assembling it yourself - and
"assembling" didn't mean just plugging together some finished components, it often involved a soldering iron - a number of companies found that to be financially viable. Altair and Imsai were a couple of the big names then. Apple got started that way, too.

Later, finished computers became the norm, and the Apple II was one of the big sellers in that field. Who bought Apple IIs? That same tech elite that you think couldn't make a computer market financially viable, mostly. The Apple II was groundbreaking in that it was a computer that was easier to learn and was bought by large numbers of people who were not engineers or programmers or electronics freaks, but were nevertheless smart and curious.

That last is key. I never said, or even implied, that you should have to be a tech elite to own a computer. But being smart is desirable, being curious and willing to learn - including educating yourself via RTFM - is key. I think it's great that computers are available easily and cheaply, but it's not great that willfully ignorant people install Linux and then demand - not ask for - free help from those who educated themselves, just because they "tried this Linux thing."
Re:Unification in the *nix world by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 12:04 · Score: 1

It's all about signal to noise ratio. Haven't you ever seen a forum killed, or nearly so, from being overrun by the willfully ignorant? I have, and it's not a pretty sight.

I'm quite happy to help those who are new and willing to learn both Linux and the *nix Way. I was a beginner in *nix once myself, transitioning from a mainframe and Windows background. People who knew helped me become a person who knows. What I don't want is to waste my time on people who don't want to know, but just demand free help and wish to remain ignorant, or who think they're some kind of genius because they popped a Mandrake install CD in the drive and took all the defaults and now they're running Linux. They're usually willfully ignorant, too.

I am on a FreeBSD list, and I'll tell you, there is no one like that there. I've never seen one, ever. Anybody who can get FreeBSD installed has at least two clues to rub together, and they will grow from there. Linux was once that way, and I don't see it becoming less that way as a good thing. Popularity has a price, and it's steep.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by jamienk · 2004-01-04 12:33 · Score: 3, Informative

I only occasionally use XP on my old laptop, and I'm always shocked at how inconsistant everything is, how every app and website tries to wrest control over my system with its own, non-standard styles. From skined media players to full-screen, popped-up, Flash websites; from ever new MSOffice widgets to tray-launched applets; weirdly-named, unknown processes running in task-manager; never knowing how to stop an automaticly launched program (service? registry? auto-exec bat?). In fact, half the time I can't tell if I'm shutting a program off or just "hiding" it. Programs are always trying to grab MIME types and not give them back; wizards are always starting suddenly and won't quit; I have a hard time telling when and where (or if!) I've unzipped a file! I have to click, hover, clcik, hove, search, hover, and start again just to open Notepad, and it has NEVER smartly figured out that it is one of my most used apps. When my wife uses the laptop she always ends up with a million bizzarre windows all over, little apps launched, tons of stuff frozen...

In a word: Windows has NO consistancy at all! And it really fucks up my productivity.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by shaitand · 2004-01-04 12:53 · Score: 1

"Haven't you ever seen a forum killed, or nearly so, from being overrun by the willfully ignorant?"

*looks around slashdot* Is this a trick question?

"I am on a FreeBSD list, and I'll tell you, there is no one like that there. I've never seen one, ever. Anybody who can get FreeBSD installed has at least two clues to rub together, and they will grow from there. Linux was once that way, and I don't see it becoming less that way as a good thing. Popularity has a price, and it's steep."

I see your logic now, and understand what you mean. But your logic is flawed and wishful thinking. The degradation of signal to noise is inevitable. If all those who are in the know move to BSD, BSD will slowly evolve into a feature rich platform. Slowly the not entirely ignorant but not thinking they need to be less so will migrate to it to be l33t. Your signal to noise will start to degrade, their suggestions and minor developments will start to nudge things in another direction. BSD would start to gain popularity, with popularity means more developers and that means more people to try to convince that things should be uneccesarily difficult in order to keep those who don't know what they are doing from the userbase.

Basically, it's inevitable, moving to BSD simply means recreating the wheel all over again. In the end it will be the same. Personally I'm going to stick with linux, I can't stop it from growing, eventually I may help new users less because of the signal to noise ratio. But they won't need as much help either as things become easier and more commercial support options become available. So I'll invest my time and input into linux and seeing that it remains flexible and solid.

Every man to his own I suppose. I simply don't see what's to gain by moving to BSD and starting the process to the same end all over again, and without the philosophical benefits of the GPL behind it. What follows when BSD gets popular? Hurd? Then when we've reinvented 10,000 wheels 3 times for each system what follows? Besides that some wheels are simply ported and not reinvented, so the decline of BSD would likely be faster than that of linux. And hurd"?" after that more rapid yet.

Seems better to switch forums than Operating system's to me.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by spitzak · 2004-01-04 14:18 · Score: 1

True, but IBM was planning the same deal with Digital Research for CPM/86, so they would have ended up in Microsoft's position.

I think whoever ended up in that position (IBM itself if it had done the deals right) would have turned into an evil monopoly. Several would have been far worse than Microsoft is, probably. And Bill Gates would be posting on Slashdot and complaining about the monopoly.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by good+soldier+svejk · 2004-01-04 14:41 · Score: 2, Informative

The real problem surfaced when Gates cleverly decided not to sell his OS but to license it.
Actually, IBM insisted on this. They were still defending a Federal anti-trust suit and therefore treaded gingerly into the PC market. Later the Meese Justice Department dropped the suit.

--
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man

-James Baldwin
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 15:02 · Score: 2, Funny

Bill Gates would be posting on Slashdot and complaining about the monopoly.
And his sig would be "120 chars should be enough for anyone".
Re:Unification in the *nix world by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-01-04 18:17 · Score: 1

You make some good points, however I must say that the move to graphical configuration tools is present in most of today's commercial Linux distributions, for better or worse. And to be fair, MDK 9.2 was rushed out with a few problems apparently (I haven't tried it).

I'm currently running the powerpack edition of 9.1, and very happy with it. However, there have been a few bumps, like when I built my own kernal and had some issues with Mandrakes' default settings conflicting with a vanilla kernel. Previously I ran SuSE 8.0 and Redhat 7.0, and both had their own idiosyncrasies, especially SuSE.

I did briefly try Debian (Woody), and wasn't crazy about it. After apt-getting a kernel that didn't have support for my NIC, I threw in the towel. I'll probably try it again someday after I've learned a little more about Linux in general.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by shellbeach · 2004-01-04 18:38 · Score: 1

Whether or not we want Linux to move to the desktop ... something I used to support very strongly five years ago but have now substantially re-thought, there's no need to make Linux one-size-fits-all. That would kill Linux rather than help it.

No need to make Linux "one-size-fits-all", certainly, I agree. But there's absolutely nothing to stop a distro arising that is substantially dumbed down to the point of MacOS, where complete newbies can use it without ever being in danger of accidentally destroying data or making their computer unusable. If such a distro did arise, you would not be forced to use it - your distro of choice will still be around or you could even build things from scratch if you so desired. So how is this such a bad thing?

As for Linux on the desktop, the only argument I really have for it now is that I'd rather see anything other than MS on the desktop, and after Microsoft is will and thoroughly crushed, I can retreat into FreeBSD. It has an installer strong enough to keep away the computer-stupid.

So the only reason why you'd use *BSD is because it's too hard for newbies to install and thus gives you the pleasure of using an "elite" system? That's one of the most stupid reasons I think I have ever heard for using an OS. Unless you really need some definite advantage that *BSD offers over linux, why on earth would you switch to it?? You'll lose a lot of hardware compatibility ...
Re:Unification in the *nix world by AigariusDebian · 2004-01-04 23:59 · Score: 1

How on earth he got modded to +5 for such a ridiculously false statement is a true testament to the level of knowledge of most /. mods these days.

First post effect?
Re:Unification in the *nix world by B'Trey · 2004-01-05 01:56 · Score: 1

Come now, I really expect better of you than to raise such a false argument as this. Choice is the fact that Kerberos is an open standard. You and without reservation, that is a Good Thing. That is the strength of free/open source software. That doesn't mean people can't use that freedom of choice to do bad things, such as fork it and break compatibility for their own selfish ends rather than add functionality and contribute that functionality back to the main tree, but the presence of choice itself doesn't make this a bad thing. I think most citizens of democracies (of whatever type) would agree that democracy is a good thing, even though politicians often use that freedom for their own selfish ends without regard to what's good for the nation as a whole, and people often make foolish and uniformed choices in the laws and/or leaders for which they vote. These lapses, however, do not make us regard democracy - that is, choice - as a bad thing.

We're getting a bit far afield here, but you need to define "choice." Standards are all about restricting choice. However, unless someone is standing over your shoulder with a gun, you're perfectly free to ignore the standard. So does choice still exist or not?

I certainly don't advocate that we enlist squads of armed goons to go out and ensure that all Linux desktops operate consistently. Rather, I say that we need a desktop standard, somewhat similar to the Linux Standards Base, that defines how a desktop Linux should look and feel following a default install. Necessarily, that will mean standardizing on KDE or Gnome. Choice for the user still exists. You can modify your desktop or choose another windows manager either during or post installation. Distributions are free to ignore the standard if they choose.

So do standards limit choice or not? It's a matter of semantics, and one you can argue either way. I don't particularly care how you see it, since the existence of the standard is the important part.

I think perhaps we need to define "desktop" here so that we better understand each other. It has come to take on the common meaning of "home user system" even though somebody's computer at work is also a desktop.

I'd disagree with your definition of the common meaning. I often see "desktop" used to include office as well as home desktops.

For myself, I define a "desktop" as a computer who's primary role is to run general purpose software for direct use by a user. This is opposed to servers, which primarily provide services to other systems on a network, and to workstations, which primarily run a limited set of special purpose applications. That's a quick and dirty definition, not meant to be comprehensive. You could undoubtedly expend megabytes of ASCII on the subject if you wished.

It's a lot less ready for the home user desktop, not only for reasons pertaining to ease of use (burning CDs on Linux is still far more complicated than doing the same on Win/Mac, although the 2.6 kernel will take care of those issues, and Konqueror in KDE 3.2 will support drag-and-drop CD creation) but for the same reason that Windows isn't really ready for that market either: the world of networked computing has become a very hostile place, far more than it used it be, and not only Windows but most Linux distributions as well, has a default install that is far to open for a computer that may be connected to the Internet directly, without even NAT standing between it and the blackhats. On this score in particular, I think Mac OS X is more ready for the desktop than any other system, but that doesn't surprise me. Macs have always been hard to crack, relative to most other platforms.

I have a hard time accepting this as an argument that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. You're not talking about anything inherent to Linux itself but merely critisizing the choice of the default security posture. Mandrake, which you seem to hold in contempt, ask the user what the role of the machine is to be and ada

--
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Sunnan · 2004-01-05 02:26 · Score: 1

I'm sure you've noticed that your distribution whichever it is, comes with some set of reasonable defaults.

No, I use Debian.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by the+argonaut · 2004-01-05 06:36 · Score: 1

Now you'll probably call me elitist again, but you'll be just as wrong as you were the first time.

No, you'll still be just as elitist as you were the first time.

It is elitist to state that if you don't know how the internals of the system work or if you are not willing to figure it out then you are not willing to use it. What you are saying is that linux is a system for programmers, developers, sysadmins, and those who have nothing better to do in their life (like maybe get a job and earn money) than sit around figure out how their computer works.

I know a lot of really smart people who know next to nothing about their computers beyond how to use the GUI and how to run the applications that they need to. They don't know jack about recompiling kernels or editing config files or whatever. And it's not that they don't know about these things because they are dumb or because they're not curious: it's because they are curious about other things, and they are spending their time pursuing those things. But because they don't meet you're definition of whose special enough to use linux, you're want to put up big walls and lock them out.

Well, you can go fuck yourself. Put up your stupid walls. People like me will go and build the siege engines to let those unclean barbarians into you little city. And I'm not saying I do this out of spite. I do it because I think that people should be able to enjoy the benefits of systems like Linux without having to know everything about how it works. Some people have more important things to do with their lives.

--
fuck you.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by be-fan · 2004-01-05 09:02 · Score: 1

That's the thing! Its perfectly possible to run a Linux desktop and only occasionally use a different toolkit. But its nearly impossible to do the same for Windows. What do you use for an office suite? In KDE, I can use KOffice, which handles my light document needs just fine. In GNOME, I can use AbiWord and Gnumeric. In Windows, you have to use either MS Office (which uses a different toolkit than the rest of Windows) or OpenOffice (which also uses a different toolkit). What do you use for an IDE? If you use Visual Studio, like most people, than you're using the .NET toolkit, which is different from there rest of Windows. What do you use for a media player? If you use Windows Media Player, than while it does use the regular Windows toolkit, it looks completely different from a regular Windows app, and draws its own buttons and whatnot.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Unification in the *nix world by cbreaker · 2004-01-07 16:37 · Score: 1

You've said what I was going to say if nobody else did!

That's got to be one of the most ridiculous explinations of Microsoft's monopoly to date.

Not to say that UI uniformity isn't a good thing, but it's an afterthought for Microsoft to have done so.

--
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Re:Unification in the *nix world by cbreaker · 2004-01-07 16:40 · Score: 1

If choice wasn't a good thing, how come "skins" are so wildly popular on anything that supports them?

You could make a damned clone of Microsoft's "calc" but with "skinning" abilities and it would instantly become all the rage, with people writing skins for it by the dozens.

People want a choice, although I do agree that it would be nice to have basic similarities. Fortunately, the two most popular desktop environments for Linux, Gnome and KDE, DO share many common GUI elements and are fairly easy to figure out, even for a layperson.

--
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Re:Unification in the *nix world by B'Trey · 2004-01-08 00:01 · Score: 1

Choice is usually a good thing. It isn't ALWAYS a good thing. And it generally isn't a good thing to have to make choices when you don't have the knowledge to make an informed decision, when you don't understand the implications of the choice you're having to make, or you don't know which choice to make to achieve the results you wish.

Skins are popular with a certain sub-set of computer users, primarily young people who have grown up with computers. I'd wager that most, where most is greater than 50%, of computer users have never used a skin and don't know what one is.

--
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Re:Unification in the *nix world by cbreaker · 2004-01-08 10:36 · Score: 1

While I'd certainly agree that most (being over 50%) people don't use skins and don't know what they are, there is a substantial number of people that do know and do use them.

The thing is, if everyone DID know that you could skin things, I'd wager that 'most' people would use different skins for all softs of things. I don't know of too many people that are aware of skinning abilities and don't do it.

--
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Re:Unification in the *nix world by Trepalium · 2004-01-08 18:22 · Score: 1

I suppose every time your car breaks down, you fix it yourself? When your TV is on the fritz, do you break out the oscilloscope and soldering iron? And you rewired your house because the electrical wiring wasn't up to code, right? HVAC systems are a cinch to fix for you, right? You built your house from scratch, all by yourself? My point? You don't expect to be excluded from all these luxuries, do you? Yet people like you seem to be constantly advocating just that. Yes, there are assholes out there they demand you do things for them because they feel some form of 'entitlement'. I don't believe for a moment that's limited to computers, because I've seen people acting poorly at virtually any business, be it fast food or repair people. But if you're doing free support for people because you enjoy doing it, you have an advantage. You can ignore the people who annoy you, and can use technological means to enforce your wishes (kill file). If you truely enjoy doing something, what others are doing shouldn't matter to you one bit.

--
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.

The finbe print . . . by randyest · 2004-01-04 04:36 · Score: 4, Informative

Seems like a start in the right direction, but don't expect something ready to roll (as I did until I checked the site):

Currently the code is very buggy and incomplete - a few widgets do not yet use the QT drawing code. However it is still perfectly usable. This theme is slightly slower than that of most native GTK themes, but the difference is hardly noticed on a fast machine.

Known bugs: * Menus do not have borders
* The background colour doesn't change when text is highlighted
* Colours are incorrect when using certain styles (eg. Keramik)
* Buttons, and other widgets, may be the wrong size
* Scrollbars sometimes misbehave

This is a 0.x release - do don't expect it to work perfectly :)

--
everything in moderation

Just a style by gilesjuk · 2004-01-04 04:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's actually just a style that makes them both look more consistant. Unifying the API is the hardest job and I don't really want to see a unified API as it would be a bit of a mongrel. To me I think the best way forward is for either QT or KDE to die and the developers of the losing project to join the winning side.

Merging QT and KDE would be like merging Linux and one of the BSDs.

Re:Just a style by Shisha · 2004-01-04 04:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

No one is really talking about unifying the API. That's the bit that developers are most mentally attached to. As we all know GTK vs. QT is rather different in the style of writing code, different mindset even, so it wouldn't work for either side to unify the API. With unified API we'll have loads of unhappy QT _and_ GTK developers!

OTOH this (unifying themes, i.e. one theme working for both QT & GTK) is the first step in the right direction, of making the two indistiunguishable to the user. Next would be _perfect_ cut & paste, including HTML pages, pictures, vector graphics etc. AFAIK freedesktop.org has come a long way working on cut & paste (drag & drop) and apparently all it needs now is more polish.

Final stage would be using kparts in GTK apps and bonobo components in KDE. There are cautious steps in that direction. And then there is OpenOffice (check out cukoo) of course and Mozilla and GNUStep... long way to go till everything is perfect. Then it will be the job of distributors like Mandrake & Xandros to give us the perfect desktop linux. Or our job, for those who like to tweak and fiddle with things. I'm looking forward to all this! (and I hope I'll be seeing less and less GNOME (KDE) sucks!!! style flamewars everywhere. Hey, I don't care whether I'm using Rhythmbox (where the file open dialog is still a joke) or Juk (which uses arts for the sound backend and arts sucks _and_ is a joke), I'll settle for either of the two as soon as it'll be perfect :-))!
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-04 05:34 · Score: 1

Wasnt gnome abandoning bonobo?
Re:Just a style by md81544 · 2004-01-04 05:36 · Score: 1

I think you mean "Merging QT and GTK" or "KDE and Gnome". KDE is based on Trolltech's QT, Gnome is GTK.
Re:Just a style by damiam · 2004-01-04 05:40 · Score: 1

No. Bonobo is still in use (a major part of Evolution especially), although it's not quite as in-your-face about it as KParts.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Just a style by rzei · 2004-01-04 05:45 · Score: 1

Merging QT and KDE would be like merging Linux and one of the BSDs.

By this you must mean that actually BSDs are built on an api provided by Linux? Nah, I don't think so. A better would be:
"Merging QT and KDE would be like merging Linux and one of the X11 servers."
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-04 05:52 · Score: 1

But what interesting Bonobo components are out there that would make KDE benefit from using them, and what bonobo container apps can benefit from using KParts?
Re:Just a style by damiam · 2004-01-04 06:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not many, really. A few apps (abiword, gnumeric, and a few others IIRC) can export themselves as bonobo components, and can embed bonobo components (although that's not well-supported or widely used). Theoretically, Konqueror could use a KPartsBonobo bridge to embed Abiword and Gnumeric. Nautilus could do the same to embed KOffice, KHTML, or even the Konqueror filebrowser. Really, though, I've never seen much point in embedding everything in the filemanager, aside from "it's cool that we can do it". Bonobo and KParts seem much more useful from a developer's perspective than a user's perspective.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-04 06:19 · Score: 1

Well, I wrote a rss aggregator, andit sure is nice to be able to embed a web browser so you can follow the blogs links without necessarily opening a separate window.

And for an etext reader, the chance to display PDF, web pages or plain text just by switching the part is nifty.

Really, if developers think about it, and its easy to do, and there are interesting parts, it *is* useful for the user.

In fact, you use parts in KDE without even noticing most of the the time, I dont know why it was described as "in your face" before :-)
Re:Just a style by arvindn · 2004-01-04 06:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

If you want a unified API, look no farther than wxwindows.
It has backends for qt, gtk, ms-windows etc. Trouble with it is that it adds an extra layer of complexity for the programmer and dependency for the end user.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-04 06:30 · Score: 1

You seem to be confused.

That sort of component is not what those libraries "reused by GNOME and KDE" are.

Although it is possible to write a component model based on shared libraries (like, say, KParts ;-), GNOMEs component model is based on CORBA, and it seems to be really losing emphasis nowadays.

It is strange because there was a lot of GNOME flamage about how KDEs approach was so inferior and antiquated (CORBA is the future, remember? it will always be ;-), yet KDEs component framework
is the successful one, go figure!
Re:Just a style by damiam · 2004-01-04 06:42 · Score: 1

Well, I wrote a rss aggregator, andit sure is nice to be able to embed a web browser so you can follow the blogs links without necessarily opening a separate window.
The argument against that is that is that then the user starts browsing the web in your app, and then they want to open a new tab, or change a setting, or something that can only be done in a real web browser. It's easier (IMHO), if you just have one tool for each task.
That said, there are some good uses for components, such as an etext reader, or an Evolution/Kontact-style PIM. I just think that they're used gratuitously in many cases. Look at all the windows apps that embed IE - everything from KaZaA to Winamp, and it's useless in all of those places.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-04 06:49 · Score: 1

Well, I wrote the RSS agg. because I wanted it, and trust me, having the browser in it is better.

It was even one of the most requested features for NNW, the most popular app of its kind on OSX.

Your opinion of the gratuitousness is really not too interesting because you (as myself) are probably so many standard deviations outside of the normal use cases.
Re:Just a style by Findus+Krispy · 2004-01-04 06:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Working copy & paste/drag & drop is definitely important, but I don't know about the component thing.

The other important things are that all apps should use the native print/file dialog, and all apps should have access to the virtual filesystems within that environment.

Everything required for solid integration between these two (awesome) environments is well under way (from the KDE side at least -- I don't hang about the Gnome forums).

I too very much hope that everyone will learn to get along when this work is finished. Both environments are clearly important since they have so many loyal fans, and integrating would just reduce what is obviously a useful choice. Few zealots at all will admit that it would be nice to have Gnome/Gtk apps work perfectly in KDE, or KDE/Qt apps work perfectly in Gnome. This work will achieve that through a number of intiatives, and we will all benefit in true OSS style. Thankyou Gnome and KDE!

As for Mozilla and OOo, they are both being Gnomified (and possibly KDEified), and so even KDE users will benefit once Gnome apps work better in KDE.
Re:Just a style by The+Vulture · 2004-01-04 07:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

I've been working on a new home project for a couple of months in wxWindows now, and I must say, I'm very impressed with it.

I've done Qt programming in the past (no GTK though), and toyed around with Windows GDI, but wxWindows actually seems to make more sense to me - it just seems easier than both of those (that could be because I haven't used Qt or GDI in a bit though).

I disagree on the extra layer of complexity for the programmer though - it's nice to be able to develop your main application using only one toolkit, and have most of the cross-platform issues taken care of for you (there are some limitations, but you plan for these). This is why I was initially attracted to Qt (but stopped using it after looking into wxWindows). I do agree that it is an extra layer of complexity/dependency for the end-user, but that's what pre-compiled binaries with installers are for.

The main thing that I like about wxWindows is that I'm planning for my application to run on many platforms, so it fits the bill perfectly. The application won't look exactly the same on Windows and Linux/UNIX with GTK or Motif, but it will be reasonably close, which is a huge bonus.

-- Joe
Re:Just a style by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 07:35 · Score: 1, Informative

It is strange because there was a lot of GNOME flamage about how KDEs approach was so inferior and antiquated (CORBA is the future, remember? it will always be ;-), yet KDEs component framework is the successful one, go figure!
Read this, and understand it: GNOME is not demphasising Bonobo, Corba or anything like it. CORBA, BTW, also runs many enterprise systems the size of which KDE developers cannot even imagine. I'd suggest doing a bit of research before spewing your gibberish in future.
Re:Just a style by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:34 · Score: 1
If the developers of Qt (Trolltech) die, the world would likely be in better stead because all the code for Qt would presumably become purely GPL, at which point there would be no whingers about the dual-license agreement which Qt is under. Let's hope it goes that way instead of the other.

It sounds like what you were really trying to say was that Gtk and Qt should merge.

That would never happen, but what would be nice would be to at least have a common style interface! Then you could have:
- Gtk using the style interface;
- Qt using the style interface;
- Xlib programs using the style interface;
- Tk using the style interface...
In other words we would have an API almost at the level of Xlib itself, which enabled all applications to look the same.
--
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Re:Just a style by alext · 2004-01-04 14:40 · Score: 1

Might be worth pointing out that this is of fairly academic interest to the largest Linux users and investors since major business applications are no longer being written in C or C++.

Although it generally fails to register in Slashdot land, Java and Dotnet have happened and the dynamics of software development will ensure that there is zero chance of going back to pre-VM platforms.

The most likely way forward is that both QT and GTK2 API layers (but not necessarily the GUIs themselves) will become irrelevant. The well-meaning advocates of GUI unification are therefore in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory if they fail to embrace and exploit this fundamental change.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-05 07:16 · Score: 1

They are intertesting as long as they are accepted as what they are. But not too good to generalize from them.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-05 07:18 · Score: 1

Well, KDE seems to use the components a lot more. Perhaps thats why they speak about it more.

It is hard to brag about something that is not happening.

Besides, I just asked about it being dropped because I had heard something about it. No biggie.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-07 01:01 · Score: 1

Well, apparently, the GNOME users in this forum can only mention Evolution as a container and Abiword and Gnumeric as components.

Doesn't look like much. If there is more, they should publicize it. It's part of developing a platform.

You act as if saying "hey, we have components and we use them all over the place" is bad. It isn't. It's good.

If GNOME has components and uses them all over the place, GNOME should emphasize it, and spread the gospel.

As for thwe rest, dude, I won't bother dropping to your level. I had read that in a place I usually trust to have decent GNOME information (sorry, can't say the source). I was wrong? Good for GNOME, then.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-08 04:38 · Score: 1

I mean, they mention very little usage. Now you say its used all over the place. Whatever.

If you are right and its a widely used technology, then they are not doing enough to educate their own users.

The rest of your message is too stupid to answer to.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-09 01:31 · Score: 1

Dear, when I said "their users" I didn't mean me, I meant the OTHER guys, the ones that use GNOME, that said it was used in evolution and that there were "a few" apps that worked as components.

And just a small question. You actually bother checking this page every day to answer me? At least I get email notification!

You must have serious issues to act like you do. I suggest you seek professional help.
Re:Just a style by Roberto · 2004-01-09 12:45 · Score: 1

Darling, come back when you learn to read, too!

As I said, I *asked* where it was used, and *other people* who are GNOME users came back with a rather poor list.

A poor list that you, beyond saying bonobo components are used all over the place, have done nothing to extend.

If your point was really to correct my "FUD", you could do it by just posting a nice list.

However, you seem to find entertainment on insulting people on threads noone else reads, while hiding behind the veil of your anonymous coward features.

That is, in my humble opinion, sign of some strange inclinations. Perhaps you are of a too masturbatory nature. Maybe you lack fiber in your diet.

That some guy is... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 04:39 · Score: 5, Informative

David Sansome... at least name the person who put in the effort to make this happen.

Re:That some guy is... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 05:20 · Score: 2, Funny

Chill out David.
We all saw your name when we followed the link.

Good work btw.
Re:That some guy is... by davidsansome · 2004-01-04 07:55 · Score: 1

Thanks :)

--
-- Wibble

Re:Bluecurve by Talez · 2004-01-04 04:39 · Score: 1

Sort of.

IIRC, Bluecurve is a theme for both QT and GTK2 and wasn't applied to original GTK apps.

Re:Bluecurve by pe1rxq · 2004-01-04 04:40 · Score: 5, Informative

No, bluecurve are still seperate themes that look the same.. You need to make each theme both for gtk and for qt.
This theme engine uses the actual qt theme and thus does not require any duplicate work when creating a theme.

I wonder if the reverse could also be done (a qt engine that uses the gtk engine for its theme) or is gtk more flexible in this regard?

Jeroen

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Re:Bluecurve by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 04:41 · Score: 5, Informative

Isn't this what Redhat's Bluecurve does?

No. Bluecurve is one widget style under QT and another under GTK, that have been designed to look the same as one another.

This system is quite different to that, it gets GTK to effectively draw widgets in the same style as the QT theme, regardless of which QT theme you're using.

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

Re:Unified OS already exists since Win 95 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 04:41 · Score: 1, Insightful

Win 9x/Me and Win NT/2000/XP aren't really that unified.

Re:Doh, Replace KDE with GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 04:43 · Score: 3, Funny

Replace KDE with GTK, sorry I have KDE on the brain :)

I agree, replace KDE with GTK ;)

Widget Mania by Speare · 2004-01-04 04:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is a good first step. But it's a tiny baby step.

When I can choose a widget theme once, using a central theme selector, such as GNOME's, and it shows up in all versions of Qt, GTK, Gtk2, Tk, Mozilla, and other applications, then I'll take notice.

The proliferation of toolkits does such a disservice to the desktop, even moreso than the proliferation of desktop environments. Why are there so many?

It seems like most OSS developers must go through the same milestones of skill development: a new C++ string class, a new IRC client, a new window manager, a new toolkit, and a new update package manager. Stop rewriting the wheel and improve what's out there in meaningful new ways.

--
[ .sig file not found ]

Re:Widget Mania by Trick · 2004-01-04 05:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments. Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who'd feel the same if GNOME were to disappear so that KDE could be the one true desktop environment.

If that means that some apps won't be completely integrated with my dekstop, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have the choices I have now than be forced to use a desktop environment I don't like.
Re:Widget Mania by Talez · 2004-01-04 05:01 · Score: 1

But... But...

Without rewriting the wheels we wouldn't have so many iTunes clones!
Re:Widget Mania by ihummel · 2004-01-04 05:15 · Score: 1

It seems like most OSS developers must go through the same milestones of skill development: a new C++ string class, a new IRC client, a new window manager, a new toolkit, and a new update package manager. Stop rewriting the wheel and improve what's out there in meaningful new ways.

Instead of writing their own version of programs already in existence, they should read the source of already existent OSS programs and mess around altering them. If they need to write a program that is redundant, then they should resist the temptation to put it on the web and promote it unless it is significantly better than what is already out their. You're right: the proliferation of redundant programs is harmful.
Re:Widget Mania by kfg · 2004-01-04 05:15 · Score: 1

Stop rewriting the wheel and improve what's out there in meaningful new ways.

But before you can do that you have to at least understand the wheel.

Of course that doesn't mean you have to release every bloody line of code you write.

KFG
Re:Widget Mania by Fidgety+Philip · 2004-01-04 05:20 · Score: 1

Not only that, but if you insist on unification, you destroy most of the features of Open Source / Free Software development that are meant to be its strengths.

If you want to have a single project and still allow developers to add the features that only a few people want, then all you will get is a host of patchsets instead of a host of projects.

Well, actually, what you will get is a lot of people who are dissatisfied.
Re:Widget Mania by CaptnMArk · 2004-01-04 05:49 · Score: 1

It probably means that many of those people consider bloat a big enough issue that they prefer to start from scratch. Or that GNOME is not good enough yet.

BTW: you forgot the editor :)
Re:Widget Mania by Sleepy · 2004-01-04 05:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

>Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments.

Except for a few "journalists" and controversial posters, I would bet that most people agree.

>Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved.

KDE will never be the dominant desktop. No offense to anyone pro-KDE. By the time this all works out, we'll have a KDE and GNOME that is so different from today's that we will not remember what the API wars were about.

Wrappers, unification API's, and freedesktop.org are bringing the two sides together where it makes sense. It makes sense in a LOT of places that aren't talking yet, but I say in time it will work out.

I'd LOVE to see KDE and GNOME use "common API's" for file dialogs. Why the hell NOT? An application should just say "file_dialog_common()" and then the user/desktop/distro settings determine WHO draws it. It doesn't matter. Desktop-specific features are EXTENSIONS. Granted, a lot of people thought GTK 2.2 and 2.4 file dialog was sub-optimal. Hopefully in the future with GTK 2.6, there will be some interest in at least standardizing the function calls, if not the actual code itself.

People won't shut up about which API "rules" until much of what the API's provide has been turned into a commodity, as in this example. The revolution will not be televised. ;-)
Re:Widget Mania by evilad · 2004-01-04 06:15 · Score: 1

> KDE will never be the dominant desktop.

Care to substantiate that is not _currently_ the dominant desktop?
Re:Widget Mania by Fnkmaster · 2004-01-04 06:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm glad we have choice of desktop environment too. I just feel, as do many others, that the choice of API should not lock you into one widget set with its own drawing mechanisms, theme engine, and so on such that it becomes aesthetically impossible to run apps written for one desktop environment and apps written for the other desktop environment at the same time, when certain apps really only have a top notch representative in one widget set or the other.

I think hacking the widget set to make it use the drawing routines of the other widget set as much as possible is probably the best solution anybody has come up with yet to make them fit together without having to go through some manual configuration nightmare and cherry pick themes with matching engines on both the Gtk and Qt side. So kudos to this fellow and may his work continue.
Re:Widget Mania by ElGuapoGolf · 2004-01-04 06:22 · Score: 1

Okay, I'll call you crazy cos you've totally missed the point of this.

It's not to "Unify" the desktops per se, it's to make GTK and QT apps look like each other. There's nothing wrong with having your widget, styles, and colors shared across apps, and it's even better if it happens transparently.
Re:Widget Mania by HiThere · 2004-01-04 06:55 · Score: 1

The only unification that I really want is unification of the copy/paste. That's really improved over the last couple of years, and perhaps I shouldn't be complaining about it, but I want MORE!

OTOH, I'm not really sure what SHOULD be done when one attempts to paste code into an application that doesn't know how to handle it. Clearly and xpm pasted into a text editor should be text, but what about into a word processor? It should probably be a picture...but sometimes I want it to be text. And how does one handle the copy/paste of sounds? I'ld *LIKE* to be able to paste a *.wav file into NoteEdit, though that's probably an absurd thing to hope for. Etc.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Widget Mania by ignipotentis · 2004-01-04 07:07 · Score: 1

You don't get it do you? This is the best way to go about this. You still have a choice. If you want to run gnome, go ahead. If you want to run kde, go ahead. This is a theme that allows all apps written in various tool kits to look the same.

This is a great concept. You don't have to use it. However, this will allow transistion from other better looking desktops to happen with ease. Every program needs to look the same for 99% of the computer using world.

--
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
Re:Widget Mania by (startx) · 2004-01-04 07:25 · Score: 1

That's the idea bethind my friend's masters research. He's designing/implimenting a common API where the program writer calls something like draw_widget_common() and his api translates it to whatever toolkit the end-user prefers, be it QT, GTK+, wxwindows, whatever. There's a lot more to it then that, but it sounded really interesting when he explained it to me a couple months ago. Hopefully he'll log into his /. account and reply to this post describing it better.
Re:Widget Mania by Sleepy · 2004-01-04 08:09 · Score: 1

> The only unification that I really want is unification of the copy/paste.

Do you even mix KDE and GNOME applications.

IF you do, then your statement can be read as you desire inconsistent look and feel.

Most users consider inconsistency to be a bug.

I hope we see eventual modularity for all code that overlaps:
KDE folks can run Evolution with a near-complete Qt look&feel and rendering

or

GNOME folks run KDE apps with near-complete integration. I install KDE apps, like k3b CD burning (killer app!) atop GNOME.

Bluecurve was only a start, but the success of it indicates many people DO care that different API bases work together transparent to the user.
Re:Widget Mania by Findus+Krispy · 2004-01-04 08:22 · Score: 1

KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software.

This is only true if you value your time at zero. Every company I have ever worked for has paid me to be there; I had assumed that was normally the case. Gtk does have real value for small ISVs, but is a not a win for the majority of comapnies. Here's why:

1. Qt can be had under a proprietary license which many companies feel safer with.
2. Qt is far more productive to develop with, and pays for itself in short order.
3. Qt is a strong multi-platform toolkit, and many large companies will want to transition to Linux slowly, not all in one go.
4. Qt comes with quality, professional support from the company that builds it.
5. Qt has already been used by a huge number of large, well known companies, and businesses tend to have a herd mentality.

There are shards of truth to a lot you say, but in totality it just shows that you are another person engaged in a war to kill KDE, armed to the teeth with FUD, and bad intention.

Niether toolkit/desktop needs to die, or be exterminated. But, better integration must occur for users, and for businesses who will require that there products work regardless of were they may be deployed.

Peace.
Re:Widget Mania by CAIMLAS · 2004-01-04 09:01 · Score: 1

You took what he was saying, and ran 180 degrees in the other direction right into a wall.

He wasn't saying that KDE should replace GNOME, or vice versa. He was simply saying that it should be possible to have a unified look and feel.

Personally, I think that having a 'pluggable' toolkit design with universal hooks would be nice. A wrapper of sorts that stands between the guts of the TK and interacts with userland applications. That way, it'd be relatively simple to switch an entire desktop from one toolkit to another with the changing of a config file.

--
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Re:Widget Mania by be-fan · 2004-01-04 09:05 · Score: 1

Qt, GTK, Gtk2, Tk, Mozilla, and other applications, then I'll take notice.

Going forward, GTK and Qt are the only widget sets that matter. Who uses Tk apps on the desktop? And why use Mozilla when there is Galeon or Epiphany? OpenOffice is moving to a toolkit-independent framework, so it too will be able to use GTK or Qt in the future. As long as there is integration with those two, you've got your 90% "good-enough" solution.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Widget Mania by unoengborg · 2004-01-04 09:45 · Score: 1

You are missing the point.If we can get Gnome stuff look like native KDE stuff in KDE, and KDE stuff look like real Gnome stuff in Gnome. Then we get more choises, not less. The trick is to get this dualism work for both for developers and for users. This is what all this is all about.

If we can't unite on some low level, e.g. how theming, drag & drop, naming of icons representing similar things, we get lock in effects that just as bad as the barrier between windows and open source systems.

--
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Re:Widget Mania by hey · 2004-01-04 09:59 · Score: 1

The file_dialog_common() is composed to a bunch of widgets. It actually does quite a bit.
(eg thumbnail view)
Its really like a mini-applet.
Re:Widget Mania by Grizzlysmit · 2004-01-04 12:09 · Score: 1

Call me crazy, but I'm glad we've got a choice of desktop environments. Not to knock the KDE folks, but I happen to prefer GNOME. If desktops were to somehow "unify," and that meant all we had left was KDE, I'd be more than a bit peeved. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who'd feel the same if GNOME were to disappear so that KDE could be the one true desktop environment.

If that means that some apps won't be completely integrated with my dekstop, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have the choices I have now than be forced to use a desktop environment I don't like.

Hmmmmm hang on if I call you crazy, then I have to call myself Crazy, Ok in that case you're Crazy, Like Man you're completely NUTS. Ah that feels better, I'd hate to think too many people thought I was sane :-D.

Seriously but, I totally agree with you, I've always found these sort of stories weird, I don't want only one desktop environment, mostly I prefer Gnome, but sometime for a change I'll use KDE for a bit, I also like having all them others, basically we need competition, and I believe that in the long run only other FOSS desktops will provide this, to my mind Widows no longer provides any real competition or Idea's, as for Mac OS X, (I know this is blasphemy :-D) but well it really provides little that I would care to call completion, and soon the FOSS offerings will be so far ahead of them, that they will never have a hope of catching us.

If we want to keep the standard moving we will need to compete amongst ourselves, also I just like changing now and again, and choice is good.

--
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that :-D
Francis Smit
Re:Widget Mania by spitzak · 2004-01-04 14:29 · Score: 1

That's what wxWindows does.
Re:Widget Mania by bssea · 2004-01-04 16:29 · Score: 1

I am the person your parent is talking about, so I guess I'll address you too.

wxWindows does indeed supply a common API to draw widgets, but the toolkit itself is extremely too static. In order to get an application capable of supporting QT *and* GTK+ (of which wxWindows doesn't even support QT), one would be required to compile the program not once, but twice - even if the target machine is the same. I have delved into the code of wxWindows to fix this issue, and it is quite an undertaking. So much so, that it is actually easier to rewrite a toolkit from scratch.

However, don't be misled by your parent and believe that the project is just a unifying API - that would not be worth a Master's thesis at all. The project is meant to incorporate dynamic and adaptive interfaces, as well as the ability to work with bonobo and kpart parts (meaning that a kpart could be embeded in a bonobo part if really want to, for some reason). These interfaces exist on *both* the developer and user side. You would have to see the entire project to note the complexity of it.

On a side note: For those who believe a Unifying API is a "bad solution", you are correct IF AND ONLY IF the developers approach it as a least common denominator. However, as wxWindows shows you can unify most APIs *without* going to the least common denominator. However, wxWindows does not go far enough - it is too static and it does not abstract to enough areas.

If you have questions or just want to bash me, then you can e-mail me at:
sea at umr dot edu

--sea
Re:Widget Mania by Erik+Hollensbe · 2004-01-04 19:27 · Score: 1

Doing the job yourself is a lot more work than having middleware that does it for you. End of story. These people should be putting the effort towards (hey freedesktop.org, listening?) a unified theme interface.

Personally, just a common default theme amongst the two would be a nice thing. I could care less about the shiny widgets. SuSE does a pretty nice job of that.

GTK and GTK2 can already share themes, IIRC. Mozilla, who cares? It's just an app (one that a lot of us don't use because it's too frigging slow :).

Besides, as many people have pointed out, there are apps with skins and there will be more to come - both on windows and the various unix desktops.
Re:Widget Mania by d_i_r_t_y · 2004-01-05 00:29 · Score: 1

Some coward wrote:

The fact that it focuses on working instead of fake transparent menus?

bollocks... gnome has always been the desktop with the scalable pixmaps and the original emphasis on themeability at the expense of functionality. this wasn't added to kde until kde2, when all of the core functionality had been bedded down. kde was, and still is the more functional desktop, in terms of what can be done, so your point is moot.
Re:Widget Mania by HiThere · 2004-01-05 05:23 · Score: 1

The differences in the way they look don't bother me. I'm not sure I really desire it, but I certainly don't care. I'm in KDE right now, using Mozilla right now, and I had to think a bit to realize that IT was a good example of a Gnome application. (I also use the Gnome print manager and gvim, and a few others that I can definitely place as Gnome.)

OTOH, when I'm in Gnome my access to KDE applications is much more restricted. Presumably the menu editor will eventually be fixed, but for now Gnome isn't a viable choice. (Unless they've fixed it, and I just didn't notice because I've stopped looking.)

Up until the Gnome menu editor stopped working, it was my habit to alternate between the two (Gnome and KDE) trying to decide which I preferred. Sometimes it was one, and sometimes the other (though KDE had the edge, because it was easier to unpack files). With the death of the menu editor, however, Gnome became an unviable choice. So I may not be a good example of the person you want to think about. But I really don't care about what differences there may be. And I intentionally switched away from BlueCurve and back to the default themes. (Some parts of KDE didn't appear to work properly under BlueCurve, besides, when I'm using Debian BlueCurve isn't available...or wasn't.) FWIW, I didn't see any advantages to Bluecurve. At all. The confusing of the desktops I saw as a disadvantage, as I like to be able to easily tell what environment I'm working in.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re:Widget Mania by HiThere · 2004-01-05 05:34 · Score: 1

P.S.: I find the current habit of just saying, e.g., "Word Processor" in the menu both disgusting and apalling. WHICH word processor? It *DOES* make a difference. WHICH text editor? (Depending on what I'm doing I usually prefer either nedit or kate, but sometimes gvim is the appropriate choice.)

Having a word processor category is probably a good idea (or an Office category, really). And it's a good idea that members of a suite of applications be grouped together...they really seem to be just alternate entry points into the same application. But OpenOffice.org isn't KOffice isn't (AbiWord + Gnumeric + ??). (Well, that last isn't really a suite. It doesn't work together nicely enough. And I'm not sure about KOffice, for all that they are MORE integrated. But OpenOffice.org definitely is a suite.)

And this brings me back to the point of having a decent menu editor... I don't mind a system wide choice, but I do want to have MY choice of menus. Particularly because it seems to me that those making distribution level choices do such a poor job. This may be inevitable, given the wide distribution of skill levels among their customers, but it's a fact.

--

I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by zarr · 2004-01-04 04:45 · Score: 2, Funny

Why do we need two widgets?

Because if you only had one widget, all GUI programs would be a pain to use.

Re:Unified OS already exists since Win 95 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 04:47 · Score: 1, Insightful

Good for you, in the *nix world there is more than one player on the field. You probably think that sucks. Well, then you should stick to windows.

Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by TrekCycling · 2004-01-04 04:48 · Score: 1

Like I said, I use Gnome, in part because I like the way it looks as opposed to QT. QT is hard on the eyes. I'd prefer to see something that made QT Apps look like GTK.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 04:50 · Score: 2, Informative

This is simply not true. QObject, the base of all QT Classes has been providing tr(const char*) and tr(const char*, const char*) for internationalization for years, localization is supported (see http://doc.trolltech.com/3.1/i18n.html) and both QT and KDE provide great anti-aliases fonts.

Don't know what you mean with the application framework, but if you look at QT/KDE as a competitor to GTK/Gnome, the KDE framework provides everything from common dialogs, clipboard handling, a component model (KParts) and vfs (kio-slaves) to IPC (DCOP), XML UI definitions, plug-in support and common components like a HTML rendering engine, a JS interpreter or a spell checker, that applications can use.

Also applications can expose interfaces for use with scripting languages and tons of other features.

Check http://developer.kde.org/ if you want to learn more. (Though I guess you already know these things and still like to troll.)

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by dna42 · 2004-01-04 04:52 · Score: 1

wow, this is the worst gnome troll, i've ever seen...
to be precise, QT had antialiasing and good localisation a long time before gtk (back when gtk2 didn't exist and QT was at 2.x)

Unified eyecandy != unified environments... by Rahga · 2004-01-04 04:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

If you make a unified trailer hitch that will hook any load to any automobile, then you'll be sure to find someone trying to pull a truckload of anvils with a VW Rabbit.

This is a minor bit of neat hackery, nothing earth-shaking though, and nowhere near a step to unified environments.... If you want to create that illusion, surely it would be better to make something that creates two sets of themes (gtk and qt... or even more toolkits) from one single source, think DocBook. Fortunately, I don't think the author of this software claimed that he was trying to unify anyway.

Re:Unified eyecandy != unified environments... by tylernt · 2004-01-04 06:03 · Score: 1

Hey, I had a VW Rabbit with a trailer hitch, and it could pull trailers just fine, thank you very much!

Or was is the trailer that was pulling the Rabbit backwards... I forget.

--
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'

Re:ummmmm... by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 04:53 · Score: 2, Informative

It doesn't replace GTK widgets with QT widgets, it just changes the drawing style so they look consistent.

This may not be useful to you but if you think that someday you might like an engine that lets QT programs fit in better with your GTK desktop then you can see that this is good for people who are in the opposite position.

It may not help everyone, but it helps some of them. That's still good, right?

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

Unifying to look like what? by Gilesx · 2004-01-04 04:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

The only true way to unify the two DEs is to get both camps to agree on a common widget set.

I, like many other Gnome users, chose the Gnome DE because of it's professional appearance - something which I feel KDE doesn't even come close to. There is no way I'd want to replace my Gnome widgets with KDE widgets, and I'd bet the farm that KDE people would feel the same way about the reverse.

There are many half hearted, rush desktop unification jobs at the moment. Unfortunately the only way that we're ever going to see true unification is if everyone agrees to work on it simultaneously at a deeper level than just aesthetics.

How can you unify two groups of people that aren't even on the same page?

--
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.

Re:Unifying to look like what? by DrXym · 2004-01-04 06:17 · Score: 1

You're not replacing widgets, just the engine which renders their appearance. Even if GTK were using the default QT theme it would still contain the same 'feel' as GTK even if it looked different.

A unified theme engine is a good thing. The hardest thing is abstracting out the differences in how both GTK and QT go about rendering their buttons. Perhaps it would be as well to produce some abstract widget-neutral interfaces for this kind of thing.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by JDWTopGuy · 2004-01-04 04:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't know whether you're trolling or not, but IIRC, GTK is C based, while QT is C++.

Now, I'm sure that you can write your program in either C or C++ and still use either toolkit, but I would imagine C programmers prefer a C-based toolkit, and C++ programmers prefer a C++ toolkit.

--
Ron Paul 2012

Licensing? by IamTheRealMike · 2004-01-04 04:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is interesting for sure, but what are the licensing implications of this? Can anybody tell me?

GTK is LGPLd. That means it can be used by proprietary software (and in fact, sometimes is). If I use this theme engine does that mean I can no longer run proprietary software that uses GTK because I'd be linking it with GPLd code?

Perhaps the same concept should be applied but in reverse - a Qt theme engine to use GTK. There seems to be more experience going this way too, for instance XUL is already GTK themable and it works nicely.

Re:Licensing? by Ianoo · 2004-01-04 05:12 · Score: 3, Interesting

No I don't think this works at all. In the absence of repugnant EULA agreements from certain companies like Microsoft I can modify and combine software however I want on my own machine to suit my own needs. The GPL doesn't say you must make the source code available if you modify, it says you must make the source code available if you distribute. I can (and do) modify GPL and LGPL software to suit my needs on my own machine without any intention of ever redistributing these modifications, mostly because they're silly and complete messes (for example I've hacked various bits of GNOME's panel system to suit my own needs, such as removing the "Actions" menu from the Foobar).

Hence if I take commercial GTK applications and GPL'd GTK applications and commercial QT applications and GPL'd QT applications and install them on my own machine, I can install whatever the heck I like to change and/or modify their behaviours at runtime. This themeing engine doesn't have licensing issues at all.
Re:Licensing? by IamTheRealMike · 2004-01-04 05:30 · Score: 1

Installing stuff together isn't the same as linking them together. Of course GTK can be used at the same time as proprietary and free software, the question is can you link them together using plugins in this way. At least from discussions I've seen in GStreamer the answer appears to be "no".
Re:Licensing? by Otter · 2004-01-04 06:32 · Score: 1

The issue is this: can you make a proprietary application that links to LGPL GTK widget drawing code that links GPL Qt themeing code? (At least that's how I understand this works -- given the comments at kde-look, I'm not planning on installing this thing for another couple of releases.)
The answer: you'll find people who'll say yes and people who'll say no. For all the pronouncements on this subject, I don't know of any meaningful legal ruling that actually settles the issues of linking and plugins.

--
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 04:57 · Score: 1

I'd prefer to see something that made QT Apps look like GTK.

That's right. We've got a big group of people who use GTK and also the occasional QT program and another big group of people who use QT and also the occasional GTK program. And a bunch of other groups too.

So ideally it would be nice to have a system that let QT apps fit in GTK apps, as you say you'd like, and a system that lets GTK apps fit in with QT apps which is what was announced here. Well this means that we're part way there. Doesn't resolve every issue, but it's progress.

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

Okay, now... by Janek+Kozicki · 2004-01-04 04:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

I want Mozilla and OpenOffice to use a widget set of my choice (no matter which one I choose - qt, gtk, gtk2 ....)

btw, it reminds me of wxWindows - a set of tools that allow you to compile your programs under different OSes using native widget sets of your choice. All widget sets are supported, but the widget set is chosen during compile time.

--
# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #

Re:Okay, now... by twener · 2004-01-04 05:16 · Score: 3, Informative

Seems like you will be able to choose for the next major OpenOffice version whether you want a Gtk2 or a Qt/KDE version. And guess which will have the higher integration into its desktop. :-)
Re:Okay, now... by TwinkieStix · 2004-01-04 06:43 · Score: 1

Perhaps the solution is a meta-toolkit. That is, a toolkit that does nothing other than, at compile time, bind the program to a particular toolkit, I guess, similar to wxwindows. If everybody used this toolkit to write their applications, then the applications could be compiled for QT, GTK, Windows, OSX etc. The problem is that this is the easy part. What about bonobo and placement of the buttons (Does OK go left or right of cancel). The common message boxes could handle that for us, but what about custom windows?
Re:Okay, now... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 07:26 · Score: 1, Informative

No, if you follow the roadmap for OO v2, you will see that the OpenOffice team are working on closer integration with GNOME/GTK. On the KDE side, one guy (a KDE fan) has put up the page you linked to and done some press releases... that's all... NOTHING ELSE. KDE/Qt integration and widgets for OpenOffice are vapourware.
Re:Okay, now... by TheLittleJetson · 2004-01-04 08:47 · Score: 1

>> I want Mozilla and OpenOffice to use a widget set of my choice (no matter which one I choose - qt, gtk, gtk2 ....)

Mozilla can be compiled to use either gtk or qt as it's base -- but it puts its own skin on top. I think it has been this way for some time...
Re:Okay, now... by RedWizzard · 2004-01-04 10:14 · Score: 1

A meta-toolkit is a bad solution - it will result in a lowest common denominator approach where you can only use the functionality common to all the target toolkits. Java's AWT is a classic example of a meta-toolkit.
Re:Okay, now... by TwinkieStix · 2004-01-04 10:33 · Score: 1

What I am trying to say is that these applications that can be "themed" could support a special theme that allows them to handle this meta-toolkit. Maybe it should be called a meta theme-kit. Why not a theme that can, itself, be themed. We could have a gnome theme called metatheme, and a kde theme called metatheme, and then using a special theme control panel change all QT and GTK applications in one shot. That's not to far from what's already been done. Actually, it seems like the next logical step.
Re:Okay, now... by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:58 · Score: 1

one guy (a KDE fan) has put up the page you linked to

Well by a strange coincidence it seems to be on the openoffice.org domain. Lucky fan.

--
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Re:Okay, now... by Erik+Hollensbe · 2004-01-04 19:31 · Score: 1

Arg.....

This is the most disgusting thread I have ever read.

Do you realize what kind of programmer effort this requires? Do you realize what a total waste of time this is? The sad thing is, that people are doing it! It's pathetic.

If OSS has done one thing wrong, it's teaching people to expect more than talent can produce. We're wasting our time integrating apps between two different desktops when we should be working harder to integrate the two desktops themselves.

Thank Goodness by ParadoxDruid · 2004-01-04 04:58 · Score: 1, Interesting

I've tried using both Gnome and KDE, and I feel like Gnome isn't as advanced as KDE, despite what some of the other people on Slashdot may feel.

For one thing, I can change the individual colors of my widgets in my theme on the fly in KDE, something that a friend of mine who has used Gnome for over 4 years says is still not possible- the theme specifices one color set.

For another- most users never change some defaults, and the default Gnome icons are UGLY. Dark and uninspired.

Something to let me use excellent programs written for GTK, but with a more QT feel is nice. I'll have to check it out.

I already use ThinGeramik, a GTK style that looks to QT ThinKeramik for it's colors and such (also on kde-look.org).

--
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.

Re:Thank Goodness by Roberto · 2004-01-04 05:29 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, lets say you like brushed metal or whatever,but you also like the auvergine color.

Right now, IIRC, the color is part of the theme in gnome, and you need to find an "auvergine-brushed-metal" somewhere.

On KDE, the widget look and the color are separate, and can be configured at will.
Re:Thank Goodness by IamTheRealMike · 2004-01-04 06:01 · Score: 2, Interesting

That feature has been discussed a few times by the Gnome team I think, but the general consensus is that nobody cares enough to actually implement it. You can change the colours in GTK, but there is no UI for it because the theme picking stuff is already complex enough without loads of stuff for "color themes" as well.
Personally I don't find it to be an issue, but whatever floats your boat....
Re:Thank Goodness by damiam · 2004-01-04 06:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

For another- most users never change some defaults, and the default Gnome icons are UGLY. Dark and uninspired.
<rant> Funny, I'd say the reverse. GNOME icons are colorful, tasteful, and usable. KDE's default icons are so gaudy, garish, and poorly thought out (IMHO) that it's much harder to easily identify them.
Look at the average panel, for example (see this picture). Konsole has a monitor with a seashell - clever, but useless and confusing when you're looking for a terminal emulator. The control center has this weird gear thingy with an indistinct background - are those supposed to be micro-sized widgets? "Home" looks like a doghouse. Konqueror has this sort of half-spiky circle that's supposed to look like a globe, but doesn't. The hard disc icon on the desktop has worms growing out of it. And I have no clue what that smiley thing is supposed to be - it says nothing about it app it represents.
None of those icons makes it easy to find the program at a glance. When you think "control center", do you look for a purple-green-blue gear? Does "web browser" conjure up images of a spiky sphere? What I like about GNOME's icons is that a) they're not all blue, so you can tell them apart, and b) they seem much more intuitive, because they actually bear some resemblance to the thing they represent. </rant>

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Thank Goodness by Roberto · 2004-01-04 06:07 · Score: 1

Uh... its really a very simple UI. Check it out.

Besides, it is not really related to theme picking at all. Both things are orthogonal.
Re:Thank Goodness by WWWWolf · 2004-01-04 06:10 · Score: 2, Informative

Uh, unless you use pixmaps to texture things, you can override the theme engine's default colors in GTK+. At least that was how it was in GTK+ 1.x, probably so also in 2.x as well...

I used to use a slate blue NeXT theme, until I acknowledged that Gray is the Only True NeXT color =)
Re:Thank Goodness by Roberto · 2004-01-04 06:22 · Score: 1

Weird, this other gnome user just posted that there are no plans to add a UI to do it because noone cares.

Now I am confused.

Or you went and modified the themes resource files by hand?
Re:Thank Goodness by WWWWolf · 2004-01-04 06:33 · Score: 1

Or you went and modified the themes resource files by hand?

Yup, just edit ~/.gtkrc (or file included from it) by hand...
Re:Thank Goodness by lostchicken · 2004-01-04 10:02 · Score: 1

I've got this strange dragon thing for my web browser. And my mathematics program has a leaf? My IM app is, a bookmark? Some sort of award?

Honestly, all icons are just things to click on. You learn what they are. They're just things you recognise. That's it.

--
-twb
Re:Thank Goodness by damiam · 2004-01-04 11:27 · Score: 1

Yeah, but it's easier if the icons are distinctive (so you can identify what you want at a glance) and intuitive (so that they're easy to memorize). My point was that, IMHO, GNOME's icons beat KDE's in those regards.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:Thank Goodness by brunes69 · 2004-01-05 00:41 · Score: 1

None of those icons makes it easy to find the program at a glance. When you think "control center", do you look for a purple-green-blue gear? Does "web browser" conjure up images of a spiky sphere? What I like about GNOME's icons is that a) they're not all blue, so you can tell them apart, and b) they seem much more intuitive, because they actually bear some resemblance to the thing they represent.
If you knew about UI design and human psycology and spatial recognition, you'd know that the time to aquie an object is not so much a function of it's familiarity but it's uniqueness.
The initial impression of the icons is irrelevant. People will very quickly figure out what they are via the KMenu's descriptions (like Web Browser for Konqueror) and the icon tooltips. What's more important is that icons are distinctive and stand apart from one another, so that your brain can properly correlate things like "blue gear == settings". KDE does this much better than GNOME IMO.. all GNOME's icons look very dark and cartoonish, the smaller versions of them do not stand out at all well against the default greyish GNOME environment. If the text labels are turned off it's evern worse. KDE's are bright and vivid and easy to distinguish, against all but the brightest of backgrounds (and who sets their toolbar backgrounds to white?).
Re:Thank Goodness by damiam · 2004-01-05 03:27 · Score: 1

all GNOME's icons look very dark and cartoonish ... KDE's are bright and vivid and easy to distinguish
This is subjective, but I disagree. GNOME's icon's aren't dark, although they are somewhat cartoonish (not that that's a bad thing). They're all colorful, and quite easy to distinguish (for me). KDE's icons are all the same bright blue. Even if they don't hurt your eyes (as they do mine), I don't see how you can claim that it's easier to distinguish a bunch of similarly-colored icons than a bunch of unique icons.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by twener · 2004-01-04 04:59 · Score: 1

You don't understand the difference between a style engine and a default style.

Re:Accountability Problems by platypus · 2004-01-04 05:00 · Score: 2, Informative

"While KDE isn't technically closed, it seems to me that they still hold themselves more financially accountable to the closed software model of doing business. Unlike Gnome, this diverts some of their talent, focus, and resources into gaining revenue from controlling people's copying behavior rather than thru more efficient services and support, or business models more accountable to the free (as in freedom) software paradigm."

WTF are you talking about? KDE is free. Maybe you should specifically state what leads you to say something like the above.

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by Joe+Tie. · 2004-01-04 05:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

QT is hard on the eyes.

No, QT is hard on your eyes. As shocking as it might be, different people have different artistic tastes. Personally I've never seen a GTK theme I didn't think was painful to look at, excluding those based on QT themes, but I'd never say they're hard on the eyes - just because it's obvious many people do like them. Having an opinion on matter which by its very nature is nonobjective does not make it fact.

--
Everything will be taken away from you.

Re:Accountability Problems by twener · 2004-01-04 05:01 · Score: 1

> While KDE isn't technically closed, it seems to me that they still hold themselves more financially accountable to the closed software model of doing business.

Any examples to help me understand what you mean please?

Re:ummmmm... by plj · 2004-01-04 05:02 · Score: 4, Interesting

"making GTK2 apps use QT" != "Unifying"
"making GTK2 apps use QT" == "How to migrate off GTK2

Don't be ridiculous. There are many applications that are built completely around GTK(2). I, for one, usually prefer KDE over Gnome, but I've always found it much harder to live completely without GTK apps that completely without QT apps.

Both are great toolkits with their own pros and cons - just use the right one for the right job.

Personally, though, the feature I'd most like to see in GTK would be the chance to move the menubars of all apps to the top of the screen like on Mac OS, just as I can do with QT apps.

--
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by twener · 2004-01-04 05:11 · Score: 1

> the GNOME framework on the other hand, is the perfect manifestation of good, clean

Good and clean as in "three different HTML rendering engines" starting with GNOME 2.6?

> Not to mention that GNOME is GNU and therefore free, which QT is a propertiary licence.

Since when is the GPL propretiary?

Also worth checking out... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 05:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

Is SodiPodi, the famous vector image editor. It is a GTK program that uses the KDE file and print dialogs.

Re:Accountability Problems by argoff · 2004-01-04 05:18 · Score: 1

WTF are you talking about? KDE is free. Maybe you should specifically state what leads you to say something like the above.

Well maybe I missed somthing, but last time I checked, it's free only if you use it in free software. For other software, they are just like any other commecrial software company.

Re:ummmmm... by Lispy · 2004-01-04 05:23 · Score: 1

QT is for QTers, so? ;-)

Re:Accountability Problems by 49152 · 2004-01-04 05:25 · Score: 1

I think you are a bit confused with the difference between QT/Trolltech and KDE

Re:Accountability Problems by platypus · 2004-01-04 05:25 · Score: 2, Informative

Well maybe I missed somthing, but last time I checked, it's free only if you use it in free software.

Yeah, just like the linux kernel ...

For other software, they are just like any other commecrial software company.

... which doesn't even have this option.

Btw. it seems you are talking about QT, not KDE. I sense you should inform yourself about KDE and what some people (rightly or wrongly) suppose to be its problems. Funnily, the FSF should be more satisfied with QT's licensing than with GTK's, but what do I know.

Re:Accountability Problems by jregel · 2004-01-04 05:25 · Score: 1

KDE is free software. The parent is talking rubbish and should not be modded insightful!

Re:Accountability Problems by Kesha · 2004-01-04 05:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

Argoff, would you care to elaborate on your earlier statements?

I can't claim to know anything about GNOME development, but what do you know about KDE development that makes you think that they are "financially accountable to the closed software model of doing business"? They are not the ones being sponsored by SUN, GNOME is. Their annual budget for the year 2002 was a little over $1800, and for 2003 a little over $7600 - http://dot.kde.org/1072276327/

This does not look like "financial accountability to the closed model of doing business" to me. They have competent developers and newbees, both of which work on the code that they are capable of working on. Most newbees start out working on a small application, because nobody in their right mind would trust a newcomer unfamiliar with the KDE architecture to make changes to its core (does not apply to trivial bug fixes).

And what exactly do you mean by "can't keep their focus like gnome"? Where is that focus now - remove advanced desktop features so that the "simple" users can use it? KDE will find a way to meet the needs of simple users without sacrificing the usability to which advanced users became accustomed, that has been their focus since KDE 3.0, and they are following though with it.

Paul.

Re:Accountability Problems by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 05:28 · Score: 1, Informative

Quoth the article:

Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Library GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Library GPL for that library.

Yeah, still debatable. Not that it particularly matters.

NO. by DAldredge · 2004-01-04 05:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

I can call the Linux API from closed source apps with no license fee.

I can not do the same thing with QT, it costs 1,200+ /dev for that right.

Re:NO. by platypus · 2004-01-04 05:46 · Score: 1

You are wrong. QT is under the GPL. The GPL doesn't place restrictions on calling the API, it restricts derived works. Linking is derived work, calling the API is not.

Though, since QT is only a library, I don't see where one could just interfere with some part of QT by just "calling" the API.
Re:NO. by Carewolf · 2004-01-04 06:44 · Score: 1

I can call the Linux API from closed source apps with no license fee

Nope sorry. You'll have to use system-call interfaces unless you are GPL. Fortunatly it is mostly drivers would ever need more than just system-calls.
Re:NO. by Brandybuck · 2004-01-04 11:05 · Score: 1

I can call the Linux API from closed source apps with no license fee.

Only because Linus Torvalds placed an exception to the GPL in the license. Go read it.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:NO. by DAldredge · 2004-01-04 11:20 · Score: 1

I am aware of this. It doesn't change my point. The GTK license (LGPL) allos such linking.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 05:30 · Score: 1, Funny

C programmers prefer a toolkit containing plenty of whips and thumbscrews. They must be masochists, it's the only explanation for their use of a glorified assembler.

Re:Bluecurve by twener · 2004-01-04 05:31 · Score: 1

It has to do with Qt3 introducing a new style system (which allows Qt application like Opera to use "KDE styles"). KDE2's "legacy style" was simply never ported.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by twener · 2004-01-04 05:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

And Apple is a Microsoft company. Learn something about research, share amounts and who controls a company.

Re:Accountability Problems by twener · 2004-01-04 05:39 · Score: 1

> They are not the ones being sponsored by SUN, GNOME is. Their annual budget for the year 2002 was a little over $1800, and for 2003 a little over $7600

December brought a little more for this year, but from the signature of a known KDE developer: "We're not a company, we just produce better code at less costs."

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 05:39 · Score: 1

Learn something about research, share amounts and who controls a company.

Agreed. Company law is quite definite on this point, the company is controlled by its Board of Directors. How anyone could think that Canopy has any influence over Trolltech is beyond me.

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by platypus · 2004-01-04 05:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Dopn't forget trolltech is a canopy company. Yarro sits on trolltech's BOD. Canopy and canopy companies have already sued msft, and ca. Scox, another canopy company is now suing IBM. All over IP violations. This is Canopy's real business.

Once you start mixing code, you open yourself up to lawsuits. Especially if you are mixing code with the lawuit-happy canopy. Canopy's entire existance is based on these kinds of lawsuits.

Arrgh, why does this awful legend still exist? Canopy owns a very, very small stake in Trolltech, while the employees hold more than 2/3 (IIRC) of the stock.
OTOH, Sun, a major sponsor of Gnome development, has seemingly filled SCO's war chest with a good amount of money (if what is said on groklaw is true), but nobody whines about that.
And, there's still this if Trolltech might be bought out.

Now, here's a question. Let's say Microsoft is doomed, and Sun, by having enourmous success with some Gnome based desktop offering, replaces them in market dominance. The dangers of this scenario combined with the fact the Gnome is LGPL'd are left as an excercise to the reader.

See, both scenarious are very unlikely, but I see no reason why I should trust Sun more than Trolltech.

KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 05:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Many times when there is a debate about Gnome vs KDE , the argument of the API popup often like comments like this one:

>"A GNOME spreadsheet you want Miguel? Don't worry. The way things are
>looking, I can hack one out in a few days. We will borrow from X, Y, and Z
>projects since they have most of the functionality we need. It will be a
>matter of fitting them all together."

I find it always funny that KDE supporters always list re-use of existing libraries as a big minus point of Gnome, as if it is a bad thing to re-use and adopt none-Gnome supporting libraries,

It is my vision that this is one of the great strengths of Gnome. In Gnome the supporting libraries are almost never Gnome dependent they often use already existing libraries or help to modify them too their needs, without Gnome-ifying them. When they create a new one for use in Gnome they tend too make it as generic as possible, With this sort of philosophy you create functionality that is easily adopted by other projects or was already in use or planned to get used. Things like Cairo (X-server), Fontconfig, ATK, etc. This is exactly why this functionality is popping up everywhere in open-source land. Which makes the KDE supporters scream that Gnome is taking everything over. This isn't true, but Gnome by using the above philosophy, doesn't alienate itself from other Linux/*nix projects in stark contrast too KDE. Gnome is not only about building a great desktop, it is about building modular desktop technology that can be used and reused by more projects then Gnome only, which make Gnome more cooperative too other projects then KDE. Look at the way KDE looked at Open-Office, They trashed everything about it and Koffice (or anything which was KDE-ified was much better), only now, after Gnome (Ximian) has showed the way by starting to make Open-Office better merge able into other widget sets they realize what opportunities Open-Office has too offer, but don't expect any thank you for the groundwork Ximian has done, making the integration as generic as possible so that a qt variant is also possible. No they will scream and whine till the end that Gnome is about adopting and Gnome-ifying, while little somebody else can use is coming from the KDE community (it is all of the KDE or die, look at Red-hat and userLinux how KDE treads other visions).

The question is: Do you want a *nux/Linux community desktop which takes from (Fontconfig, Cairo, librsvg, etc) and gives too (GTK+, Freedesktop.org, Gstreamer, ATK, Pango, etc) other projects (Xfree86, XFCE4, etc) without making everything it touches Gnome or do we want the none-*nix/Linux philosophy of one big API in the form of a win32 clone which alienates everything none C++/QT/KDE bolted on *nux/Linux (KDE). Which is more *nix/Linux one great API for everything or take the tools and merge it too what you need?

I find the KDE community extremely vicious against everything not KDE, The Borg like mentality of adapting everything into the KDE frame-work without keeping it generic alienates it from everything none C++/QT/KDE, but especially the whining they do that libraries that Gnome uses are also used in other important projects is something that keeps amazing me. It is the KDE community that uses embrace and KDE-ify it as there mantra! They turning the reality upside down.

Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by nehril · 2004-01-04 06:51 · Score: 1

In Gnome the supporting libraries are almost never Gnome dependent ...

this is indeed a great theory. in real world practice, however, we see that installing one app has 12,000 dependent libraries, and now you have to track them all down *in the right order* to proceed (yeah, I almost gave up trying to compile evolution from source). Got gnome-supercool-addressbook-lib 2.1? well, this app needs 2.0 and wont compile with what you got. or worse, it needs 2.2b1r5 off the developer's laptop and you can't find it anywhere. And then you find that 2.2b1r5 itself needs quarko-coldfusion-libxml 0.34r12 to compile.

I certainly agree with the spirit of modular-is-better, but the gnome folks need to either show some more organization or trust in the "package managed distro fairy."
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by forlornhope · 2004-01-04 07:01 · Score: 1

That is why most people use a distribution that has already done this dependancy hunting for you. All I do on my debian machine is apt-get install evoluion or if I want the build dependancies all I do is apt-get build-dep evolution. Also you have garnome for those who wish the cutting edge, and if you want more cutting edge than that, your probably a developer and know where to get all the dependancies and compile them all. So your rant about the lack massive number of dependancies is really just a straw man.

--
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by Findus+Krispy · 2004-01-04 07:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

I find it always funny that KDE supporters list re-use of existing libraries as a big minus point in Gnome, as if it is a bad point to re-use and adopt none-Gnoome supporting libraries,

Actually both communities are correct in their approach -- both are refreshingly pragmatic.

If you have a toolkit available to you as good as Qt, which makes re-use *very* simple, then you may very well realise that it would be easier to re-write existing functionality for that framework, rather than having to create a new framework yourself.

On the other hand, if you had no such library in the first place, you would see that it would be easier to re-use the myriad of existing software, and develop/grow a library that explicitly enables that.

Both approaches are equally valid given the differing starting positions of their projects.

I find the KDE community extremely vicious against everything not KDE, ...

No, niether the KDE or Gnome communities are vicious, it's just the fringe lunatics that pretend to represent these communities that talks all this crap. And they mostly do it here on Slashdot.

If you do some development, or just subscribe to the lists, you'll see exactly what I mean. Lot's of nice people just having fun developing quality code. Hurrah for Gnome and KDE!
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by Brandybuck · 2004-01-04 10:49 · Score: 1

I find it always funny that KDE supporters always list re-use of existing libraries as a big minus point of Gnome, as if it is a bad thing to re-use and adopt none-Gnome supporting libraries

Anything taken to an extreme becomes absurd. Back when GNOME followed the "don't ever write a new piece of code" philosophy, it sucked. Thank goodness they've started getting over that.

But it's still a pain. Try building a GNOME desktop by hand. No apt-get, no ports, no emerge. It's up to you to find all the requisite libraries in exactly the right versions so they'll fit together. It's maddening.

Code reuse is good. But it's not a religion. What started happening to GNOME, before they stopped it, was that there were dozens of libraries that did 90% of what they wanted, with dozens more to do the various remaining ten percents, with quite a bit of overlap. It was like building a structure using bits from erector sets, lincoln logs, legos and bionicles, with liberal amounts of silly putty. Sure it got built, but the build engineers started going insane.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by Brandybuck · 2004-01-04 10:57 · Score: 1

So your rant about the lack massive number of dependancies is really just a straw man.

Not a straw man. Using apt-get, you go do a new install of evolvator-2.9.5-RC2. It sucks down ten new packages and fifty updates to existing libraries. But thirty existing apps need to be updated because of those updates, so you need to suck them in as well. They might bring in other changes of their own. And the probability is high that you might just end up with two incompatible applications that cannot live together in the same system. All without compiling a damned thing.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by d_i_r_t_y · 2004-01-04 11:12 · Score: 1

this is such a troll... which idiots modded this up?
Re:KDE vs Gnome, battle of philosophy by forlornhope · 2004-01-04 17:07 · Score: 1

note garnome. It puts an entire development gnome install in your home directory with all the current libraries. Also, Im not sure where your getting evolator from, but if your running debian testing or stable and trying to pull packages in from unstable or experimental, then this situation will happen with any package you try to pull down. Its the nature of debian and using libraries as opposed to statically linking stuff. Gnome might have a few more dependancies to satisfy but the very fact that its using libraries that are on your system is a good thing because you dont have to pull in 5 different libraries for each program you want to use.

--
"We Don't Need No Truthless Heros!" - Project 86

Re:Bluecurve by Darren+Winsper · 2004-01-04 05:40 · Score: 1

Actually, that only worked for Gtk themes based of the default or pixmap engines.

Re:Gnome translate-o-matic 2004 by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-01-04 05:41 · Score: 1

Ha-ha! THis is the best new troll to come out! I thoroughly enjoy reading this one. :)

--
Like what I said? You might like my music

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by damiam · 2004-01-04 05:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

While I agree that GTK generally looks better, this theme is intended for KDE users who want GNOME apps to integrate well into their desktop. GNOME users such as yourself are not the targeted audience here.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 05:44 · Score: 2, Informative

Canopy owns 4.1% of Trolltech. The vast majority (64.7%) is owned by the employees.

Yes, as one of those employees I can assure you that this idea of Canopy having some sort of influence over Trolltech is entirely absurd.

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by Roberto · 2004-01-04 05:46 · Score: 1

In a system with multiple inheritance, just because QObject is the base of all Qt classes (it isnt anyway), that doesnt mean its a single rooted class hierarchy.

So, the previous poster was technically a little off, you are somewhat off, and your generalization is stupid anyway.

Step in the right direction? by tyler_larson · 2004-01-04 05:49 · Score: 1

One of the things I like the most about GTK is that it doesn't look like QT. Is change always progress?

--
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925

Partly a win, partly a problem by eschasi · 2004-01-04 05:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Stating prejudices up-front: I'm a KDE kind of guy.

There's plusses and minuses to this. On one hand, unified theming is a win, no question. But doing so by adding yet another layer of interface could perpetuate the core differences rather than helping unify them. The world is rife with short-term hacks that are still running; it's one of the big contributors to bloatware.

In addition, it's a one-way change. When the author completes his work, Gnome apps can follow KDE themes, but not vice-versa. That's good for KDE, but not particularly good for Gnome.

It also leads to some subtle UI traps. When I run a Gnome app under KDE, it stands out. In one sense that's bad, as it can be visually jarring. In another sense that's good, as I'm visually alerted to expect some different UI rules. If one can't determine which ruleset to follow by a casual glance at the app, it's going to lead to user confusion.

It's also going to dilute the UI guidelines to both KDE and Gnome. Application writers tend to model their UIs on other apps, not from reading the UI guidelines. An app developer running Gnome apps under KDE look (but not feel!) will assume that either the KDE rules are loose or that he should be developing Gnomish features.

I'm not saying the author shouldn't do this; it's a noble goal and (from the responses on the author's posting) pretty decent code for an alpha/beta release. But we should hope for and work towards better long-term theme engines.

Re:Partly a win, partly a problem by adrianbaugh · 2004-01-04 12:17 · Score: 1

It's not yet another layer of interface, it's done as a theme engine. Theme engines are already a part of the desktop, they already do all the theming. This one just does it differently (by interpreting the KDE theme definition instead of the gnome one).
Nothing to see here, move along...

--
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by JDWTopGuy · 2004-01-04 05:52 · Score: 1

That's funny, but why would you want to use C++ if you can do it in a smaller, more efficient way in C?

I'm not exactly a C fanatic, in fact my favorite compiled programming language is Java (braces for a wave of trolls), but sometimes "a glorified assembler" is what you need to do the job.

That said, it does make a heckuva lot more sense to use OO languages for GUI programs.

--
Ron Paul 2012

Mod parent down by phoxix · 2004-01-04 05:54 · Score: 1

I respect his choice for whatever software he wants, thats for sure.

But he doesn't offer any real nor insightful reason for why he chooses GNOME over KDE.

You can take his post, and replace GNOME with KDE and KDE with GNOME. The post still says the same thing. See how pointless his post is ?

Sunny Dubey

Re:Gnome translate-o-matic 2004 by eschasi · 2004-01-04 06:00 · Score: 1

Inspired by the Gentoo translate-o-matic.

And a fine bit of inspiration it was, clearly.

Why do we still fight GNOME x KDE by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-04 06:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

I really don't understand most Slashdot readers. In every news about KDE or Gnome people start fighting on what is better, Qt or Gtk, C or C++, Gnome or KDE, with theory on how SuSE buyout will end KDE, why Qt isn't free, that Linus uses KDE, Trolltech is owned by SCO, etc. People who keeps posting things like this must be new to free software, or just don't understand it at all. The goal is *NOT* to kill Microsoft Windows and every OS and have just GNU/Linux with one desktop installed on all computers. The goal is freedom, is choice. I don't want to be like 10 years ago, when I thought DOS/Windows were the only operationg system available. Also, most free software projects are coded for fun. I can assure you, even if the whole world start using Gnome and KDE is just used by it's own developers, KDE will keep existing! There's no desktop war, so there is not going to be a winner. So, understand the community, and stop flames. We should be discussing how great it is that someone is trying to make GTK apps integrate better to the KDE environment, and hoping a GTK coder will start doing the same. I use KDE and I get really happy when I see a new feature on Gnome, cause probably KDE will have it too soon, Gnome users should feel the same way when KDE gets a new feature. And, while we're still talking about this, please, when a project is posted here, let's not comment on how there was already a project with the same goal and how duplicate effort is lame: if someone think it'll be fun to code another mp3 player, let him do it, *For coders, projects are mostly about fun!*

Re:Why do we still fight GNOME x KDE by whovian · 2004-01-04 08:50 · Score: 1

I can assure you, even if the whole world start using Gnome and KDE is just used by it's own developers, KDE will keep existing!

That's probably true. Especially if it's of sufficient value. For comparison's sake, just look at with RedHat: In the absence of their supporting their X.Y version, other groups arise that can provide package updates.

*For coders, projects are mostly about fun!*

I think this point cannot be underestimated. If you're a coder working for a company, you're essentially a work=for=hire and could very well be coding up someone else's idea (thereby bringing them fame, glory, profit). OTOH, it's not funny being a starving coder either :(

--
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Re:Why do we still fight GNOME x KDE by AvantLegion · 2004-01-04 10:04 · Score: 1

>> I really don't understand most Slashdot readers. In every news about KDE or Gnome people start fighting on what is better, Qt or Gtk, C or C++, Gnome or KDE, with theory on how SuSE buyout will end KDE, why Qt isn't free, that Linus uses KDE, Trolltech is owned by SCO...
... Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex!
JFK! Blown away! What else do I have to say?

I can smell the flames from here by FreeUser · 2004-01-04 06:16 · Score: 1

Since when is the GPL propretiary?

cue Microsoft provocateurs, *BSD License zealots, and SCO apologists...

I can smell the flamage of the battle to come from here.

You are right. The anti-qt FUD is just that, FUD, and no less so for being propogated by zealots that were once representative of a more mainstream ("gentler, kinder, more corporate, less political") version of free software renamed open source (and who have replaced the politics of freedom with the politics of gratis beer, of subjective preferences vis-a-vis Gnome v. KDE, gtk v. qt, and Open Source non-GPL with GPL where it make sense to unerscore their position on gtk v. qt, while maintaining a hypocritically and diametrically opposed opinion on the very same license for the other 90% of the software that makes up the system they are trying to promote).

QT is GPLed, just as is the Linux kernel, gcc, and most of GNU. Any statement claiming qt is closed or proprietary is FUD and likely a troll (whether it is a Microsoft financed troll or not is an interesting debate for another time), as it is equivelent to saying that the GPL is closed or propriatery, a nonsensical stance taken by *BSD Licensing zealots, Microsofties, and others who would prefer to take the hard work of others and not give back in return, and resent not being allowed to do so.

I have no preference for qt vs. gtk, and I find both the GPL and BSD-style licenses to be useful in the appropriate place, but as you point out, only an idiot (syn. "troll"), a FUD-mongering zealot with an axe to grind, or an agent provocatuer from the anti-free software crowd (Microsoft et al) would seriously argue that a GPLed library is "closed."

--
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy

Single Linux Desktop is inevitable by solprovider · 2004-01-04 06:19 · Score: 1

When MS crashes, big business will pour tons of money into the Linux Desktop PC. They are going to pick only one desktop toolkit because it gives a better ROI than splitting the money to 2 or more projects. It is likely that the other desktops will survive for quite some time (reference people still using Amigas), but the others will fall behind unless they use software like the project in this article to borrow from the leader.

if you insist on unification, you destroy most of the features of Open Source / Free Software development that are meant to be its strengths.
I know there is still strong development of the BSDs, but most of the corporate money for OSes is going into Linux. Is it "destroying the features of OSS/FS?" (Be careful how you answer. This is Slashdot and we do not tolerate criticism of the Linux development model.) The BSDs will survive just like the alternate desktops, but eventually the leader will far surpass them both in features and marketshare.

The key to the desktops is the toolkits. Eventually one will be chosen. We (all techies) will have little input into which is chosen. The first large software company that makes the choice and puts the money into one toolkit will make the choice for the entire world. It will probably be IBM, although Novell or SUN could take the role; Redhat has already given up. The final choice may be decided by one business manager that has been using Desktop Linux for some time and does not want to change.

Maybe Bruce Perens can influence the decision. As much as he likes KDE, he thinks Gnome is the better choice for a universal desktop (reference Slashdot article from last month.)

Yes, what you will get is a lot of people who are dissatisfied. Nobody says you cannot keep using Slackware 3 at home. But in a few years, all computer software jobs will require knowledge of the primary Linux desktop. Plan accordingly.

--
I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Re:Single Linux Desktop is inevitable by Fidgety+Philip · 2004-01-04 07:26 · Score: 1

I can't help thinking that there's a flaw in that reasoning. The fact that big business will start pushing money into toolkits doesn't mean that control will be lost. For one, ROI does not apply to big businesses as a group. IBM's investment can't be recouped by Sun, after all, so there's no reason to think that they shouldn't back different horses.

But more importantly, control in an OS/FS project is going to tend to stick with the fork that produces the best code. Doesn't your reasoning mean that you think that big business, with its big bucks to spend, will be churning out more and better code, than OS coders can, and hasn't that long since been shown to be untrue?

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by scotch · 2004-01-04 06:28 · Score: 2, Informative

That's funny, but why would you want to use C++ if you can do it in a smaller, more efficient way in C?

What do you mean by smaller and more efficient?

Code Size? Virtually all valid ansi C will compile to the same object code when compiled under a C++ compiler. It's possible in this case that the C++ code image still might be marginally larger because of start up code, libraries, etc, though I would doubt that this would matter except in rare situations. In embedded systems, for example, there are efforts to control these size increases.

Code Speed? Unless there are paging effects caused by the rare problem discussed above, the C code compiled under the C++ compiler will be the same speed as under the C compiler. However, is some situations, the C++ compiler can produce faster code: a common example is the C function-pointer qsort method versus the C++ stl sort using functors.

Source Code Size? C++ will blow away C in this department.

Developer efficiency? Libraries make a world of difference, but with the standard libs for both, C++ will blow away C in this department.

Of course, there are ways to write bad C++ that will eliminate any of these advantages, but that's the nature of powerful tools.

HAND

--
XML causes global warming.

I've heard for years... by halivar · 2004-01-04 06:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

I have heard for years (How many? Almost ten? Might be wrong) that KDE was going to come to a "dead end" because of (inster one: non-GPL, strict-GPL-non-commercial, closed development, pact with the devil, etc.), and that Gnome would eventually dominate due to its keeping with the "true spirit" of the FOSS movement.

I'm still waiting.

Re:Accountability Problems by Fnkmaster · 2004-01-04 06:40 · Score: 1

NOT like the Linux kernel. You can "use" the Linux kernel in any kind of project you want - rarely indeed do you need to create derived works of the kernel, which is a piece of OS-level infrastructure, just to build custom apps. The GPLness of the kernel pretty much only comes into play with hardware support and driver issues because they must link directly against kernel code and thus create derived works. You can generally call Unix standard functions without creating a derived work of the Linux kernel.

On the other hand, if you GUI toolkit library is under the GPL, than simply "using" it, which ALWAYS involved creating derived works to call into the API is possible only for GPL-compatible software. So this is not just like the linux kernel at all. I like Qt too, but developing commercial software with it is costly relative to other options. For a wide-use packaged software app for *nix, this cost is insignificant relative to other costs. But in a situation with a hobbyist developer wanting to write a cross-platform app, or make it so a primarily Windows-targetted app is also accessible to a *nix audience, that cost, on the margin, to gain access to an additional 1-2% desktop audience is very hard to justify.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by Ralph+Yarro · 2004-01-04 06:47 · Score: 1

Thanks for the tip.

--

The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.

QT? by d_54321 · 2004-01-04 06:49 · Score: 1

So will the GIMP Tool Kit now have a look and feel similar to QuikTime (Light blue bar above everything) or Quiktrip (red and yellow) or Quentin Tarintino? (Bring out the GIMP...)

--
Support the FairTax

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by BillKaos · 2004-01-04 07:16 · Score: 1

The dangers of this scenario combined with the fact the Gnome is LGPL'd are left as an excercise to the reader.

I'm tired of people trolling about GTK's licensing, the LGPL. I think that it's the only reasonable licensing for a toolkit.

If you're trying to create a general-purpose desktop, it's clear you've to allow closed source apps.

QT toolkit allows this by licensing for money, GTK is LGPL'ed. What would be a show-stopper is a GTK that's truly GPL, as you're excluding all closed source, as games, CAD/CAM, databases, etc... from your desktop, and the code is copyrighted by lots of people, so is very hard to license.

In your hipotetical scenario, there's no problem to Sun, as they could buy Trolltech, and make all the closed source apps they want.

Re:Accountability Problems by Elektroschock · 2004-01-04 07:24 · Score: 1

"Unlike Gnome, this diverts some of their talent, focus, and resources into gaining revenue from controlling people's copying behavior rather than thru more efficient services and support, or business models more accountable to the free (as in freedom) software paradigm."

Ho?

1) KDE Libs are gpl, based on freeqt
1)b)freeQt is gpl
2) Qt != KDE
3) Gtk is lgpl

add 2) Take hbasic(hbasic.sf.net) as an example, a qt app for Linux, not a KDE app. Although KDe libs are based on qt.

add 3) that's why we see this awful license variety in the Gnome world.

1b) Commercial apps for KDE are based on qt. Commercial non-gpl software can be produced under what license you want and you have to pay for the qt toolkit. Such as you have to buy Visual C++. Despite ximian's propaganda this is no reason that prohibits companies to contribute, but an incentive for individual developers to license as gpl.

Hehe by davidsansome · 2004-01-04 07:49 · Score: 4, Informative

That's quite interesting - I was just uploading version 0.2, when I suddenly noticed kde-look.org slowing down... now I know why :)

Anyway, 0.2 should fix some problems people have been having.

--
-- Wibble

Re:Hehe by dbs_flac · 2004-01-04 08:04 · Score: 1

Just like to say thanks for this, its a great tool. I'm using 0.2 atm and have found a minor bug - gnomines doesn't display (if it really matters) Again, thanks for this and keep going

Re:Accountability Problems by twener · 2004-01-04 07:55 · Score: 1

> 1) KDE Libs are gpl

Wrong, they are LGPL.

Re:Widget Mania (most dominant metric) by Sleepy · 2004-01-04 07:56 · Score: 1, Troll

>> KDE will never be the dominant desktop.

>Care to substantiate that is not _currently_ the dominant desktop?

That was not my intent, but...

Substantiate? That's impossible to do for either desktop. There is no registration or accounting mechanism.

We can use circumstantial evidence:
*) most users run the distro's default desktop.
*) Red Hat is not just the leading distro, but also the the majority distro.

That's not perfect science, but I'll wager on it anyways. I don't give much weight to how loud any particular demographic/group is.. the minority factions in life are always trying to compensate for size. ;-)

(NOTE: Light sarcasm is meant to be humorous. By no means would I intend disrespect to the general KDE community, and especially not to hardworking, generous developers. /. moderators with an agenda only hurt the forum, not me.)

I agree by gilesjuk · 2004-01-04 07:57 · Score: 1

I've toyed with QT designer, it's a good bit of software.

I'd sooner see QT and KDE win over Gnome and GTK. When I first started running Linux I used Gnome and GMC was ok but Nautilus crashed. I left Linux for a while and next time I installed it I used KDE, I found it much nicer and I've stuck with Linux and KDE ever since.

Re:Accountability Problems by argoff · 2004-01-04 08:02 · Score: 1

ok, as an earlier poster pointed out, i should be talking about Trolltech and not KDE, but the point still stands. If you use their libraries in non free software, you half to pay out the nose to use it you cant tell me that this doesn't hold them accountable to different market forces.

Re:Why do we need two widgets? by JDWTopGuy · 2004-01-04 08:05 · Score: 1

I don't know crud about C/C++. My point was more about programming something the OO way vs. programming something the procedural way. I didn't intend to start a language-war.

YMMV, HAND.

--
Ron Paul 2012

Big business and OSS by solprovider · 2004-01-04 08:07 · Score: 1

The fact that big business will start pushing money into toolkits doesn't mean that control will be lost.

Control would not (and cannot) be lost, but big business can push the priorities that are important to them.

ROI does not apply to big businesses as a group. IBM's investment can't be recouped by Sun, after all, so there's no reason to think that they shouldn't back different horses.

With OSS, IBM's investment can be recouped by Sun, IF SUN CHOOSES THE SAME PROJECT. If IBM puts a few million into Gnome, then Sun only benefits if they also choose Gnome. If Sun chooses KDE, they probably have to repeat the work that IBM has done. But Sun could choose Gnome, receive the benefits of IBM's work, and then continue with what is important to Sun. That is why I feel the first influential company to choose will have a great impact on all succeeding choices.

more importantly, control in an OS/FS project is going to tend to stick with the fork that produces the best code. Doesn't your reasoning mean that you think that big business, with its big bucks to spend, will be churning out more and better code, than OS coders can, and hasn't that long since been shown to be untrue?

The community will still decide the best code. But wouldn't the ability to spend a few million tend to increase the possibility of writing some decent code?

Why are you distinguishing between "big business" and "OS coders"? The whole SCO/IBM lawsuit is because some IBMers are OS coders. If a company is willing to pay (or hire) programmers to work on OSS, then those coders must become part of the OSS community to be effective. That their priorities are set by the company should not affect their coding abilities.

(Well, there is the part about scratching your own itch, but a paycheck is rather good incentive to scratch someone else's itch. And you would still want to write great code for the reputation/karma.)

Try not to disparage this too much. I am certain that many Slashdotters have been dreaming of the day when big business decides that OSS programming is important, and have their OSS resumes ready.

--
I spend my life entertaining my brain.

Re:ummmmm... by Zirtix · 2004-01-04 08:08 · Score: 1

I think that practically speaking the difference is linguistic. C coders are likely to use GTK and C++ coders Qt. That's just my impression. Of course each toolkit has lots of other bindings as well, though they seem comparatively little used (especially for Qt).

Mirror by compwiz · 2004-01-04 08:29 · Score: 1

Mirror of the pertinent files are up here.

Re:Unified OS already exists since Win 95 by BiggerIsBetter · 2004-01-04 09:04 · Score: 1

Since when did Windows have a choice of window managers?

Since LiteStep came out.

Stupid AC.

--
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.

I think people seem to miss the point *really*. by danalien · 2004-01-04 09:06 · Score: 1

I surely do, after reading a bunch of comments like your's. Pro-{KDE,Gnome} ppl that is, arguing about "how their oppinions/tastes are better/grander then the oppositions, what-else & what-not...".

In a quick sentense; Neither matter more or less then the other. Because einstein's "relativity theory" extends to other tings then just physics; and arguing which "choice" is better or worse or equal than the other, simply doesn't exist in the mind of a true "relativity nutcase" as me ;-) - they just exist *end of story*.

So if we stop biquering, for awhile, and step back a few step; and try to analyze things in a pacifistic way - maybe we'll get the picture.

*IMHO* - the 'picture' I see, from all of this, is actually, "more choices, then less" & "more satisfaction".

Howcome? *you (might) ask?* - let me put it in a breif anology:

KDE equals eg. 'Orange juce', while Gnome equals eg. 'Graphefrute juce'. There are three sort of ppl in this world,

a) Either only drinks 'Orange juce' - dislikes the taste of 'Graphfrute juce'
b) Either only drinks 'Graphfrute juce' - dislikes the taste of 'Orange juce'.
c) Neither, 'A) or B)' xor 'can drink which of the two without any dislike what so ever over the other'.

I, happen to be one of the 'Case A)' ppl, *Am utterly, horrified over the taste of Graphfrute*, "just one of those things in life I can't do", is drink it. And who am I to bash on 'Graphfrute juce'-lovers out there, and who are they to bash me? And by now one might be content to say everyone should be more like 'Case C', and while I might understand your thought for awhile; things in life just are, so anyhow you try to 'bend it', in some or other way, all of the 'Cases' will forever exist.

!Thus, It's not a matter of 'which case one is', but more in the lines of "how can we get along, with each other, the way we are, with our tastes & dislikes?"

So for me this "GTK 2 QT Engine" is something that'll convert that horrid 'Graphfrute juce' I so dislike into something I love, 'Orange Juce'. *now, that's a pice of work, really - from my POV*

And while the quick thought out there, may start to think 'I found a flaw in his thinking' - That this, this engine, will extinct/exterminte Gnome / 'Case B' / 'Grapefrute juce'. And such a scenari is thus not my intention, thinking nor would I as a KDE lover go along with such a scheme - mearly because 'What if the tables would be the other way around?'; I know I wouldn't like extingtion to stumble upon my choices. So, what's missing, at present (to my knowledge), is a "QT 2 GTK Engine" that'll convert horrid 'Orange juce' into sweat 'Graphfrute juce' for those who drink it.

So, a "GTK 2 QT" & "QT 2 GTK" Engine - would be something both KDE & Gnome should invest in, to give us, the ppl, even "more choices, then less" & "more satisfaction", untop of those that they allready bless us with - After all, both are just a UserInterface, with a 'G' infront of them; what matters are the 'function(s)' unerneeth the 'hood we really don't see, unless we take a look underneeth' *emphasis on "Give us functions, and let us decide the UI of the G; after all isn't function(s) what we strive to use computers for?"*

brief, as brief as such a thing could be explained in...
//danalien

--
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by BillKaos · 2004-01-04 09:10 · Score: 1

So, jokes aside, I'm not trolling about QT, I'm saying both QT and GTK solve the same problem (allow closed source apps), either by paying to trolltech or by using LGPL; althougth it's very debatable what's the better approach.

So far, i think both are working well, maybe QT a little better because it's good support to commercial developers.

Unification by be-fan · 2004-01-04 09:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

Its interesting how people ar deriding this sort of "look-based" unification. The truth is that "look-based" unification has worked just fine for Microsoft. I use a mostly KDE desktop, and only once in a while do I have to start a GTK app. The same thing is probably true for GNOME people --- they only have to start a non-GNOME app on occasion. If you use MS Office, you're automatically using at least two toolkits on a Windows desktop. Windows has many toolkits that major apps use on a regular basis. Its nearly impossible to run a normal Windows desktop without regularly encountering at least a few.

Now, why do Windows users think their desktop is so unified, when in practice, *NIX desktops are really more unified? Because Windows toolkits look kinda the same! Windows's "unified look and feel" is based entirely on unification of themes, rather than on any real technical unification.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...

Re:Unification by spitzak · 2004-01-04 15:14 · Score: 3, Informative

That is absolutely correct. Any "unification" of Windows is due to the fact that programmers of other toolkits copied the GDI32 and MFC ones. In fact most of the unification on Linux is due to people copying Windows, not from any plan or from copying each other.

Windows programs probably use many times more toolkits than Unix. Except for GTK, ALL the Unix toolkits have a Windows version, plus there are dozens of Windows-only toolkits. Therefore there are more Windows toolkits than Unix. I can confirm that quite a few different ones are being used for Windows programs. Also high-end 3D software and other production software like Avid like to use their own in-house toolkits, so that they can access widgets that don't exist anywhere else.

Yet idiots keep posting here their belief that Windows has a single toolkit and that is why it is "unified". That is FALSE. The reason there is unification is because of toolkits copying each other, something that is finally happening in Linux as well.
Re:Unification by Quattro+Vezina · 2004-01-04 18:26 · Score: 2, Informative

I agree with most of your comments except for one thing:

There's also a Windows version of GTK. It's not too commonly used, but the Windows ports of gAIM, the GIMP, and probably some other programs do use it. And just like on Linux, GTK-Win32 is themable.

--
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Re:Unification by Shadowlore · 2004-01-11 00:01 · Score: 1

Except for GTK, ALL the Unix toolkits have a Windows version

I don't now about ALL, but GTK does in fact run on Windows.

--
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.

Skin availability by tepples · 2004-01-04 09:30 · Score: 1

I use the "classic" skin for Windows Media Player, which unobtrusively looks like any other stereotypical Windows app. A "classic" skin exists for Winamp as well, leaving the brushed-metal QuickTime Player as the only oddball.

looks are not the issue... by hitmark · 2004-01-04 09:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

copy&paste, drag&drop is. what ims saying is that in windows you have one set of rules for the clipboard, so that any program doing a copy&paste job have the same calls to make.

i dont care if my xchat looks like my conqueror as long as i can copy a url from one and paste it in the other:)

oh and there are a lot of people that messes around with the windows looks, litestep or plan 9 anyone? hell you can even run blackbox as your windows desktop:)

--
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

This iswhat we really need by Rysc · 2004-01-04 09:46 · Score: 1

This is the kind of thing we're really missing. Most people don't give a damn about what widgets a program uses, and a lot of people want their programs to all look the same. The common answer to this seems to be "Well let's drop (GTK|QT) and then we'll have unification." This is a very Bush attitude, right up there with "If everyone does what I say then we have cooporation."

True unification will come when it doesn't matter to the user which widget set something is written in. This will involve a special theme setting for each kind of widget out there which basically says "Generate yourself a theme from tis here meta-information."

We need a neutral theme format. One which describes looks in a way which is not specific to any theming system. Then, each widget set can (when told to) copy this information into a format it can use directly, and use that for its theme.

With modifications to allow such an operation to each of the themeable widgets sets out there, porgrams could get a reasonably similar look with no further rewriting, and no need to "compromise" on a unified widget set. Maybe the look achieved would not be exact, but exact is not necessary.

If you consider Windows, many apps don't look exactly the same. They use slightly newer or slightly older widgets, from perhaps different incarnations of the Windows API. But since they all look to roughly the same place for information on (for example) what color to be, the user largely does not notice.

--
I want my Cowboyneal

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by oconnorcjo · 2004-01-04 09:53 · Score: 1

See, both scenarios are very unlikely, but I see no reason why I should trust Sun more than Trolltech.

The key difference is that Sun does not have any control over the Gnome desktop while TrollTech does have control over key parts of KDE. The control that TrollTech has over KDE varies in significance depending upon the reader's software philosophy. If one never uses (or writes) proprietary software then the differences in the GTK/Qt license is minor but if the reader does not mind using proprietary software, then the differences in the licenses could be significant.

TrollTech uses a GPL/TrollTech license which means they can charge arbitrary sums of money (reasonably priced at $1,200 at the moment) to developers for using the Qt libraries in software not compatible with the GPL. Gnome uses GTK (with an LGPL license) which has no restrictions (provided one doesn't actually change the libraries themselves without releasing the changes made to the libraries).

Sun is merely a supporter of GTK/Gnome but Trolltech has control of Qt (and thus to some degree KDE). If Sun turned around and became the Evil Empire, it would have no effect on Gnome software or the Gnome DE but if TrollTech became the Evil Empire, KDE might still be fine but if a user of KDE wanted to use closed source software such as Oracle or various popular Video Games, they might not integrate well due to Oracle and xyz video games and etc needing to use a different gui toolkit [Oracle uses Qt now but I am talking about in an imaginary future, such as imagining in 1998 that Caldera would threaten to sue everyone for using Linux in 2003].

Sun is not relevant to Gnome but TrollTech IS relevant to KDE. So while you might not trust either one, only TrollTech can make life harder for the Linux community.

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I miss the Karma Whores.

Same code/different compiler or same job/diff lang by BaconLT · 2004-01-04 09:54 · Score: 1

C++'s approach to memory management is about as streamlined as a Mack Truck.

Go ahead and put an output statement in your copy constructor, and see how many times your object is copied.

It would take a PhD in C++ to effectively heavily rely upon using dynamic memory in any large-scale C++ project.

dynamic memory in C=slicker code

dynamic memory in C++=disaster

Solution: STL?

Are we talking about same code with a different compiler or the same job done with different languages? For the former, you make sense. For the latter, you don't.

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Who mediates your information?

no problem by nietsch · 2004-01-04 10:00 · Score: 1

contrary to what most /.ers think, you can dynamically link a program to a gpl-ed library. You should make sure however that it is not vitally important to it, the program should be able to run without it.

See for instance the fact that you can run propriety programs on a linux system. It may make (gpl-ed) kernel calls, but is not tainted by the gpl, because it is assumed the program can be run in other unices too.

It can even be argued that the desktop environment is part of the system just like the kernel, and that propriety programs can hook directly into those. The GPL allows that interpretation.

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The funniest soon on your desktop... by bad_sheep · 2004-01-04 10:07 · Score: 4, Funny

Yet Another QT Hacker will soon write a similar style for QT to use GTK to draw widgets, the result will be:

GTK: Please QT, draws me a button
QT : Please GTK, draws me a button
GTK: Please QT, draws me a button
QT : Please GTK, draws me a button
GTK: Please QT, draws me a button...

Have to wait before having anything drawn on the screen...

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by TrekCycling · 2004-01-04 10:15 · Score: 1

Who needs the English class? You can't infer an opinion from someone's statement then I would say you need an English class. Language isn't just about literal statements. English isn't C++. There's inference throughout the language and yes I'M the on e who THINKS QT is hard on the eyes. And *I* *THINK* anyone who thinks it isn't is either blind or lying, but that is an opinion, whether or not I preface it with "I think". Sheesh.

Qt=={GPL|QPL} by nietsch · 2004-01-04 10:16 · Score: 1

It is even better than you think. Qt is dual licenced, you may use it with the GPL or QPL licences, or you can pay a wad of cash to trolltech and do what you cannot do with the GPL/QPL.
In other words, Qt gives you more freedom (of choice) than gtk does.

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Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by TrekCycling · 2004-01-04 10:17 · Score: 1

I agree. I wasn't lamenting my plight as a Gnome user. Rather taking the opportunity to joke that making a GTK app look like a QT app didn't seem like a good idea to me. Just a personal opinion.

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by damiam · 2004-01-04 10:54 · Score: 1

There are some aspects of a toolkit that cannot be changed by a theme (look at bluecurve-gtk1 vs. bluecurve-gtk2 vs. bluecurve-qt, they all look slightly different). It's quite valid to think that one toolkit inherently looks better, regardless of the actual theme used.

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Isn't this *choice* on different levels? by janbjurstrom · 2004-01-04 10:59 · Score: 1

I totally disagree with your (apparent) eliteist views regarding who should be "allowed" to use Linux. I don't understand this position, and so won't argue with it. Instead, I'd like to focus on the (constructive) discussion on the concept(s) of choice.

I agree that a universally applied "one size fits all" 'strategy', would take away a core strenght/concept from Linux. But I don't think your assertions about choice really invalidates the grandparent's belief that 'choice' in the (G)UI isn't always a good thing.

Perhaps the use of (the keyword) "choice" there is misleading, but I think you're mixing up choice, constraints, and freedom, in you post.

I view choice (in the "core-concept-of-Linux" sense), as the freedom to choose, based on open source and licenses that give you powerful rights, to use, share, modify, build on, etc. On the other hand, constraints (to disallow certain things in favor of other benefits) are vital. Your own claim that interop between Gnome and KDE is a good thing, shows that you too understand this.

As an example, Roy T. Fielding's (W3C, Apache foundation, et al.) dissertation Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (describing the architecture of WWW) is illustrative. Fielding coined the term Null style:

The Null style /.../ is simply an empty set of constraints. From an architectural perspective, the null style describes a system in which there are no distinguished boundaries between components. ...

Obviously, the Null style gives you unlimited choice (absolute freedom). It's also practically useless as you can't build anything without constraints.

Another example: OOP wouldn't be very useful (or, indeed, object-oriented) if one chose to disregard the principles of abstraction, encapsulation, inheritence, polymorphism, etc.

I think we all can agree that solutions (such as this GTK-QT Theme Engine) that aim to bridge various gaps throughout the "Unix universe" are good things.

Sometimes these efforts might constrain our choices, but they don't necessarily limit our freedom.

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Re:Isn't this *choice* on different levels? by gujo-odori · 2004-01-04 12:09 · Score: 1

I am not in any way elitist. Please see my earlier response to that charge.

The rest of your post I substantially agree with, although we would probably disagree about where the constraints should be placed. I would certainly say that having every distro - or even every mainstream distro - using the same desktop by default would be an excessive constraint. Ideally, the installer would just ask you at startup which you want and than have all the same programs available on each, but I understand that supporting two desktops is a lot more work for the distributor, so I don't mind if they pick one. If the distro I like doesn't have the desktop I like, I'll build it myself if necessary.

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by Brandybuck · 2004-01-04 11:01 · Score: 1

So go change your Qt theme if you don't like whatever default it uses on your system. If the default is Keramik, then change it to Highcolor, Plastic or Qinx. Duh!

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Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

Need to go beyond themes by harlows_monkeys · 2004-01-04 11:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

The biggest annoyance I have between various toolkits is not visual appearance (although that is annoying), but the file open/save dialogs.

I find the KDE open/save dialogs vastly more useful than the GNOME ones, for example.

There are some people who feel the other way.

What is needed is a way to make it so that I always get KDE open/save dialogs, even when using GNOME apps, and so that the GNOME dialog fans always get GNOME dialogs, even when using KDE apps.

Choice is great, but this kind of thing should be the user's choice, and the current system makes it the programmer's choice, indirectly by which toolkit the programmer uses or which desktop environment the programmer writes for.

Re:Accountability Problems by Brandybuck · 2004-01-04 11:08 · Score: 1

Qt is free as in "it uses the Free Software Foundation's preferred license for free libraries." It's every bit as Free as GNU's readline library.

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Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

community spirit truimphs by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 11:15 · Score: 1

I switched from BSD to Linux because the Linux community is large enough, and evangelical enough, that every single question I have ever posted to a Linux newsgroup (or followup in private email) has offered at least a sympathetic response, and 75% of the time at least some useful info, and often a pointer to the complete solution. And never an obnoxious flame. That attitude, in turn, has stroked me enough to post my own solutions in public, search-indexed websites. The BSD community is small and crabby, so despite my perception of the BSD tech superiority, that marginal advantage is drowned in BSD's limited potential for actual problemsolving. Linux is an artifact of a community of collaborators, inherently more powerful and resilient than BSD, merely an artifact without the community. It's worth noting that a large community of mutually supportive developers is what got Microsoft where they are today, and where the actual platform competition is. And why Linux is gaining so quickly on MS, Apple, Unix, and any others.

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wrong way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 11:20 · Score: 1

This is one-way unification: turns GNOME apps into KDE apps. I prefer the GNOME style, and want to use KDE apps. I'm looking for the reverse. Or even better, true unification, in a middle layer, with KDE/GNOME style selectable on top. A 3tier architecture version of KDE-look would be a good approach: KDE & GNOME API mapping in the "data" layer, unified widget functions in the "business" layer, and selectable KDE/GNOME syles in the "presentation" layer. Any GNOME hackers want to seed the KDE-look source into a new project, and flip the script?

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Re:wrong way by fault0 · 2004-01-04 13:54 · Score: 1

There was a way to do this several years ago (Qt could use GTK pixmap themes), however, a few things happened:

- qt 3.0 appeared, with a new widget theme layer
- gtk 2.0 appeared, with a new widget theme layer
- nobody cared enough to port it, probably because of the abundance of kde 3.x themes (in comparison to kde 2.x themes)
Re:wrong way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 14:01 · Score: 1

What was that project called? Do you think that code could be spliced into KDE-look to get a good start at a real 2-way unification?

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Re:wrong way by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 14:11 · Score: 1

The danger of a unification layer is, the author of this unification layer says there is a performance hit. Do you really want that same performance hit for all applications?

There does need to be a place to store common widgets so both Gtk+ and Qt can use the same widget while still using completely different APIs... but I don't see it hitting the primetime until everyone has so much processing power they need to throw it away.

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Re:wrong way by juhaz · 2004-01-04 16:33 · Score: 1

The problem with middle layer is that it always needs to be compatible with lowest common denominator.

And there already is such a system, it's called wxWindows. Too bad it suffers from the same problem, you can't do a lot of things GTK or QT allows because they also need to cater for the other(s) (like win32)

Reverse would be nice though ... too bad starting first KDE app from Gnome will still take 10 seconds on even a modern machine. And probably vice versa.
Re:wrong way by fault0 · 2004-01-04 16:42 · Score: 1

It was not a project, but was rather part of KDE itself.
Re:wrong way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 18:18 · Score: 1

If vestigal parts (algorithms, APIs) are still in KDE, adding KDE-look, perhaps this unification project isn't so farfetched. Maybe even a feature request to the KDE-look team. And to answer another consideration in this thread, expanding to GTK libs under the hood is a good time to make the libs pluggable, adding as many as available when apps install dependences.

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Re:wrong way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 18:24 · Score: 1

Another thread in this discussion is dealing with resources and bottlenecks in the unification, such as a pluggable libraries architecture, and performance. Is the long initial KDE startup time because GNOME has already started at login/startx, while KDE must start when its first app calls it? How about starting KDE in the background after GNOME offers an environment, while the other startup apps are starting? The startup environment can be determined by whichever apps are started first, with others grinding up before apps need them, as cached from previous session history, overridden by environment preferences.

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Re:wrong way by juhaz · 2004-01-04 23:11 · Score: 1

Is the long initial KDE startup time because GNOME has already started at login/startx, while KDE must start when its first app calls it?

Yes, that's probably the biggest part of it. KDE apps start kdeinit and need to load QT libraries when they're first started, if there's not already something else using them.

How about starting KDE in the background after GNOME offers an environment, while the other startup apps are starting?

That would help, but it eats up quite a bit of memory, and slows down the already rather lengthy boot process as a whole while we don't even know if any KDE apps will be started.
Re:wrong way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 23:28 · Score: 1

Well, the way to address most of the issues raised in this interesting thread is: factor, factor, factor. If the toolkit libraries can be carved up into smaller namespaces, then the startup time to load them can be minimized, so it can happen on demand without dragging app startup time out too much to stand.

Another, more drastic, but much more widely beneficial approach is to cache the startup state after the toolkit libs are loaded in a disk image. After first generation, that image is reloaded at login, rather than recalculating it from the toolkits' startup logic each time. The image is largely deterministic, before user input (reverse Catch-22 ;), except for the sysclock, and some network state. Clean logout/shutdowns can force that state to be more consistent across logout/shutdowns. Just loading the precalculated image from disk to memory is much faster than regenerating it, with even a 128MB image loading in about 30 seconds. The image can be flushed and rebuilt periodically and on suspected corruption.

I'd love to cache my RAM image before logout, and pick up from there on relogin, just reloading the cache. A hash could ensure integrity, with the rehash-compare function running as a low priority task after login. But that is a really big project, even if it could make instant-on Linux desktops from FlashROM into a real Windows killer.

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MAC OS-X with new Cocoa based KDE will Gnome app? by watermodem · 2004-01-04 11:30 · Score: 1

With the recent non-X11 KDE port to Mac OS-X (cocoa based) does this hack permit Gnome apps to be compiled to run on the MAC too?

When the non-X11 KDE port to windows gets running will this permit both KDE and Gnome apps to run on windows?

If one or both of these are true then computing will get very interesting....

Re:Gnome is an excercise in egoism by unoengborg · 2004-01-04 11:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

A couple of years ago the difference in technology advancement was important in the choise between Gnome/Gtk and KDE/QT. Event though Qt still have a technological lead, Gtk of today is good enough.

Having good enough technology, focus shifts to usability. This is needed to attract new non tech savy users. In this field Gnome has much more to offer than KDE. Anyone with a background in usability who looks at konqueror, the KDE flagship, can see this. While KDE still exels in the number of functions, Gnome makes it simpler to find the functions used by most users. And that is a winning formula.

As there are far more experienced coders than there are usability experts active in the opensource movement, my guess is that Gnome will have a better chance of fixing their technical deficienses, than KDE to fix their usability problems.

And for the record, QT wouldn't have bin free software today if Gnome/Gtk hadn't offered a semi free (LGPL) competing alternative. So I would say that Gnome was founded for all the right reasons.

Still, I will miss KDE if Gnome comes out on top, as Qt is much easier to develop in than Gtk.
I was able to fix bugs in KDE within hours after I first saw the code, while I still have a lot to figure out in Gtk before I get to the same level.

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God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER

Most users don't know from "tool kit" by NotQuiteReal · 2004-01-04 12:46 · Score: 1

Hell, I program in old-school MFC, .NET and Qt. Heh, whatever pays the bills, eh.

I just fired up MediaPlayer, and it looks like a Windows program to me...

File View Play Tools Help

huh?

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This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.

Same look and feel? by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:22 · Score: 1

So why do Office and Visual Studio.NET look different to other Windows applications?

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

Not the same. by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:29 · Score: 1

That's not the same. See in theory with this Gtk->Qt theme 'wrapper', when you change the Qt theme, all Qt and Gtk+ applications will automatically repaint with the new theme. Now they just have to get it up to v1.0 and I can toss out Geramik. :-)

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

More than file dialogs... by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:47 · Score: 1

It would also be useful to have common 'drawing' routines for things like text areas. I have quoted the word 'drawing' because the feel of the widgets should also be uniform. I should be able to modify the context menus so that every application's right-click menu will use the same list of actions.

Unified look is a start. Unifeed feel is next. Surely Mac OSX can't be the only one who gets this right.

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

Re:Great, so now we can make GTK apps ugly also by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 13:51 · Score: 1

See I don't understand that. The Qt theme Keramik (which happens to be the KDE default at the moment) looks great, and is easy on the eyes. Meanwhile, Gtk's theme takes a whole lot of tweaking so it doesn't look so damn fuzzy.

Gtk's default theme wasn't just hard on the eyes, it actually caused me eye strain to the point where it was causing headaches. Luckily I learned about 'switch' and 'switch2', and changing the fonts and so forth eventually I got it to look just as sharp as Qt.

If users of GNOME would realise there is an equivalent tool for Qt called "qt-config", the bitching about Qt being "hard on the eyes" may go away overnight.

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

Re:MAC OS-X with new Cocoa based KDE will Gnome ap by fault0 · 2004-01-04 13:52 · Score: 1

> With the recent non-X11 KDE port to Mac OS-X (cocoa based) does this hack permit Gnome apps to be compiled to run on the MAC too?

Theoretically, but there is a great deal more than that for gtk to truly integrate with OSX (menubar, dock, bundle support, etc..) and there are easier ways (like using the Appearance Manager directly).

QT theme for GTK? by simcop2387 · 2004-01-04 13:56 · Score: 1, Funny

I'd like to see a similar thing for QT that uses the current GTK theme, but what happens when you turn on both of these!?!

Re:UGLY by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 14:05 · Score: 1

Bluecurve is one of the ugliest KDE themes available...

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LOL! by Trejkaz · 2004-01-04 14:09 · Score: 1

That sounds like the best thing ever!

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Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!

Re:MAC OS-X with new Cocoa based KDE will Gnome ap by unborn · 2004-01-04 14:13 · Score: 1

No, this development is relevant to the visual styles of gtk applications. It has nothing to do with native gtk on OSX.

I've read this... by kingkade · 2004-01-04 14:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yet Another QT Hacker will soon write a similar style for QT to use GTK to draw widgets, the result will be:

GTK: Please QT, draws me a button
QT : Please GTK, draws me a button
GTK: Please QT, draws me a button
QT : Please GTK, draws me a button
GTK: Please QT, draws me a button...

I've read this a couple of times and it still isn't funny.

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why run from Vincenzo?

Elitist: ..sorry; constraints: consensual view(?) by janbjurstrom · 2004-01-04 14:32 · Score: 1

Ok, I understand better now and would like to retract the elitist (correctly spelled this time) accusation, my apologies.

Your elaborations on willful ignorance, the problems with lack of incentives to learn, meritocracy, etc., are educational, and I agree. Also, the clarification/definition of "desktop" in this context makes sense. And I believe it points towards some form of consensual view.

I too, think it would be a bad idea, a very 'costly' and ultimately destructive evolution, if developers and users were constrained (forced) into conforming to one-and-only-one 'desktop'.

As a *nix 'semi-beginner', my interests lie in the empowering "development and programming aspects" of the OS/toolkits, community, and culture as a whole. In this context, I see many possibilities with tools that try to bridge incompabilities; tools that 'translate' between different cultural and/or technical views/solutions - or at least try to. (And I think this GTK-QT Theme Engine is an attempt in this general direction.)

Sometimes they create a new, unified and more powerful "Way" - deep down in the kernel, or high up in a GUI. More often, they probably (re)introduce weaknesses an original model or fork tried to overcome. Evolution hopefully continues to do its stuff.

The ability to put "everything" in a pipe is ingenious, for example. It's intriguing when people try to achieve something related at other levels of the system ecology.

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right way by Doc+Ruby · 2004-01-04 14:38 · Score: 1

Multiple layers of indirection always offer some performace hit. It's a tradeoff against features - if all you need is a paperweight, an unplugged computer is instantaneous ;). Proper design into tiers can minimize performace hits, eg. keeping all loops inside the same layer, rather than looping across multiple pointer dereferences. And the elimination of redundancy makes the call graphs more readable, therefore optimizable - by both programmer and compiler. That GTK and Qt are written in C (not C++ or other OO lang) indicates lots of cleanable spaghetti code, especially to my experienced GTK programming eye. Factoring code into layers of encapsulated objects has overhead, but real programs leverage that overhead into greater efficiency in the complex code of eg. GUIs. I remember the performance tweaks we got at Apple when we switched from the Pascal toolkit to native C++, (System7). And Apple has never looked back. Linux GUIs can learn a lot more than just look & feel from the Mac desktop.

The extra performance cost is much smaller than the benefit. KDE-look, by mapping GTK app calls to the Qt API, unifies the GUI layer into something describable as an inverted Y:

KDE-app GNOME-app
| |
+--KDE-look--+
|
Qt-libraries

Adding a "GNOME-look" equivalent would merely add another library set to the bottom layer:

KDE-app GNOME-app
| |
+--K/G-look--+
| |
Qt-libs GNOME-libs

With the extra logic in the "K/G-look" logic layer. The call graphs would not be any longer or more complex, in terms of extra layers. The extra logic would be precomputed at app startup, to switch given apps to their preferential toolkit libraries, and amount to fast switch/case statements for routing to the preferred library.

The better organization of the code, and the actual low cost of the runtime switching, offer a good benefit/cost ratio, at runtime. The state of the old project (called?) code, and the complexity of integrating it, is the benefit/cost ratio for coding it. On that, I'm talking out of my hat. Any ideas?

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Possible to go the other way? by jonadab · 2004-01-04 16:10 · Score: 1

Is it possible to go the other way, producing a Qt theme that draws using GTK?

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No Performance Loss by fault0 · 2004-01-04 16:37 · Score: 1

There isn't much of a performance loss at all.

- The GTK drawing logic in this GTK engine is a simple blit, which is *extremely* fast. Thus, the performance matches the performance of the Qt Style Plugin.
- Other platforms work like this- see WindowsXP's uxtheme.dll and MacOS 8.x/9.x/OSX's Appearance Manager.
- With both Qt and GTK, you can get function stacks about 30 function calls (I've seen this quite a few times while gdb'ing some apps)

Re:Claim: many KDE apps suck by Quattro+Vezina · 2004-01-04 18:36 · Score: 1

Here are some useful KDE programs:

KOffice (also competes with AbiWord)
Kate
Quanta
K3b
KMPlayer
Konsole
ot hers...

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I support the Center for Consumer Freedom

Not that different by r6144 · 2004-01-04 20:52 · Score: 1

One day I rewrote a gtk/glade-based application in C# (just to try out mono). Source code size went from 20kB in C to 18kB in C#. The size of the unwritten C++ version will probably lie somewhere in between (I don't use many things that can be simplified by using STL, while in C# a lot of "free"/"delete"s can be omitted). The problem in your logic is that, although "gtk_tree_path_append(path, 1)" is significantly longer than "path->append(1)", such library calls is usually only a not-so-big part of the UI code, which is in turn a not-so-big part of the whole program. Considering that most of the time is spent on designing and debugging, rather than typing, it is hard to see such simplification will help productivity much. A good library (such as Glib/STL/standard library of java and c#) or certain other language features (mostly just garbage collection) helps much more.

Re:Not that different by scotch · 2004-01-05 01:58 · Score: 1

When I say devleoping in C++ is easier than C, I don't mean just reduced typing time. C++ has features that make factoring and abstraction of code much easier: generics, objects, destructors, etc. I'm sorry I haven't programmed with gtk in a while, so I don't know off-hand what C++ idioms and paradigms might help, but maybe this would. You have a function that pops up a window. The function needs to always close and free the window, but there are multiple return paths from the function because of some other logic. In C, you either repeat code dealing with resource freeing or use goto stamements and labels (still tedious). In C++, you have put the object encapsulating the resource on the stack and then not worry about it thereafter. This advantage is increased for real code where some things are initialized and some things aren't - a C style case label would have to check them all. In C++, only automatic objects reached have destructors called.
You're correct about a godd library being important. Again, it's been a while since I used glib, but the stl is much easier to use and more powerful, in my recollection.

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XML causes global warming.

Re:Same code/different compiler or same job/diff l by BaconLT · 2004-01-04 23:15 · Score: 1

Exactly.
Make copy constructors with output statements and you'll see. Especially if you use the STL. If you don't, you probably reimplement it on your own, which is a pretty bad way to be a generic programmer.

I didn't invent the idea, my grad school Advanced Programming Concepts II professor suggested it. If you disagree with my statements, make your argument to him. You'll be doing a service to all, I suppose.

http://www.monm [anti-email-harvesters] outh.edu/~rclayton

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Who mediates your information?

Re:Same code/different compiler or same job/diff l by BaconLT · 2004-01-04 23:23 · Score: 1

Oh, and by the way, perhaps you didn't read my email. Perhaps that's why you feel it's important to remain in anonymity?

I said dynamic memory. In C++ with classes that means the "rule of three:" if you have any one, you probably need all three of:

copy constructors
assignment operators
destructor
If you're never writing copy constructors, and you're passing by reference, you're not using dynamic memory. And the STL uses it for you, you're not using it there.

Put your objects in a vector, and put a verbose copy constructor in it, and see what happens throughout your program.

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Who mediates your information?

Re:Same code/different compiler or same job/diff l by scotch · 2004-01-05 02:07 · Score: 1

I don't understand in what case you think dynamic memory in C++ involves excessive calls to copy constructors? Perhaps you could provide a short example?

I use dynamic memory in C++ all the time and it's minimally just as easy as C and usually better because you can leverage other features of C++ (e.g. RAII). I write C++ professionally, but no, I don't have a PhD in C++

As far as you last statement, I'm talking minimally about the same code, people that dislike C++ often forget that C++ encompasses C; i.e. C programming styles are part of the toolbox of C++. However, beyond that, C++ provides additional tools and paradigms that give the advantages I mentioned.

Please, concrete examples where dynamic memory management in C++ is a disaster? Afterall, you can use (and I sometimes do) use malloc/realloc/free in C++.

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XML causes global warming.

Re:Same code/different compiler or same job/diff l by scotch · 2004-01-05 02:20 · Score: 1

Put your objects in a vector, and put a verbose copy constructor in it, and see what happens throughout your program.

If the objects are small, then the copying done by the vector will be likely inconsequential. If the objects are larger, but the vector doesn't get rearranged very often (e.g. things are only added to it), you'll still do ok because of the growing behaviour of vectors (constant amortized time). If the objects are large, and you're worried about this, you can use a vector to pointers to the object - just like you would maintain an array of things in C but with lots more features. Then the copy constructor won't be invoked for any of the vector operations. Finally, a called copy constructor represent the same amount of work you'd have to do with C initializations and memcpy style struct copying. The copy constructor provides a convenient way to abstract this work to improve the life of the programmer. In C++, the copy constructor can often be inlined, and is often largely optimized away, though your instrumentation will likely be the most expensive part of the code, after the optimization.

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You can't fool me! by ShecoDu · 2004-01-05 05:00 · Score: 1

I bet you were the anonymous coward that submitted the story, and then you posted this comment to try to fool us... well... you certainly didn't fool me! :) just kidding

nice job.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy? by frank_adrian314159 · 2004-01-05 06:04 · Score: 1

Arrgh, why does this awful legend still exist? Canopy owns a very, very small stake in Trolltech, while the employees hold more than 2/3 (IIRC) of the stock.

Because it's true?

Every penny paid to a successful company that Canopy owns acts as financial backing for Canopy's more... let us say... unsavory activities. Even if Canopy holds a minority portion, each of the dollars held in a worthwhile stock acts as part of the collateral for loans/bonds/deals and, ultimately, solvency for Canopy. When you sell your stock to dogs, you get fleas. Don't try to rewrite the rules of finance just because you happen to like the company that the symbiote is hanging with...

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That is all.

Re:Same code/different compiler or same job/diff l by BaconLT · 2004-01-05 06:42 · Score: 1

If I wasn't a part of this thread, I'd mod you up. Thanks for an intelligent response as opposed to the standard anonymous flaming without any technical base we've grown so accostomed to on /.

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Re:Most users don't know from "tool kit" by be-fan · 2004-01-05 08:58 · Score: 1

Well hell, my KDE apps go "File View ... Help" too. That doesn't make them look like Windows apps. My point is that WMP, by default anyway, uses completely different seperators, buttons, scrollbars, sliders, etc, than a normal Windows app. It doesn't even have a menu until you move your mouse towards where the menu should be, and one appears. That doesn't exactly strike me as usable.

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