GTK 2.4.0 Released

As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:09 · Score: 4, Funny

...I'll be really happy that it's finally released.

Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:14 · Score: 5, Informative

FTFA:

GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites.

GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However, the licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties.

GTK+ is based on three libraries developed by the GTK+ team:

GLib is the low-level core library that forms the basis of GTK+ and GNOME. It provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads, dynamic loading, and an object system.
Pango is a library for layout and rendering of text, with an emphasis on internationalization. It forms the core of text and font handling for GTK+-2.0.
The ATK library provides a set of interfaces for accessibility. By supporting the ATK interfaces, an application or toolkit can be used with such tools as screen readers, magnifiers, and alternative input devices.

GTK+ has been designed from the ground up to support a range of languages, not only C/C++. Using GTK+ from languages such as Perl and Python (especially in combination with the Glade GUI builder) provides an effective method of rapid application development.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Neil+Blender · 2004-03-16 11:22 · Score: 1

Hmmmm, this is true and sad: The first indication I got that Glib was vitally important was when I uninstalled it using red-carpet. I did manage to keep it running long enough to tar up and ftp my home directory off my system.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Gherald · 2004-03-16 11:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

Good rule of thumb: do not uninstall anything with 'lib' in it. Odds are it is a 'library', which means it is used by other programs!

--
The unofficial /. digest
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by sydb · 2004-03-16 11:34 · Score: 1, Informative

I hazard a guess that was glibc, not glib. glibc is fundamental to your system - it is the GNU C library. glib is a bunch of nice things that GTK uses.

I'd give you links but gnu.org is slow just now.

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by sydb · 2004-03-16 11:36 · Score: 2, Informative

One of the nice things about Debian is that if I apt-get remove something, before removing it, apt-get will tell me if it's going to have to remove other things that depend on it, and give me the chance to cancel.

Does redcarpet not do this?

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:37 · Score: 0

I don't think he'd have kept his system running long enough to transfer stuff to another system if he'd just uninstalled glibc. Sounds like he removed something useful but not essential. Maybe glib, for example.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by sydb · 2004-03-16 11:44 · Score: 1

I don't think he'd have kept his system running long enough to transfer stuff to another system if he'd just uninstalled glibc. Sounds like he removed something useful but not essential. Maybe glib, for example.

Dunno, maybe his cp is statically linked. But my point is, if it was just glib, it could simply be reinstalled, no need to sweat.

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-16 11:53 · Score: 2, Informative

On most systems, tar is dynamically linked to glibc. It was probably glib (why on *earth* Red Carpet let him remove it without complaining about dependencies is beyond me). If he had his system set up to use gdm and kicked it into runlevel 5 at startup and the guy didn't know how to use CLI utils (I'm guessing this is the case if he's using Red Carpet), this could pretty much screw you over.

--
May we never see th
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by sydb · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 0, Redundant

S'pose. Red Carpet must be awful.

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by hazzey · 2004-03-16 12:14 · Score: 1

all that I need to know is that it makes fonts actually readable in Mozilla Firebird under linux!
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by maw · 2004-03-16 12:29 · Score: 2, Informative

1) Red Carpet would have said what it was going to remove
2) Red Carpet has a CLI, very useful
3) I know how to use a CLI, and I use Red Carpet all the time. By far the easiest way to keep the numerous systems I'm responsible for updated.

--
You're a suburbanite.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by mrogers · 2004-03-16 13:16 · Score: 2, Informative

Even better, run debfoster occasionally. Debfoster asks you what packages you want to keep and then removes all packages (including libs) that are not required by the programs you've decided to keep.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Captain+Rotundo · 2004-03-16 13:30 · Score: 1

that should have been easy as nothing critical to the system uses glib... unless your confusing it with glibc ?

Maybe you should use a packaging system that warns about dependancies ?
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:42 · Score: 1, Insightful

especially in combination with the Glade GUI builder

That is, if you think Glade is a good tool. Blech.
Re:As soon as I figure what this things does.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:00 · Score: 0

You are a total sissy fag

So.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:10 · Score: 1, Offtopic

did they fix XInput method support? Or am I the only one having problems with XInput and Gtk+ 2.2?

Re:So.. by epiphani · 2004-03-16 11:25 · Score: 0, Interesting

I *pray* they didnt break anything big again. 2.1 was hell, 2.2 wasnt bad, 2.3 was annoying.

[karma burn]

What exactly was wrong with libc5 that glib had to come along and fark up things anyway?

[/karma burn]

--
.
Re:So.. by pe1rxq · 2004-03-16 11:35 · Score: 2, Informative

You are confusing glib with glibc (aka libc6).
glib is a library with some higher level stuff than the kernel-user glue that is libc.

Jeroen

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Re:So.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:38 · Score: 1, Informative

glib != glibc.

glib is a set of portable data structures and other useful misc. functions. e.g. portable threading, portable 64-bit ints, portable random numbers, portable date/time functions, etc.

It's used primarily by GTK+ (and GTK+ applications).
Re:So.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

me too. i had to make two separate sets of entries in XF86Config... one set to use my tablet as a mouse, the others to use it as a tablet in gimp. but once that configuration hell was over, it's only locked up once in many months. of course it shouldn't freeze at all :)
Re:So.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:04 · Score: 0

I had nothing but problems with my Drawing tablet on GTK. Also if I resize my windows, its just a mess of shit all over the screen, what the hell is so hard with repainting on a resize? This toolkit just has FREE written all over it, its shitware. Could be worse but what this is is spasticware. Just cant be taken seriously for professional applications where usability is an issue.
Re:So.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 21:44 · Score: 1, Informative

What exactly was wrong with libc5 that glib had to come along and fark up things anyway?

Apart from the fact that you've confused Glib with Glibc, if you really have to ask that question then you wouldn't understand the answer. Suffice it to say that Glibc2 is better than libc5 in many ways, including things like symbol versioning.

How long? by rwiedower · 2004-03-16 11:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

Until this makes it into the win32 version of the GIMP? Or will this make any difference?

Re:How long? by QuantumG · 2004-03-16 11:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

Come on, it's a wonder GTK 2.2.4 ever got a win32 port.

--
How we know is more important than what we know.
Re:How long? by nadolph · 2004-03-16 11:32 · Score: 0

I hope its soon. Maybe this will stop GAIM (win32) from crashing every 20 minutes.

--
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
Re:How long? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:20 · Score: 1, Interesting

I wouldn't expect it to make much difference the GIMP developers are pretty careful about what features they use and I'm pretty sure the Linux version doesn't even depend on GTK2.2 yet
Re:How long? by grilo · 2004-03-16 12:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

To be honest, I believe GTK will start get much better within the win32 platform. The gnumeric guys are trying to port the spreadsheet, and they'll probably give a push to GTK developers.
Re:How long? by Yaa+101 · 2004-03-16 13:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, but photoshop didn't give us GTK and Gnome. :P
Re:How long? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:38 · Score: 0

just becasue people are unaware of an alternative doesnt make it less usable. Well most photoshop users are not aware of it. considering most photoshop users are not using a legal copy in the first place. They got it because it does what they need it to, they wouldnt pay for it though.

zealots will keep equating with usage rate and quality of application.
Re:How long? by Azghoul · 2004-03-17 02:52 · Score: 1

I'm thinking it's your configuration. I have gaim open every day, 8-9 hours a day (work), and it has yet to crash on me.
Re:How long? by nadolph · 2004-03-17 15:05 · Score: 0

What version are you using? Im using .75 and it crashes often when people send messages to me.

--
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
Re:How long? by Azghoul · 2004-03-18 09:40 · Score: 1

.74, but I'm wondering if it might be GTK instead. I'm using 2.2.4-2 Revision A (according to the "WinGaim" options in the Gaim Preferences).

It's the little things.... by klipsch_gmx · 2004-03-16 11:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

... like glib, gnet, gtk+ (hah! little! and now, brand new!) but you know what I mean - these were things that people needed, so they wrote. We all benefit, and so does linux and unix.

I guess one of the strengths of the unix development model is that my SGI and Sun boxes have all the linux libraries on them, and I don't think that's at all strange...

Unix (before linux became mainstream) didn't have as much work in the class libraries (which like it or loath it, VC++ provided quite well).... Now it does.

Re:It's the little things.... by sydb · 2004-03-16 11:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

All hail Lord Stallman; praise to St Ignucius.

Those "linux libraries" are not "linux" libraries, they are GNU libraries.

That's why they run on things that aren't linux.

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:It's the little things.... by leandrod · 2004-03-16 11:42 · Score: 4, Informative

> my SGI and Sun boxes have all the linux libraries

Only these aren't Linux libraries, but GNU ones.
No matter how do you call the GNU/Linux OS, these libraries are under the GNU Project umbrella, they have little to do with Linus Torvalds.
Moreover since they've been adopted by the BSDs and Unices as well, and even run on CygWin, they could also be properly called POSIX-based libraries.

--
Leandro GuimarÃ£es Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Re:It's the little things.... by JustinXB · 2004-03-16 11:42 · Score: 1, Informative

I don't see that a good thing necessarily. I've gone through the pain of compiling programs that had dozens of libraries needed because the author was too lazy to write a single function. Having all these libraries an arm reach away has made modern programmers lazy and less knowledgeable. However, I do agree such libraries as GTK+ are needed.
Re:It's the little things.... by DShard · 2004-03-16 11:52 · Score: 2, Funny

Every time you say linux libraries you make baby stallman cry.
Re:It's the little things.... by YOU+LIKEWISE+FAIL+IT · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

I don't see that a good thing necessarily. I've gone through the pain of compiling programs that had dozens of libraries needed because the author was too lazy to write a single function. Having all these libraries an arm reach away has made modern programmers lazy and less knowledgeable.
This is a tragic mis-statement. What it has done is extended the power of complex, standard behaviors and routines to other programmers, allowed for centralised bug fixing as well as system wide improvments and feature enhancements. Code reuse has allowed us to build complex software in short time periods to meet ever diminishing deadlines.

Even if the use of standard libraries made programmers 'lazy' and 'less knowledgeable' ( I can't believe I'm writing this ), how does this in any way negatively impact their output provided they have access to these amazing laze inducing libraries?

It almost makes me sad to read this post. My computing forebears slaved and suffered in a living hell of replicated work and wasted maintainance time - we have these tremendous advantages at our disposal, and they are characterised as some kind of enemy of programming moral fiber.

--
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Re:It's the little things.... by G-funk · 2004-03-16 12:55 · Score: 0

Am I the only one wanting to run around the room yelling "linux libraries" just to make baby stallman cry?

--
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Re:It's the little things.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:21 · Score: 0

That was hilarious. I can't stop laughing.
Re:It's the little things.... by Jason+Earl · 2004-03-16 13:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Code reuse is the "good" sort of laziness. It saves time, memory (shared libs are good), and it allows for easier centralized testing. Basically code reuse is the sort of laziness that saves time and energy for everyone involved.
Not using a packaging manager is the "bad" sort of laziness.
Re:It's the little things.... by Mysteray · 2004-03-16 14:07 · Score: 1

Moreover since they've been adopted by the BSDs and Unices as well, and even run on CygWin, they could also be properly called POSIX-based libraries.

Acutally, they also run on Win32 even without cygwin. So I don't know what you'd call them except freakin' portable.
Re:It's the little things.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:23 · Score: 0

Tragic mis-statement, indeed.

The real point of GNU libraries is to free ourselves, so your use of
"fore-bearers slaving" was quite apt. If I never have to write a linked
list as long as I live, the world will be a better place. As the level
of abstraction gets higher, the readability and design-ability of
software will increase, regardless of the programming language.

I expect more stylized code, not less, due to the increasing
sophistication of GNU libraries. The idioms of programming are
expanding, in all languages.

Personally, I think the quality of the GNU libraries, and associated
free libraries, is only getting higher. It's very interesting to watch,
and the design progress is fascinating. ... and the resultant systems
that people are building out of all these pieces are really quite amazing.
Re:It's the little things.... by leandrod · 2004-03-16 14:27 · Score: 1

> they also run on Win32 even without cygwin

Interesting... references?
But this does not negate they are definetly not Linux libraries.

--
Leandro GuimarÃ£es Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Re:It's the little things.... by JW+Troll · 2004-03-16 14:39 · Score: 0

his beef is still valid, however, even if the reasoning isn't sound. Software installation/removal sucks (at least RPM 4 is pretty nasty..) and anybody trying to download GAIM for example ends up downloading 100 MB of crap for seemingly no reason. At least that's what it feels like. Even apt can't ease the pain of installing a tiny app and ending up with 30MB an hour later.

--
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
Re:It's the little things.... by Mysteray · 2004-03-16 14:42 · Score: 2, Informative

http://www.dropline.net/gtk/
Re:It's the little things.... by lurgyman · 2004-03-16 14:53 · Score: 1

But.... that's a problem with binary RPMs being built against every library and its mother, not a problem with using libraries.
Re:It's the little things.... by torpor · 2004-03-16 21:26 · Score: 1

This is a tragic mis-statement. What it has done is extended the power of complex, standard behaviors and routines to other programmers, allowed for centralised bug fixing as well as system wide improvments and feature enhancements. Code reuse has allowed us to build complex software in short time periods to meet ever diminishing deadlines.

No, programmers are lazy. It makes no sense to have so much shit in /usr/lib ... for which, on my scarcely used box, the count is over 1gig ...

Okay. Laziness on one side and "NIH" syndrome on the other.

--
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Re:It's the little things.... by fforw · 2004-03-16 23:35 · Score: 1

Am I the only one wanting to run around the room yelling "linux libraries" just to make baby stallman cry?
yes..

--
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Re:It's the little things.... by handslikesnakes · 2004-03-17 07:12 · Score: 1

If you had less stuff in /usr/lib you would end up with more in /usr/bin.
The instructions have to go somewhere - in fact, if programmers didn't use libraries the binaries would be larger than the library directories, as there would be no reuse of code.

Incidentally, have you looked into stripping your libraries?

KDE compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:11 · Score: 0

Can I run KDE apps in Gnome?

Re:KDE compatibility? by Bull999999 · 2004-03-16 11:21 · Score: 1

I was about to run KDE apps in GNOME under Red Hat 8.0 and I believe you can do the same in earlier versions as well.

--
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Re:KDE compatibility? by AuMatar · 2004-03-16 11:24 · Score: 5, Informative

As long as you have the KDE libraries installed, it doesn't matter what your desktop is.

--
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Re:KDE compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:40 · Score: 0

No, but the need for two sets of libraries to support desktop applications is amusing. If this were 'Doze, the crowd cries 'bloat', but since it's *nix the cry 'choice'.
Suh-weet double standard...
Re:KDE compatibility? by Lussarn · 2004-03-16 11:50 · Score: 1

You are free to run whatever you want. You can install/uninstall Gnome and KDE you know.
Re:KDE compatibility? by pe1rxq · 2004-03-16 11:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

Nah... Bloat would be if your program would actually need them both and a third redundant dependancy is introduced in the service pack.
Gtk programs only use a subset of all those installed libraries, they are not bloated.
Likewise QT programs don't use all those libraries so it is not bloated either.
Compare the space needed to install two complete desktop environments including several office suites with just one typical windows install and you will see which one is bloated.

Jeroen

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Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Re:KDE compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 0

Not sure what you mean by "in" Gnome.

He means .. if he's running Gnome, can he run KDE apps. Seemed obvious to me.
Re:KDE compatibility? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:05 · Score: 0

I suggest executing kdeinit so that the QT/KDE libs are already loaded. Speeds up loading KDE apps tremendously. I put it in my .xsessions before loading gnome-session (I don't know if that's the best place, but it works). My major complaint about KDE apps taking such a huge amount to load disappeared after that.
Re:KDE compatibility? by bcrowell · 2004-03-16 17:41 · Score: 1

There is sort of the same problem in reverse, though. As time goes on, KDE apps are getting more and more tightly integrated with each other, and with the KDE desktop. For instance, kaddressbook puts your address book file in some obscure directory, and if you want to change its location, you can only change it using the KDE desktop. If you don't have the KDE desktop installed, you're out of luck. Knode tries to run kwallet every time you exit; really annoying if you don't want to run kwallet. Also, dunno if this has changed recently, but back when I was running KDE as my desktop, every time I selected a URL with the mouse in *any* application, KDE would try to start up konqueror for me.
I wish the KDE folks would let us use individual apps without assuming we want to go KDE lock, stock, and barrel...

--
Find free books.
Re:KDE compatibility? by AuMatar · 2004-03-16 18:16 · Score: 1

GNOME is doing the same type of thing. But I agree. They ought to use environment variables, or something of the sort.

--
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?

Just in time for... by bonch · 2004-03-16 11:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

...Gnome 2.6, due out March 22nd.

Re:Just in time for... by Great_Jehovah · 2004-03-16 13:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sorry, Linux desktops still have godawful, retina-burning, headache-inducing font-rendering, even with all options on.

Compared to what? TT Text fonts with Xft are certainly much easier on the eyes under linux/gtk/x11/gnome than they are under Windows XP.
Re:Just in time for... by JW+Troll · 2004-03-16 14:53 · Score: 0

last time i looked, mandrake had font-smearing on by default. i had to hunt all over to fix it.
Even winxp doesn't do that.

hint: disable anti-aliasing.

--
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net

Mirror by after · 2004-03-16 11:13 · Score: 1

This is pretty cool, cant wait to upgrade.

Here is a mirror of the frontpage(es)

New File Dialog by koh · 2004-03-16 11:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

This release should clear the most litigious point against GTK+ : the file dialog.

Recent screenshots on gnomedesktop.org seem to prove they did the job right.

However, anyone knows if the WIN32 is far behind or up to date with this release ?

--
Karma cannot be described by words alone.

Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:17 · Score: 0

This release should clear the most litigious point against GTK+ : the file dialog.

What does the file dialog have to do with errno.h??
Re:New File Dialog by BHearsum · 2004-03-16 11:20 · Score: 1

I still have no clue what the hell is wrong with the file dialog. I love it. Please, someone tell me what's wrong with it.
Re:New File Dialog by BHearsum · 2004-03-16 11:22 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Please don't tell me your talking about this screenshot. That thing is more horrid than the QT file selector.
Re:New File Dialog by after · 2004-03-16 11:24 · Score: 2, Informative

It does not allow one to navigate as they would be with somthing like the KDE file dialog.

Fortunetely, there is an alternative
Re:New File Dialog by LMCBoy · 2004-03-16 11:26 · Score: 3, Funny

This release should clear the most litigious point against GTK+ : the file dialog.

Oh really? How many people have been sued over the old file dialog? Or maybe you meant contentious.

--
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Re:New File Dialog by koh · 2004-03-16 11:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Please use the new one for one week, then try reverting to the old one ;)

More seriously, GTK file dialog has always been click-intensive if you want to go higher the filesystem (and focus-input-clear-selection-type-slash-tab-and-use -completion is not an option for most users ;)

--
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Re:New File Dialog by niiler · 2004-03-16 11:30 · Score: 5, Informative

The problem is that if you want users to only be able to select a single package type, say *.tgz, you have to spin your own dialog. The current filtering is virtually non-existant. If you do try to use it, it can hide directories that don't have the correct extension.
From the release notice: "The new GtkFileChooser widgets provide a radically simplified and improved way for users to select files. Application writers now are provided with such capabilities such as customizable filters and previews. The filesystem access is encapsulated as a dynamically loaded module; as an example of what this allows, libgnomeui now provides a gnome-vfs backend for GtkFileChooser so that it has the same view of remote filesystems as applications such Nautilus."
This is cool stuff as it will certainly improve the perception and use of GTK.
Re:New File Dialog by koh · 2004-03-16 11:33 · Score: 1, Funny

Glad to see one more who opposes the button order change. Maybe we should start a mailing list ;)

--
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
Re:New File Dialog by RickHunter · 2004-03-16 11:33 · Score: 0, Troll

Oh yea gods, that's UGLY! It looks like they blindly copied the one KDE uses (which is actually quite nicely designed, though it could be better) without actually thinking about what they were doing.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:33 · Score: 0

Still better than previous file selector.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:43 · Score: 0

Tell me about it. I actually LIKE Gnome quite a bit in most regards but I can't use the damn thing because the HIG is totally f***ed. Forget mailing lists. How about a repository of every Gnome app with the button order switched around the RIGHT way. We could call it the Emong project! ...or we can just say the hell with it and move to KDE. It's decent I guess, and a lot less work.
Re:New File Dialog by macshit · 2004-03-16 11:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

My god.

Please tell me that isn't really the `new file selector'.

The old selector was pretty basic, but also pretty straight-forward, and super-fast to use with the keyboard because of the great completion functionality.

This new dialog is not only much more confusing looking, but seems bloated, rather ugly, and doesn't have the text entry box -- i.e, they removed the one great feature they used to have!

I know they're attempting to appeal to inexperienced users, but they always seem to (1) do so in a way that pisses off experienced users, and (2) botch things up in the inexperienced-user case anyway.

Hopefully someone will come up with a less crappy file-selector and all the major distros (at least debian) will use it.

--
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Re:New File Dialog by BHearsum · 2004-03-16 11:53 · Score: 1

No text entry box?! I hope to god debian doesn't 'upgrade' to 2.4.0 anytime soon.
Re:New File Dialog by Lussarn · 2004-03-16 11:54 · Score: 4, Informative

If you press ctrl-l with the fileselector open you get a textentry box with tab-completion.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:55 · Score: 0

Text entry is enableable. There's also talk of typeahead, but I'm not sure if it's implemented yet, or comes in a 2.4.x point release.

(Where typeahead means just type, without the text entry box, and you go/select where you would've, with the text box.)
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:03 · Score: 0

It's not KDE or Qt, so I'm going to post lots of messages saying how much I hate it.

-- typical KDE super-fan on slashdot
Re:New File Dialog by Tack · 2004-03-16 12:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

I know they're attempting to appeal to inexperienced users, but they always seem to (1) do so in a way that pisses off experienced users, and (2) botch things up in the inexperienced-user case anyway.
I'm sure you like to pretend to think you know what you're talking about, but the design of this new file selector was not haphazard. There were long, arduous debates on the various, related lists about the UI and API and various use-cases for both beginner and advanced users.
Please set aside your righteous indignation and consider reading the list archives on desktop-devel-list, gtk-list, and others, and read the issues that the developers and designers have weighed and addressed in the design of the new file selector.
I'm sure nobody would say it's perfect, but you're grossly mistaken if you think it was blindly hacked together without regard to usability and API.
Jason.
Re:New File Dialog by Coryoth · 2004-03-16 12:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Hmmm, comparing KDE with GTK I would have to say mostly it follows the usual difference between GNOME and KDE that has been apparent in the last year or two: GNOME has focussed on a slimmed down, simplified model with emphasis on clean and simple, while KDE has focussed on providing options.
To be honest, however, from what I've gathered the GNOME people have been far more influenced by Apple than KDE.
And finally - when you come down to it, it's a file selector, there;s not a whole lot innovative you can do with it. The KDE file selector doesn't look overly different from the Windows one, so really, is it any surprise that GNOME follows a vaguely similar line?
Jedidiah.

--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Re:New File Dialog by jrockway · 2004-03-16 12:18 · Score: 2, Informative

Um, your first link is from 2000 and GTK1. That's a bit old.

--
My other car is first.
Re:New File Dialog by macshit · 2004-03-16 12:19 · Score: 1

There were long, arduous debates on the various, related lists about the UI and API and various use-cases for both beginner and advanced users.

Well, I'll reserve judgement until gtk 2.4 hits the streets.

However long and arduous debates are not a guarantee of anything. The gtk/gnome hackers have never shown any particularly great judgement at UI design though, so I'm not really all that optimistic.

--
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Re:New File Dialog by Bombcar · 2004-03-16 12:30 · Score: 1

How the heck can I get tab completion in the Mozilla "Load file" dialog? Such a thing would be very nice. :)

--
Fellowship 9/11
Re:New File Dialog by steveha · 2004-03-16 12:33 · Score: 4, Informative

This new dialog is not only much more confusing looking, but seems bloated

I disagree. It has many new features compared to the old dialog, and they are cleanly laid out. You have bookmarks now, to quickly go to a folder you use often; there is a preview available now; and there are many different ways to quickly get to the folder you want (e.g. you can go up two folders with one click; you can go to your home directory with one click; etc.)

rather ugly

Matter of taste. That screenshot is using a theme I don't personally like, but in a more soothing theme, the new dialogs look just fine.

and doesn't have the text entry box -- i.e, they removed the one great feature they used to have!

Calm down. The text-entry box is still there if you want it. If it's not showing, as in that screenshot, Ctrl+L will make it appear. If you are a keyboard fan, you shouldn't have much trouble hitting one extra keystroke.

For a Save dialog, you don't even have to hit Ctrl+L; it's only the Open dialog that defaults to mouse-only operation.

I know they're attempting to appeal to inexperienced users, but they always seem to (1) do so in a way that pisses off experienced users, and (2) botch things up in the inexperienced-user case anyway.

During the months of discussion and testing before this release, did you provide any feedback to help them? If not, then perhaps you might want to hold back a bit on the abuse directed towards the GTK developers.

Hopefully someone will come up with a less crappy file-selector and all the major distros (at least debian) will use it.

Hey, it's free software. Fire up your favorite image editor, and start mocking up how it should look. I'm sure OSNews would publish an article about your new design, and I'm sure that someone, somewhere in the world, would code up a prototype for you. Or you could even code it yourself!

As for me, I am content with the new dialog and I'm looking forward to its arrival in Debian Unstable.

steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Re:New File Dialog by Skjellifetti · 2004-03-16 12:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm sure you like to pretend to think you know what you're talking about, but the design of this new file selector was not haphazard. There were long, arduous debates on the various, related lists about the UI and API and various use-cases for both beginner and advanced users.

Remember, though, that a camel is a horse designed by committee. Long, arduous debates do not guarantee a successful design.

--
FreeSpeech.org
Re:New File Dialog by prockcore · 2004-03-16 12:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

libgnomeui now provides a gnome-vfs backend for GtkFileChooser so that it has the same view of remote filesystems as applications such Nautilus

That rules, and it's about time. This means you can say file open, and then select a smb:// share

A while ago I was working on a gnome-vfs module that added support for itunes shares. This would mean that you could use xmms (assuming it ever gets updated for 2.0) and browse and play songs shared in itunes.

Now I think I've got some incentive to finish that module.
Re:New File Dialog by multi+io · 2004-03-16 13:19 · Score: 1

The filesystem access is encapsulated as a dynamically loaded module;
What will gtk_file_selection_get_filename() return if the user selected a file in the VFS tree that doesn't correspond to a file in the filesystem? Copying to a temporary behind-the-scenes and returning the temporary's name would be cheating. Returning the VFS path name would require the whole filesystem access in GTK+ to be "encapsulated as a module" as well (at which point you're better of just writing a filesystem driver for the kernel, which might be a better idea anyway).
Re:New File Dialog by azzy · 2004-03-16 13:20 · Score: 0

> Remember, though, that a camel is a horse designed by committee.

Wrong.
Re:New File Dialog by Raster+Burn · 2004-03-16 13:30 · Score: 1

just fyi,

check out the Bleep Media Player project. Bleep is XMMS ported to gtk+ 2
Re:New File Dialog by shellbeach · 2004-03-16 13:31 · Score: 1

If you press ctrl-l with the fileselector open you get a textentry box with tab-completion.

Is there any way to make this a permanent feature?? (i.e. not have to press ctrl-l all the time) The tab-completion text box was the only decent thing about the old gtk file selector dialogue - I can't believe they removed it!
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:32 · Score: 0

Look at beepmp.sf.net - it's a fork of Xmms, ported to gtk2.
Re:New File Dialog by Ragica · 2004-03-16 13:32 · Score: 0, Flamebait

GTK finally starting to fix the file dialog is sort of like Microsoft starting to fix its security problems... too little, too late... but the long afflicted faithful hail it as a great triumph and step forward.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:33 · Score: 0

As most developers say, if you don't like it, make one better. That is the benefit of OSS. If you do make one better, it is likely to be adopted by the community. It took many iterations to design the new File Selector and it is still a big improvement over the old.
Re:New File Dialog by lorien420 · 2004-03-16 13:34 · Score: 2, Informative

xmms with 2.0: http://beepmp.sourceforge.net/

--
"[We'll be] really getting inside your head and making it an unpleasant place to be" -- Trent Reznor
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:52 · Score: 1

If you press ctrl-l with the fileselector open you get a textentry box with tab-completion.

That's intuitive.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:56 · Score: 0

And given that a camel is a creature far better adapted to it's environment than a horse, what does that prove?
Re:New File Dialog by .com+b4+.storm · 2004-03-16 14:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you press ctrl-l with the fileselector open you get a textentry box with tab-completion.

Why can't they have it work similarly to the (new in Panther, I believe) file dialogs in OS X? In most apps now, when you have an open dialog box open, and you start typing with a / or ~ character, a little prompt pops up allowing you to type the path. This, to me, seems a bit more pleasant than having to bother with a separate key combo when I could just start typing the path and let the dialog box figure it out.

--
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:19 · Score: 0

litigious? Now I know a lot of people weren't happy with it, but I didn't realize anyone had actually sued over it. You'd think slashdot or groklaw would've covered the case.

[insert joke about SCO being behind it all here]
Re:New File Dialog by damiam · 2004-03-16 14:48 · Score: 1

Don't knock it until you use it. I'm not sure whether I'll like it or not, but I'm reserving judgement until after I see more than just a screenshot.
Also, remember that most of the work that's gone on here is in the underlying API. It's now possible for someone to completely redesign the dialog without breaking existing programs. Changes in UI can and probably will be made much more easily now. The current "new" design, therefore, is not set in stone to nearly the same extent as the last one.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:01 · Score: 0

Firstly, it's now "FileChooser" with a completely new API. The calling program must tell GTK+ it can handle remove URIs before it can ever possibly return them. It's been well thought out, they're ahead of you ;).
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:06 · Score: 0

you could help it along by...
1. download and install cygwin
2. setup cygwin with mingw or download mingw
3. read the readmes and help everyone by getting it to compile ;)
Re:New File Dialog by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:33 · Score: 1

Nor do they guarantee failure. Quoting cliches doesn't actually prove a point other than you can memorize cliches.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 17:40 · Score: 0

Don't worry, it won't hit stable for at least another 3 years.
Re:New File Dialog by chefren · 2004-03-16 18:44 · Score: 1

The default GTK2 dialog is worse than the GTK1 version.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 19:01 · Score: 0

It's funny. Laugh.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 00:02 · Score: 0

That may be so, but a horse is rubbish in the desert.
Re:New File Dialog by DreadSpoon · 2004-03-17 02:48 · Score: 1

So file a bug on bugzilla.gnome.org about it. :)

It's a good idea, perhaps one the GTK developers simply didn't think about. (Not every GNOME developer has access to an OS X machine to try out every little hidden detail you'd never guess from screenshots, after all. ~,^ )

The new file selector API makes it *very* easy to radically change the UI, because unlike the previous file selector API, aboslutely nothing about the UI or layout is exposed in the API. If you want to switch it to something like KDE, something like OS X, or somethign totally new, you can, and all apps will use the new layout and Just Work(tm). This isn't particularly ground breaking or spectacular, as that's how it should have been done form the start, but it *is* something to keep in mind for all those folks that want to experiment with alternative UIs.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 04:38 · Score: 0

And how about the discoverability of Ctrl-L? It's extremely UNobvious!. A person new to GNOME is almost certainly not new to GUIs in general, and most file selector GUIs provide text path entry.

GUIs are about maximising DISCOVERABILITY. GNOME really fails at this.
Re:New File Dialog by fader · 2004-03-17 04:49 · Score: 1

Fortunately, if you're using Debian, you won't have to worry about
upgrading until 2012, shortly after the much anticipated kernel upgrade to
2.0.

(-1 flamebait)

--
- fader
Re:New File Dialog by Tet · 2004-03-17 05:33 · Score: 1

You have bookmarks now, to quickly go to a folder you use often
This alone is worth the upgrade. I've been waiting for this for a long time, primarily for GIMP, where I have separate directories for the same image saved at different resolutions. Being able to quickly go to one or the other is a major win for me. I just hope they've implemented it per app, and not globally...

--
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Re:New File Dialog by juhaz · 2004-03-17 11:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Please use the new one for one week, then try reverting to the old one ;)

I kind of doubt that. The bastards have destroyed the keyboard usability for click-click-click obsessed idiots. Oh well.

More seriously, GTK file dialog has always been click-intensive if you want to go higher the filesystem

Click once on drop-down box, another click on the level you want to go to (alternatively, drag, you'll make it in one). To the other way, it's one double click per level, both are, well, just like every other file selector on the planet.

(and focus-input-clear-selection-type-slash-tab-and-use -completion is not an option for most users ;)

And why is it not an option? It's not like it's hard to do or anything, of course you must know the functionality is there but after that, it takes about five seconds to learn how tab-completion works.

Oh, and it's focused and selected by default, it's type-slash-tab.
Re:New File Dialog by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 11:10 · Score: 0

and a camel is rubbish in the forest.

whats up?
Re:New File Dialog by steveha · 2004-03-17 14:18 · Score: 1

I dunno. I personally would be happy if the text-entry box were there all the time.

I figure I can learn Ctrl+L -- especially since Mozilla-family web browsers use Ctrl+L to type in the location bar, which to me at least is kinda the same thing.

I hear that Mac OS X lets you just start typing and a text entry box appears. Maybe a future GNOME will do that.

Meanwhile this is way better than what we have now.

GUIs are about maximising DISCOVERABILITY. GNOME really fails at this.

I don't agree. GNOME has pared away all the wacky stuff, and what's left is easy to explore, so it's easy to discover things. Perhaps in some cases they pared away a little too much, but generally you can fix it with GConf.

It's not perfect, but I'd still rather run GNOME 2.x than anything else.

steveha

steveha

--
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Re:New File Dialog by djradon · 2004-03-17 19:26 · Score: 1

Can I get a save dialog with an address bar (like Explorer has?)

Fileselector by RichiP · 2004-03-16 11:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

Woohoo! Let's pound on that new fileselector and see if we can break it or make suggestions (to improve it).

Congratulations to the Gtk2 developers! How's the API documentation coming along? Last time I tried learning to program with gtk2, the API reference manual was soo incomplete (incomplete function description, calling semantics, etc.)

Re:Fileselector by krumms · 2004-03-16 11:27 · Score: 1

Last time I tried learning to program with gtk2, the API reference manual was soo incomplete (incomplete function description, calling semantics, etc.)

I had little trouble picking up GTK+ 2.0 and bits of GLlib. The reference manual is not "soo incomplete" - a few widgets are poorly documented, and you'll need to go digging elsewhere for info, but for most part it's not too horrendous.

Look into the tutorial anyway.

http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/
http://www.gtk.org /api/
Re:Fileselector by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-16 11:46 · Score: 2, Informative

I didn't have any problems with GTK per se -- though I did find insufficient documentation on auxilary projects like pango.

A quick glance indicates that the pango documentation has fleshed out nicely.

--
May we never see th
Re:Fileselector by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:03 · Score: 0

every think to read the header files? the documentation really is just to help hold your
hand... just take the time to look at the headers
and you'll not only figure out what something does
you'll learn to be a better programmer ;)

file selector by pyros · 2004-03-16 11:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

They have been using the new file selector in the Fedora Core 2 test1 release, which was supposed to freeze today for the test2 release. Very nice. Hopefully this means GNOME 2.6 will stabilize and be release in time to include them both in Fedora Core 2.

Re:file selector by RichiP · 2004-03-16 12:10 · Score: 2, Informative

I believe that is the intention.
Re:file selector by salimma · 2004-03-16 14:43 · Score: 1

At this point they would have to delay the OS to fit GNOME; you don't just rip out the default desktop and downgrade to the previous version without invalidating all the manhours put into bug testing.

Evolution was reverted to the 1.4.x series, but I believe further regressions would be unlikely at this point.

--
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut

This is great by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:15 · Score: 1, Informative

2.4 has signinficant new functionallity including the action based toolbar (which I have been waiting for) and bidirectional editing and interface flipping improvements (waiting for that too.) Good work, developers!

Gnooteekay by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:15 · Score: 0

Does anyone else think that GTK should be called "Gnooteekay"?

Well.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:16 · Score: 0

Well, they had to pick a platform they could compete on. [-1, Flamebait]

Sorry, just a little biased for Qt and against MFC (yes, I know there are better toolskits than MFC, but still...)

Now, if they only could... by carniz · 2004-03-16 11:18 · Score: 0

...fix that file sel..umm, nevermind.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yeah, it's called turning on the feature in your panel that collects all the window buttons for a given app into a single button with a menu. Now quit trolling and move on. This issue has been beaten to death over and over and over and...

Paaaaaaaaarty by WwWonka · 2004-03-16 11:21 · Score: 0

In celebration of the release of GIB, GTC, and er..uh Wango I say it's time to get completely trashed on #1fd12e beer!

Re:Wohoo by after · 2004-03-16 11:21 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Does Slashdot and OSN use the same time zone offset from UTC? They should, according to "International Standard Date and Time Notation"

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:22 · Score: 0

This issue has been beaten to death over and over and over and...

And it is still a problem.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Jeffrey+Baker · 2004-03-16 11:22 · Score: 3, Informative

Sounds like a window manager problem. My window manager (metacity) groups all GIMP windows together.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:25 · Score: 1

Only for people who don't understand how to use virtual desktops. MDI fscked, get used to it, move on.

C++ Interface? by 4of12 · 2004-03-16 11:27 · Score: 1

Not an expert, not a GTK regular, but a while back when I checked things out it looked like you had to use something like GTK-- or something to get a nice convenient C++ interface.

Is that still true, or have things changed significantly?

[No, I don't want to start a flamewar, either. Just curious.]

--
"Provided by the management for your protection."

Re:C++ Interface? by daserver · 2004-03-16 11:39 · Score: 2, Informative

It is: gtkmm.
Re:C++ Interface? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:41 · Score: 0

Back when I checked things out it looked like you had to use something like GTK-- or something to get a nice convenient C++ interface.

Is that still true, or have things changed significantly?

Do you realise that what you just said is, "you used to have to use the C++ interface to get a C++ interface, is that still true?"

Well, duh.
Re:C++ Interface? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:41 · Score: 0

That is true. For portability, GTK+ is C-based.

GTK-- works fine and provides all the functions, though. GTK+ was designed from the ground up to make it easy to create bindings for other languages.
Re:C++ Interface? by Erwos · 2004-03-16 12:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, you still do.

However, I really wouldn't raise my nose at GTKmm - it's actually VERY nicely done, and for someone who was raised on C++ and the STL (ie, most coders coming out of college now), it's much more intuitive than some other toolkits.

Trust me - GTKmm is no sacrifice at all.

-Erwos

--
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:27 · Score: 0

No, it is a program design problem. Why should a single application require multiple windows as separate processes? How does having multiple windows make using GIMP easier?

Why should GIMP require a window manager that groups related windows? Why does GIMP get a pass though it is a badly behaving application?

n00b by potpie · 2004-03-16 11:27 · Score: 5, Funny

says the n00b: "it's good to see that GTK is catching up with the kernel version."
says the 1337: "..."

--
Esoteric reference.

Re:n00b by John+Hurliman · 2004-03-16 21:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'd say it's nice that GTK is catching up with some of the QT/KDE features.

Unified dropdown box (editable and non-editable), file selection dialog with custom URLs (think KDE's fish:// samba:// webdav:// etc), menus and toolbars sharing common actions, enhanced right-to-left language support. This is an excellent example of open source software at work. One competitor has cool features, the other competitor integrates those features and noone is crying about patents, copyrighted interfaces, intellectual property or trade secret theft.

I'd like to see KDE take some of the Gnome project's ideas and pursue a more rigid user interface guideline (anyone see kalarm?) as well as support for disabilities (although the default font size after a Gentoo KDE-3.2 compile will please even the blind).

Re:COOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:27 · Score: 0

Ugh. My dreams are shattered...

GTK Announcement, not GIMP announcment by ortcutt · 2004-03-16 11:29 · Score: 2, Informative

GIMP 2.0 is coming in about a week and a half.

GIMP Mailing List Post

It has dockable windows. This is an announcement for GTK 2.4. I don't know whether GIMP 2.0 will use GTK 2.4.

Re:GTK Announcement, not GIMP announcment by swtaarrs · 2004-03-16 12:15 · Score: 2, Informative

This is an announcement for GTK 2.4. I don't know whether GIMP 2.0 will use GTK 2.4.

GIMP 2.0 will use whatever 2.x Gtk+ you have installed, they're all binary compatible.
Re:GTK Announcement, not GIMP announcment by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:47 · Score: 0

"GIMP 2.0 is coming in about a week and a half."

Didn't they say that two weeks ago?

So much for GIMP 2.0 being released before Christmas, how over optimistic was that!
Re:GTK Announcement, not GIMP announcment by ortcutt · 2004-03-16 15:39 · Score: 1

Thanks. I was wondering that.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Because, as you don't seem to understand, having a widget toolkit implement a friggin' *windowing subsystem* in order to fit your MDI world view is exceedingly stupid. MDI is broken. User case studies have shown that it confuses users more than it helps them. Get over it.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:30 · Score: 0

Nice troll. This thread is about having too many window icons on the application bar, not about having too many application windows.

Re:Wohoo by d3vi1 · 2004-03-16 11:31 · Score: 1

Dunno... it's the same submitter though(GMT+2 in .ro)

--
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.

not so by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:31 · Score: 4, Informative

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
(via Gnome Dictionary, incendentally)

Litigious Li*ti"gious, a. L. litigiosus, fr. litigium dispute, quarrel, fr. litigare: cf. F. litigieux. See Litigation. ...
2. Subject to contention; disputable; controvertible; debatable; doubtful; precarious.

I'd say that definition fits. Try using a dictionary next time, smartass.

Re:not so by gnugnugnu · 2004-03-16 12:28 · Score: 5, Funny

(via Gnome Dictionary, incendentally)
Dont you mean incidentally
Try using a dictionary next time, smartass.
Isnt that just ironical!!!

Anyway common usage of litigious means it doesn't make sense to use the word that way.
Re:not so by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 17:44 · Score: 0

Now, now, now... no need to be a LITIGIOUS bastard about the whole thing ;)
Re:not so by parksie · 2004-03-16 21:09 · Score: 1

While we're being picky, shouldn't that just be ironic?
Re:not so by ozbird · 2004-03-17 01:01 · Score: 1

incendentally adv. Unintential flaming.
Re:not so by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 01:41 · Score: 0

> While we're being picky, shouldn't that just be ironic?

You think he didn't do that on purpose?
Re:not so by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 01:44 · Score: 0

the word root is "incident"
incidentally: 2 results found
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=in cidenta lly

incedentally: not found
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=in cedenta lly

I double checked before I posted,
Re:not so by ozbird · 2004-03-17 09:14 · Score: 1

Try this:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=satire

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:33 · Score: 0

But I want to have GIMP in one button, but separate xterms in separate buttons, so how do I do that?

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:36 · Score: 2, Informative

Your panel should provide an option to configure which apps are collected into single buttons and which aren't. If your panel doesn't have this feature, make a feature request... it should be quite trivial to implement. It's still not a Gimp problem.

Glade2 by RichiP · 2004-03-16 11:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

From the Gtk2 Release announcement:

GTK+ has been designed from the ground up to support a range of languages, not only C/C++. Using GTK+ from languages such as Perl and Python (especially in combination with the Glade GUI builder) provides an effective method of rapid application development.

How is Glade2 development coming along in terms of supporting Gtk2 2.4? I visited their website and there doesn't seem to be any mention of it.

Re:Glade2 by WombatControl · 2004-03-16 12:22 · Score: 4, Informative

Glade2 development has stopped, and there's a full rewrite of Glade going on. The Glade3 code is currently in CVS, and will feature badly-needed features like redo/undo.

My guess is that Glade3 will support the new GTK 2.4 widgets.
Re:Glade2 by oddbudman · 2004-03-16 17:10 · Score: 1

Interesting you mention UNDO/REDO as this too is what drove me crazy with Glade-2. At one stage I didn't realise it had a widget hierachy view as on my system it starts hidden - this made it even more infuriating when making changes to gui layouts - no UNDO and no knowing what widget was owned by what.

Once I got the feel for it though I found glade most useful - can't wait till they REDO writing Glade and Glade-3 is out!

Sort of by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-16 11:40 · Score: 4, Informative

GTK-- (aka Gtkmm) is the official set of C++ bindings for GTK. (GTK+ is the official set of C bindings._ There have been some other projects to produce C++ bindings for GTK, but AFAIK you would normally use GTK-- if you were using a C++ interface to GTK.

Is there some reason you want to avoid using gtk--?

--
May we never see th

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:41 · Score: 0

No one has said anything about MDI in this thread except you. No one has a problem with multiple SDI windows. You simply aren't paying attention.

Or trolling. I'm beginning to think that IHBT.

Gentoo by RoadkillBunny · 2004-03-16 11:42 · Score: 1

Does anyone know when it will come to the portage tree?

--
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:44 · Score: 0

And presumably, if Gimp had a "feature" that caused it to randomly wipe the contents of the user's home directory, your response would be "Your kernel should provide an option to configure which apps are allowed to delete files in ~/ and which aren't. If your kernel doesn't have this feature, make a feature request... it should be quite trivial to implement"?

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:46 · Score: 0

OK, then, troll. Pray tell how does one implement "everything in one window" without MDI?

Any commerical companies using these? by beforewisdom · 2004-03-16 11:46 · Score: 1

I always here people theorize that the liscences that the GTK ( and QT ) are under will keep private comapanies from developing with these libraries. Has anyone else noticed differently?

Re:Any commerical companies using these? by deminisma · 2004-03-16 11:50 · Score: 1

GTK+ is licensed under the LGPL. This means companies and individuals can make closed source software that uses GTK+. QT is dual-licensed, one of the licenses being the GPL and the other being a commercial TrollTech one. This means you have to pay TrollTech a fee if you want to create closed software that utilises QT.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by beforewisdom · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 1

Thanks for the info.

I haven't seen any proprietary linux products done in the GTK or the QT yet.

Has anyone?

Steve
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:06 · Score: 0

vmware
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by sydb · 2004-03-16 12:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

The Kompany do proprietary QT products.

Don't know about GTK.

But please: proprietary software is evil

--
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by Too+Much+Noise · 2004-03-16 13:04 · Score: 5, Informative

not listed so far:
Opera (QT)
Adobe Photoshop Album (QT)
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by Erwos · 2004-03-16 13:46 · Score: 1

That might be a valid argument for Qt, but GTK+ is licensed under the LGPL. There's no issues linking your closed-source code to it, providing you provide the source to the LGPL code used.

QT == GPL
GTK+ == LGPL

-Erwos

--
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by jtev · 2004-03-16 13:55 · Score: 1

Netscape is done in GTK. While not exactly costly, still non-free

--
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by kundor · 2004-03-16 16:34 · Score: 1

I'm fairly sure netscape was done in motif...
mozilla uses gtk, though.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by jtev · 2004-03-16 18:57 · Score: 1

Netscape 6 and 7 use gtk+ I wasn't refering to the old versions.

--
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by 10Ghz · 2004-03-17 02:23 · Score: 1

This means you have to pay TrollTech a fee if you want to create closed software that utilises QT.

Incorrect. If you write in-house software, you can use the GPL'ed Qt and still keep the source closed. In-house-software is not distributed to the public, therefore you do not have to share the code.

Now, if you are planning to write proprietary software for profit, then you have to pay Trolltech.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by 10Ghz · 2004-03-17 02:26 · Score: 1

People alway complain how you have to pay TT if you want to write proprietary software that uses Qt. They also say that that fact makes GTK+ more attractive to companies since with GTK+ you do not have to pay. But still, it seems that there's more commercial Qt-apps available than there are commercial GTK+-apps available. So it seems that the licensing-"issue" is not an issue at all in real life.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Any commerical companies using these? by Knuckles · 2004-03-17 03:11 · Score: 1

Pagestream DTP is done in GTK 2.x

--
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:47 · Score: 1

Actually, I'm not. The toplevel poster sure sounded like he was trolling the MDI topic. After all, he said this:

"But is there any way to get GIMP to fit into a single process"

Sure sounds like someone complaining about The Gimp's SDI interface (where, presumably, said poster meant "window" when he said "process", as the post, as it is, makes no actual sense).

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:47 · Score: 0

MDI is broken. User case studies have shown that it confuses users more than it helps them. Get over it.

Translation:

Thousands of users: Please give us an option to use MDI.
GIMP zealot: We can't use MDI, it confuses people.
Users: We only want an option, you don't have to make it compulsory!
Zealot: Sorry, it's confusing. You don't want it.
Users: Yes we do.
Zealot: Well you can't have it. Get over it.
Users: Fuck this, we're going back to Windows.

great by thegreat682 · 2004-03-16 11:48 · Score: 1

wonderful, grand, hooray, yippie-do-dad... but still incompatible with gtk 1.x

--
Hard Hat Area: Sig Construction Zone

Re:great by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 15:19 · Score: 0

It was MEANT to be incompatible, dumbass.

included on Knoppix 3.4? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:48 · Score: 0

Does Knoppix 3.4 includes this? loadux.com is giving away free copies of this but I asume is only the beta version as there is not official 3.4 yet.

Re:Separate windows are fine by 0x0d0a · 2004-03-16 11:49 · Score: 1

I suspect that you can't. I don't use GNOME (well, as a DE, though I like using GNOME apps), but I've never heard of a DE that lets you do this -- I think that KDE, OS X, WinXP, and GNOME all only let you operate in one mode or the other -- you can't tell the DE to exclude a given set of apps from grouping.

It's an interesting idea for a patch, though.

--
May we never see th

GTK release of 2.4 by Mr+Thinly+Sliced · 2004-03-16 11:49 · Score: 5, Informative

It's a great release. It is something that finally the gnome-ers can get their teeth into. And it's not before time.

For anyone who has been following the good work that the gnome developers have been doing, its starting to look like vindication.

Ok, enough of the back slapping, lets see whats on offer: (PS - release notes for GTK at Gnome 2.6 update release notes

Font Changes:

Xft and fontconfig use the same backends - whats that mean to you? - better fonts - everything GTK now plays the same game.
Fonts and character shapes can take a scripts 'hints' about a font into account - we win, the font creator wins - its about the best of everyones world.
Using bi-directional text is not forced by the application - it can be extracted or 'hinted' from the original source file itself.

GLIB:

GLIB update to use unicode 4.0 - many, many people benefit.
GLIB correctly recovers children processes.
GRandom is better at seeding. But not cryptographically secure. Yet.
The threading library with GLIB is now "operation or not" on integers and pointers.
There is a way to specify an OO 'singleton' or 'once initialisation'
Extra macros for GObject type writers
Properties can be added to interfaces (verbatim copied)
Private data within an instance can contain private data/references within and object (its not clean what this means in a C context, but I think they mean that it's not exposed).

GTK takes all of the above features, and uses those to make a fantastic release. Lets give these people time, They need it.

Re:GTK release of 2.4 by IamTheRealMike · 2004-03-16 11:55 · Score: 4, Informative

The threading library with GLIB is now "operation or not" on integers and pointers.
I think you mean the threading library now supports atomic operations - ie you can do some simple integer/pointer manipulation without needing a mutex in a thread safe fasion. They've introduced equivalents to InterlockedIncrement, InterlockedCompareExchange etc in Win32 and very useful they are too.
Re:GTK release of 2.4 by Mr+Thinly+Sliced · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 0

Yeah, I was trying to make it 'non-cs'. Atomic means something special to CS graduates, but very little to everyone else.

Eh...why? by sethadam1 · 2004-03-16 11:50 · Score: 1

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you won't really get many of the benefits unless you upgrade Gnome at the same time. The apps aren't going to magically use the new file selector. You probably want to do Gnome, GTK, pango, and all the "G" components together.

Re:Eh...why? by chavo+valdez · 2004-03-16 12:05 · Score: 0, Troll

Yes. You are misunderstanding.

Anything that uses gtk+ will instantly benefit from improvements in gtk+. Think it through, go slowly it won't hurt.
Re:Eh...why? by DShard · 2004-03-16 12:15 · Score: 1

Well, to see the new file selector in most apps you need to upgrade them as well. They did not break API compatibility with the old selector as it was highly abused.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 11:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Okay, you don't get it. That's okay, why would you? After all, you clearly don't understand how X works...

Implementing MDI is highly *non-trivial*. It requires Gtk to implement a full windowing toolkit, along with everything that entails. So, what you're saying is that you want the developers to waste thousands of man-hours implementing something that is, in the end, broken by design? Yeah, brilliant idea.

Hey, I got an idea. Why don't *you* go and implement MDI in Gtk. Then, when you're done, fix up The GIMP to use it, and voila! You'll be the hero of those "thousands of users"! Have fun!

Re:Separate windows are fine by ObviousGuy · 2004-03-16 11:54 · Score: 1

No, I meant what I said. The multiple processes of GIMP forces most WMs to create separate window ICONS along the application bar. I have no problem with the multiple window interface (which can neither be called SDI nor MDI, I think), but do have a problem with the single application creating multiple window icons where a single one would be fine.

This may be a holdover from the UNIX philosophy of tying together smaller, simpler processes into a larger, more complex application system. This works great in a CLI world where extra processes are relatively invisible to the user. However in a GUI world where each process gets its own icon, it can get wieldy.

The solution to "get a WM to group the icons together" is a hack and puts the onus on the user to work around a problem in the misbehaving application.

--
I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.

But if you use CVS to download it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 11:57 · Score: 0

...it may take up to 24h since the GNOME anonymous CVS servers are only updated once a day.

Re:But if you use CVS to download it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:59 · Score: 0

yes, it is still outdaited.
Re:But if you use CVS to download it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 18:29 · Score: 0

Nice to see I'm not alone. I suggested on the gnome-list mailing-list that it be changed to at least 2-4 times a day. But since this discussion seems to come up every year, and there are posts about it from 2001, I wonder it something will change. But it's one thing that GNOME misses. In the past you'd first get what'd be later in FTP. Now it's the opposite.

Yes, die Tor by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:00 · Score: 0

You should start working on Cygwin, not plain Windows.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Abcd1234 · 2004-03-16 12:04 · Score: 1

Then you don't know what you're talking about and, apparently, don't understand how X works.

The Gimp doesn't utilize multiple processes. It does use threads. Neither of these things has anything to do with the way the windows are aranged on the desktop or in the panel.

The Gimp *does* create multiple top-level windows. But, without using MDI, there is no other way to do things! You do *get* this, don't you? May be you don't.

Either way, The GIMP doesn't give a damn if there are icons anywhere on the desktop or not. In fact, it has no real idea *what* is running. It is the responsibility of the panel to do the right thing regarding icon placement, as, well, they're the *panels* icons in the first place! How is this difficult to understand??

Incidentally, X has the concept of a window Class. This class has two components. The first part is the application component ("Gimp"), and the second part is more specific (eg, "Fonts"). In the case of Firebird, it's "Mozilla" and "navigator". A panel can use the first part of the class to group multiple application windows under a single icon. It's quite simple, and it's far from a hack.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by erikharrison · 2004-03-16 12:05 · Score: 1

Ack! And I had mod points. Drat. Sometimes you gotta bite the bait . . .

1) Have you looked at the older GTK file selector? What other OS's file selector does it remind you of?

2) Have you ever looked at complaints about the OS X widget set? What's the most common complaint about a single individual widget do you see?

3) You need to access everything from the keyboard - with no third party extensions, which widget set do you pick, OS X's or GTK+?

4)In terms of functionality and ease of use, what does OS X's widget set have that GTK+ doesn't? No fair pointing to the windowing system (Quartz vs X). I'm honestly curious.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:05 · Score: 0

Apple == BSD Fork

Use the original, go FreeBSD.

Not quite done... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:11 · Score: 0

Where's the MDI widget?

Re:Not quite done... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:19 · Score: 0

Shoved up bill gates' ass, where it belongs. No respectable linux app uses MDI.
Re:Not quite done... by donscarletti · 2004-03-16 12:23 · Score: 1

GtkNotebook for the most part. It seems to work well.

--
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Re:Not quite done... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:12 · Score: 0

You realize tabbed browsing is MDI, tool smoker?
Re:Not quite done... by fredrik70 · 2004-03-16 22:58 · Score: 1

you could say that, but it's more like MDI done right. tabs are more like a stack of cards, with tabs in a designated area to easily reach easch one of the them, whereas 'proper' MDI was more like sheets of paper thrown all over the fscking place.

--
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }

Uh . . . by erikharrison · 2004-03-16 12:18 · Score: 1

. . .no

Notsomuch. by sethadam1 · 2004-03-16 12:19 · Score: 1

Thanks for being a dick, but as far as I can tell, you're wrong.

A cursory glance around most of the tech sites confirm what I originally said, which is without application updates, the GTK changes may not be immediately visible.

Re:Notsomuch. by kelnos · 2004-03-16 13:47 · Score: 1

agreed on the "being a dick" point, but i think what he meant is that if there are improvements, say, in performance, gtk2 apps will get the bonus just by upgrading gtk. of course improvements that involve new APIs won't be usable without app updates as well.

granted, i haven't read the release announcement or any condensed changelogs, so i dunno if any such improvements have been made (to perf or otherwise).

--
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.

Re:Separate windows are fine by jrockway · 2004-03-16 12:26 · Score: 1

You're the only person in the world who would want things to work like that. Each window gets an icon to focus that window. I mean, how else would you do it!?

--
My other car is first.

gyah.... by ShadowRage · 2004-03-16 12:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

now I gotta update all that mess again...

gah.. a linux user's work is never done.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by raodin · 2004-03-16 12:28 · Score: 1

The rest of the hardcore computing world has switch to Apple? Remind me to congratulate Mr. Jobs on this accomplishment.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Coryoth · 2004-03-16 12:30 · Score: 1

But I want to have GIMP in one button, but separate xterms in separate buttons, so how do I do that?

Use a window manager that can handle such things properly would be a good start. Enlightenment has "Window Groups" where you can configure a set of windows to all respond to actions (so, for instance, iconifying one window in the group iconifies them all). You can also configure which actions are handled by the whole group, and which are individual (so maximzing a window is done by a single window, not everything in the group.

In my experience enlightenment's handling of this was a little clunky (it took too much tme to "configure"), but it was very effective once you had it going.

The real question is: why are the standard window managers for GNOME and KDE (metacity and kwin) not implementing something like this - it seems obvious, and if it can be made to hook with the taskbar, then all your problems are solved.

The key here is that, as other people have pointed out, having and MDI means the program with the MDI has to reimplement it's own window handling (I always hated that about MDI apps in windows - their window hanling inside the MDI sucked), which is stupid when you have window managers to handle that sort of thing - what ought to be happening (instead of forcing applications to write their own MDI) is for window managers to be taking on enough functionality to make MDI like behaviour trivial for a user to arrange.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one - not from mainstream window managers anyway.

Jedidiah.

--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts

CadSoft Eagle schematic layout editor by katz · 2004-03-16 12:38 · Score: 1

That's a 100% commercial QT app. Runs on Windows and Linux, looks the same, acts the same (it's a great circuitboard editor for the kind of senior-level projects we did in college).

for more info: http://www.cadsoft.de/

Roey

Compile issue by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:47 · Score: 0

Any Slackware 9.1 users having this problem?

checking for GLIB - version >= 2.0.0...

*** 'pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0' returned 2.4.0, but GLIB (2.2.3)

*** was found! If pkg-config was correct, then it is best

*** to remove the old version of GLib. You may also be able to fix the error

*** by modifying your LD_LIBRARY_PATH enviroment variable, or by editing

*** /etc/ld.so.conf. Make sure you have run ldconfig if that is

*** required on your system.

*** If pkg-config was wrong, set the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH

*** to point to the correct configuration files no configure: error:

*** GLIB 2.0.0 or better is required. The latest version of

*** GLIB is always available from ftp://ftp.gtk.org/. If GLIB is installed

*** but not in the same location as pkg-config add the location of the file

*** glib-2.0.pc to the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

I know some other people having the same problem, which is why I've excused myself for making a tech support request on a Slashdot thread. =)

Anyone get past this? Thanks!!

Re:Compile issue by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:25 · Score: 0

man removepkg.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:49 · Score: 0

The sheets, drawers, and easily customized toolbars are very nice. However, the niceness of using OS X really comes from the whole package. It's a kind of synergistic thing, where consistent widgets work nicely together with things like Expose. The dock kinda sucks, though. The NeXT one was much better.

Re:Separate windows are fine by jonadab · 2004-03-16 12:52 · Score: 2, Interesting

> The real question is: why are the standard window managers for GNOME and
> KDE (metacity and kwin) not implementing something like this

Not sure about kwin, but the official metacity project slogan is "no features"
(apparently). A lot of Gnome users swap it out for a different window manager
such as sawfish or Enlightenment. Fortunately, the architecture of Gnome makes
this possible (though the wm in question has to support certain Gnome things
to get everything working properly (e.g., the panel task list, having certain
panels be avoided by maximize, and so on), which does limit exactly which
window managers you can choose; you can _theoretically_ choose any wm, but
if you choose one that doesn't support Gnome stuff won't work; sawfish and
Enlightenment are the major alternatives that handle Gnome stuff right, that
I know about; there may be one or two others).

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:53 · Score: 0

You can specify specific apps to be grouped in several windowing environments, or just set a threshold at 4 so that gimp will be grouped and trivial things won't.

i'm pretty sure kde lets you specify apps for grouping. but i can't check right now since i'm at work.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by jonadab · 2004-03-16 12:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

> 3) You need to access everything from the keyboard - with no third party
> extensions, which widget set do you pick, OS X's or GTK+?

Actually, for that, the Win32 widget set rather rocks. Unfortunately, it's
not very portable.

--
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 12:59 · Score: 0

have you USED any modern window managers?

all of them ... even windows xp...let you give each application a button on the taskbar, which then expands into a menu of all the windows that app has open. it's a ton easier to manage having 30 browser windows open than having 20 invisible buttons...of course, tabbed browsing does it better, but the taskbar grouping is still nice.

i assume gnome can do this, i'm of a kde persuasion myself.

Re:shitskins by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:01 · Score: 0

No, I'm Simon. Are you Roger?

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 13:05 · Score: 0

You see, this is why Linux users should actually try to understand technology before talking about it. It's not just the widget set, it's the whole product from the hardware, to the kernel, to the gui, to the applications. Everything working as a seamless whole, with the speed and stability of Unix, and the brilliantly intuitive user experience of Mac OS.

Your sig by mrogers · 2004-03-16 13:27 · Score: 2, Interesting

I thought the same thing about Linux font rendering until I installed Microsoft's core fonts and a TrueType font server on my Linux box (apt-get install msttcorefonts xfstt right now if you're running Debian). The font rendering in Linux is absolutely fine, it's just the shortage of good manually-hinted fonts that makes things look awful. Anti-aliasing is not the solution - GTK+1.2 looks better than GTK+2 with decent fonts installed, because the fonts have nice sharp outlines.

Re:Your sig by salimma · 2004-03-16 14:47 · Score: 2, Informative

Anti-aliasing is not the solution

The problem is that the freetype font rendering library for Linux is unable to use font hints because the required algorithms are patented (by Apple, which seems to like FOSS products unless they encroach on its desktop turf).

The patented hinting algorithms are in the source but #def'ed out by default, you could recompile if you want to. Most people are fine with the replacement auto-hinting though.

--
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Re:Your sig by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:20 · Score: 1

I'm using Gentoo and have all font rendering with the best options turned on, with the Windows fonts installed. I have everything from letters that are thicker than others, to curves and diagonals that are much thinner and almost transparent at smaller sizes like 10pt and even 12pt. Digits in particular seem to be an especially nasty problem.

The font rendering in Linux is absolutely fine, it's just the shortage of good manually-hinted fonts that makes things look awful.

This is just simply not true. The same fonts look absolutely fantastic in Windows. In Linux, they're blocky, misshaped, and have varying levels of thickness. Your mileage may vary, but I'd seriously like to know what magic you're casting that I'm not! It's been this way for years. I won't even get into LCD subpixel rendering--talk about a complete ugly mess.
Re:Your sig by Zan+Lynx · 2004-03-16 17:42 · Score: 1

I'm running Gentoo as well. I use the Microsoft fonts and the Bitstream Vera fonts. I also use subpixel rendering on my LCD. Sometimes I dual boot to play games in Windows XP on the same system, and to me, Linux fonts and Windows Cleartype both look very similar and both very good.

Italic fonts can look a little strange because the angle exaggerates the subpixel rendering and makes the edges look blue/red shifted. Normally I can't tell, but when a lot of little red pixels get together it becomes more obvious.

One thing that makes a tremendous difference in my LCD experience is DVI. Use DVI whenever possible! It is the difference between night and day.
Re:Your sig by chefren · 2004-03-16 18:03 · Score: 1

Freetype, which is the font rendering library, supports some patented hinting support which makes the fonts look better, but this is turned off (= not compiled in) by default due to the patent. I suppose you could try compiling freetype yourself and turn this on. It's not a totally trivial thing to do, you have to read the installation docs and edit a header file before compiling. It's worth the trouble though.
Re:Your sig by mrogers · 2004-03-17 05:47 · Score: 1

As well as installing the MS fonts you need to make them available to the X server and set up your applications to use them. I use the xfstt font server which listens on Unix port 7101 - I had to add the line "xset fp+ unix/:7101" to my ~/.xsession file to get the X server to use xfstt. If you can't see ttf fonts in the font selection dropdowns in Mozilla, something's wrong with your font server setup.

My Mozilla fonts are set up as follows:

font.FreeType2.autohinted: false
font.FreeType2.enable: true
font.name.monospace.x-western: ttf-courier new-iso8859-1
font.name.sans-serif.x-western: ttf-arial-iso8859-1
font.name.serif.x-western: ttf-times new roman-iso8859-1

Everything looks just like it does in Windows. I agree about sub-pixel rendering though. :-/

Re:Why exactly... by lorien420 · 2004-03-16 13:41 · Score: 1

It's not meaningless at all. I'm one of the many /.ers that's been waiting on this file dialog for a very long time. This is not a minor revision.

--
"[We'll be] really getting inside your head and making it an unpleasant place to be" -- Trent Reznor

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by lorien420 · 2004-03-16 13:47 · Score: 1

Think different, think better, think Apple.

That's rather impossible really, or did you mean think differently?

--
"[We'll be] really getting inside your head and making it an unpleasant place to be" -- Trent Reznor

Xfce4 by Chuck+Bucket · 2004-03-16 13:56 · Score: 1

Let's not forget that this will make Xfce4 even better!

CBS

--
free ipod and free gmail!

Re:Separate windows are fine by potHead42 · 2004-03-16 13:59 · Score: 0

There's also Xfwm4, which works really nicely with Gnome and has a lot more configuration options than metacity.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:03 · Score: 0

I think he's talking about floating toolbars, which usually aren't included in the dock/taskbar on Windows or OS X.

This is probably an issue with ICCCM or whatever the WM protocol is called.

Re:Separate windows are fine by adamruck · 2004-03-16 14:06 · Score: 1

well I for one would like just one icon on the task bar for an application that has many windows... so that would make your statement false

--
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.

Re:Separate windows are fine by mrogers · 2004-03-16 14:26 · Score: 1

The key here is that, as other people have pointed out, having and MDI means the program with the MDI has to reimplement it's own window handling (I always hated that about MDI apps in windows - their window hanling inside the MDI sucked), which is stupid when you have window managers to handle that sort of thing - what ought to be happening (instead of forcing applications to write their own MDI) is for window managers to be taking on enough functionality to make MDI like behaviour trivial for a user to arrange.

AFAIK it's possible for the window manager to manage windows that aren't children of the root window, it's just never been done. Normally the window manager sets the substructure redirect mask on the root window, telling the X server to send certain events pertaining to children of the root window via the window manager instead of straight to the client. The window manager monitors these events to find out when clients attempt to map new windows, raise or lower existing windows, etc. If a client sets the redirect override hint on a window, the X server won't redirect the window's events to the window manager and the window won't be managed.

It might be possible for the window manager to set the substructure redirect mask on the MDI "big grey background" window in order to manage its children (the MDI document and toolbox windows). The toolkit would have to check for a compatible window manager and be prepared to fall back on its own decorations. If a compatible window manager was found, the toolkit would set a hint on the MDI background window to indicate that its children should be managed by the window manager.

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by JW+Troll · 2004-03-16 14:49 · Score: 0

OSX is still more intelligent, because it doesn't automatically open an application window when you click on the icon thingy. See, it KNOWS that you probly clicked by mistake! so instead, you'll have to click on the apple bar and open the menu and click on "new window" to get the application window into sight. Better by design. Hell yeh.

Oh, and linux lusers have too many mouse buttons, so GTK+ is crippled by people expecting to use all those extra clickers.

--
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net

Re:Separate windows are fine by DashEvil · 2004-03-16 14:54 · Score: 1

Okay, have fun in Windows then. We're not here to please you. Just because these people released their work for free on the net does not mean that they owe you any service. So please, get over it and return to Windows.

--
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.

It's the little things....What's in a frame. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 14:56 · Score: 0

Makes me sad too. Maybe he should read this.
It covers OOP's and frameworks, among other things.
I don't hear Mac people complaining much about too many libraries, and I let the results speak for themselves (for a bunch of "less knowledgable" people. They do well enough that everyone wants to copy them).

Re:Separate windows are fine by Coryoth · 2004-03-16 15:18 · Score: 1

I think he's talking about floating toolbars, which usually aren't included in the dock/taskbar on Windows or OS X.

This is probably an issue with ICCCM or whatever the WM protocol is called.

Thereshould be a simple "windowlist skip" hint that can be applied to windows - in fact, there already is - you notice the panel, and various other objects (which are windows - try a different window manager that doesn't take the hints and manage them like anything else) never show up on the task bar, so obviously such things are readily available.

Jedidiah.

--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts

This is all fine and well... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:27 · Score: 0

...but can it run Windows?

Re:Still doesn't compare to OS X by moxruby · 2004-03-16 16:32 · Score: 0

Think different, think better, think Apple.

That's rather impossible really, or did you mean think differently?

Think petty, think grammer nazi, think slashdot.

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 16:38 · Score: 0

Thousands of users: Please give us an option to use MDI.
GIMP zealot: We can't use MDI, it confuses people.
Users: We only want an option, you don't have to make it compulsory!
Zealot: Sorry, it's confusing. You don't want it.
Users: Yes we do.
Zealot: Well you can't have it. Get over it.
Users: Fuck this, we're going back to Windows.

Zealot: We don't care. Buh-bye.

Not at all by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:17 · Score: 2

Letters have different thicknesses, some things, like the Times New Roman number "2" at about 10pt has a middle part that almost completely disappears. I always hear constantly about how "better" the font rendering is supposed to be from guys like you, but I have never, ever seen it.

I have tried various distros, even compiling things myself with the interpeter turned on, etc. It still looks flat-out awful, particularly italics.

Sorry, they are NOT easier on the eyes than Windows XP. That's absurd and a flat-out lie--outside of Slashdot, everyone acknowledges OS X and Windows have much superior font rendering. Using my Gentoo laptop for more than a few hours gives me headaches, and I've tried font after font, including the Windows fonts.

This is not a dig at the Freetype project composed of volunteers. But to say it's actually "better" than Windows is blind fanboy-ism.

Re:Not at all by KozmoStevnNaut · 2004-03-16 18:13 · Score: 1

Have you tried the Bitstream Vera fonts?

Example 1

Example 2

The font is Bitstream Vera Sans with Xft.

(Bear in mind that these screenshots are taken on a computer with an LCD monitor... They may look a bit 'off' on a CRT)

--
Eat the rich.
Re:Not at all by be-fan · 2004-03-16 18:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

It really depends on your setup. I've got a 133 dpi LCD, and I can definitely say it looks better. Cleartype hints far too aggressively for a display that has that many pixels to play with. For a medium-res CRT, I'd rather have non-anti-aliased, hinted output anyway. If you've got that bytecode hinter on, you'll get identical output (pixel-for-pixel) in that case. Screenshot of my desktop Note, unless you've got a 133 dpi display or higher, the fonts will look unusually large.

In any case, I think FreeType's anti-aliased output at medium resolutions is actually quite good. Read one of my rants on OSNews (search for title "Font comparo thread"). Note the attached screenshot, taken at a more sane resolution.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Not at all by Dave2+Wickham · 2004-03-16 22:12 · Score: 1

I'd guess you were using an old version of Freetype or something. I've noticed that 2.1.4 is far superior to previous versions.

Have another screenshot, anyway...
Re:Not at all by Trashman · 2004-03-17 02:49 · Score: 1

*OT* Which LCD do you have?

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Do not read this .sig
Re:Not at all by be-fan · 2004-03-17 03:21 · Score: 1

I think its a Toshiba or Hitachi. Its on a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop.

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Not at all by be-fan · 2004-03-17 03:24 · Score: 1

I've got a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop with their "UltraSharp" brand LCD.

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

Re:Separate windows are fine by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:35 · Score: 1

Isn't that treating the symptom and not the cause?

I don't get the big deal over making Gimp not take five windows. It seems like just one of those things people are stubborn about for absolutely no good reason.

anti-MDI snobs by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

You know, I hear over and over about how "flawed" MDI is supposed to be. People like you get really condescending about it for some reason. No need to be hostile--it's just some free graphics app on the net.

MDI doesn't seem to have stopped Photoshop's monstrous success over the decades, now has it?

Now, I don't know about you, but when I sit someone down to a new graphics app, and they're instantly confused with all the floating windows that don't appear to be attached to any particular application, and then they go over to Paint Shop Pro and do just fine, it tells me something.

Re:anti-MDI snobs by FooBarWidget · 2004-03-16 22:32 · Score: 1

Guess what? Photoshop on the Mac uses tons of windows too, just like Gimp! Why don't Mac people complain? Because MacOS X's "window manager" can manage lots of associated windows properly. That's what we need for Linux, not window-in-window MDI.
Being able to Alt+Tab between document windows is a huge plus. In Windows you have to click the friggin Window menu just to switch to another document.
Re:anti-MDI snobs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 00:01 · Score: 0

Ever heard of Ctrl+Tab (or F6) ? you DON'T need to use the window menu.
Re:anti-MDI snobs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 00:18 · Score: 0

Umm no you don't - try Ctrl-Clicking.

Speaking of OS X by bonch · 2004-03-16 17:44 · Score: 1

How many times has it changed its file selector in some way during its point releases?

Technology is a changing thing.

With all the *flaws*, I'll take it by solic · 2004-03-16 18:16 · Score: 1

Funny, I actually preffer MDI rather than scattering up Windows all ove my taskbar. It also allwos me to focus easier because all the program's windows are in one window. Just because you do not like it and GTK+ is too primitive to have it does not mean it is so horribly flawed. It is a very popular software design choice on Windows especially and users like it. Have you noticed that Corel, Adobe, Macromedia, ActiveState, ACDSee, Opera, Mainconcept, Lost Marble, and thousands of other developers use MDI exclusively?! MDI is easier to program and the users like it.

Re:Separate windows are fine by chefren · 2004-03-16 18:35 · Score: 1

I see tabs in browsers like a kind of MDI, with the document switching problem solved and that's not broken. But then again, the problem wasn't solved this way when mr Cooper wrote his first edition of 'About Face'.

GIMP MDI by solic · 2004-03-16 18:39 · Score: 0

Should checkout http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=8 179&vote=good&tan=88544815

The 3 monkeys (was New File Dialog) by stef49 · 2004-03-16 20:30 · Score: 2, Funny

Take 1 enginer, 1 'end' user and 1 monkey and put them in front of the new GTK file chooser with a simple task: Open the file .bashrc.

- the end-user will give up after a few minutes first because it's obvious that there is no '.bashrc' available in the list.

- the enginer will complain, curse after the GTK file-selector and will eventually start KDE or a xterm.

- the monkey is be the only one to succeed because he is the most likely to type CTRL-L by mistake.

Re:Separate windows are fine by FooBarWidget · 2004-03-16 22:34 · Score: 1

"Thousands of users: Please give us an option to use MDI.
GIMP zealot: We can't use MDI, it confuses people.
Users: We only want an option, you don't have to make it compulsory!
Zealot: Sorry, it's confusing. You don't want it.
Users: Yes we do.
Zealot: Well you can't have it. Get over it.
Users: Fuck this, we're going back to Windows."

Translation:

Anonymous troll zealot: I pretend that thousands of users wants MDI without giving evidence. You suck mwahahaha!
Apple usability engineer: Photoshop on MacOS X uses lots of windows too, just like Gimp!

Re:Separate windows are fine by FooBarWidget · 2004-03-16 22:36 · Score: 1

Gimp 2.0 gives you an option to make tool windows not appear on the task list. Only documents and the main tool window will show up in the task list.

Debian packages by emiste · 2004-03-16 22:37 · Score: 1

How long will we have to wait for GTK 2.4.0 to be available in Debian unstable/testing?

Re:Separate windows are fine by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-16 22:38 · Score: 0

It requires Gtk to implement a full windowing toolkit, along with everything that entails.

No you wouldn't. X allows you to open windows within a specific root window. For example, the GIMP could open a parent window and then all GIMP windows (the palette, the canvas, etc.) open with the previously opened parent window set as the root. I don't see why this is a problem. Although personally, I hate the MDI concept.

You may want to look at xnest BTW.

GTK2 blows... by evilviper · 2004-03-17 02:40 · Score: 1

GTK2 is significantly more CPU and memory intensive than GTK1.

I can't speak for the rest of you, but I want my programs to run faster not slower. People complain about the Microsoft Windows upgrade cycle, but now it looks like most Unix apps are adopting the same philosophy. Sure, the programs will run less than half the speed, but hey, they can always get a new computer.

No thanks. I'll stick with GTK1 and all the nice fast and lightweight apps that use GTK1.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

Re:GTK2 blows... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-18 02:33 · Score: 0

i run c64 software here!
damn its a bitch to code in and the
applications do *nothing*. but wow!
its fast on a athlon!

Proprietary GTK+ applications by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-17 03:52 · Score: 0

Someone posted a much longer list a few months ago, but off the top of my head:
AOL Instant Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
VMware Workstation
various Solaris tools

303 comments