GTK 2.6.0 Released

Ellipsization is supported in treeview cells by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:26 · Score: 0

Thank god they finally fixed that.

GTK? by DaHat · 2004-12-17 10:28 · Score: 0, Redundant

Yes, despite being a Windows user/fan, I know what GTK is... but that doesn't mean everyone does. Can we please have some more descriptive articles about software releases for the uninformed?

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Re:GTK? by malarkey · 2004-12-17 10:32 · Score: 3, Informative

from the website:

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 tools to complete application suites.

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.

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 the
only 100% free-of-cost open source industrial-strength GUI toolkit available today.

Since its origins as the toolkit for the GNU Image
Manipulation Program (GIMP), GTK+ has been used in a wide range of software. Notably, GTK+ is the foundation of the GNOME desktop; GTK+ 2.6 will be incorporated into version 2.10 of the GNOME desktop.
Re:GTK? by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:36 · Score: 1

When you don't know what GTK is, you have little interest in knowing that there is a new version.

Why waste headline-space for explaining?

But still... I see a link to gtk.org. What's the big problem?

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Re:GTK? by ivan256 · 2004-12-17 10:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Two options:

Click the word that you didn't understand, "GTK," in the article. It was convieniently made into a link for people like you who don't know what it is. The text on this linked page is nice enough to start out with a concise description of what GTK is, and gets into more detail if you care to learn more. Here's an example: "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." This is what hypertext is designed for. The author of this story did the "Right Thing"®

Click the "Preferences" option on the left and uncheck sections which contain articles you don't understand so you don't see them on the front page anymore.
Re:GTK? by DaHat · 2004-12-17 10:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Why tell people what something is? Very simple, to attract potential users.

Take your sig for example... someone who doesn't know what it is most likely going to say "Firefox? What is that? Why should I get it?" Yes, they could go to the webpage and inquire for themselves, but that takes effort, and many (including Slashdot readers) like a brief summery that helps them decide if they will click on the link to learn more.

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Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:48 · Score: 0

GTK 2.6.0 just released and they don't have a win32 installer yet!?!?!? OMG this project will die fast!! :p

GTK for windows is nice though, allows one to run some other programs they might not be able to without it.
Re:GTK? by ari_j · 2004-12-17 10:52 · Score: 1

And when you do know what GTK is, you probably know about the release because your distro's package manager tells you or because you are tracking the source and saw the release announcement on gtk.org or via mailing list before it was posted on Slashdot.

There's no reason to post this kind of crap on the front page. There are partner sites dedicated to software releases that do a much better job of explaining them, and some people actually do come here for the news, which often gets lost due to tinfoil-hat stories and software release announcements clogging up the front page.
Re:GTK? by HishamMuhammad · 2004-12-17 10:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

A sad day it will be when we actually need to explain what GTK is on Slashdot. Hopefully, this day has not arrived yet.

(Sorry about the rant, but I just had to. I guess posts like the parent are the sign of the times... :-\ )

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Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:55 · Score: 0

GTK+ is SHIT+ at least Mozilla XUL looks much nicer, and Ethereal is let down by the GTK ui, it would be much better using XUL.
Re:GTK? by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:02 · Score: 1

To attrack potential users you say? What a nonsense...

People should first know what linux (or other OS that is supported) is and then what gnome (or other manager) is before they remotely have to know what GTK is! And by that time they are already users!

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Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:07 · Score: 0

Wrong. I use Windows exclusively but have (briefly) used GTK. WTF is Gnome anyway?
Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:13 · Score: 0

You were just talking to one of them. Cranky little fuckers that assume you're a nihilist like they are. Ignore them, they go away when they realize there's no caffeine.
Re:GTK? by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:22 · Score: 1

That information the few people want to know is one click away. So if one is not a user already, nor a nihilist like the anonymous coward posting under you describes, which combined applies to (say) 2% of the slashdot readers, than that information is provided in one obvious click.

yes, it's always a matter of weighting one thing to another.

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Re:GTK? by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:24 · Score: 1

That not-nihilist person, with his exploring character, is smart enough to click on the gtk.org link then, doesn't he?

Just think man.

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Re:GTK? by Commander+Trollco · 2004-12-17 11:47 · Score: 1

Agreed. How can people look at this seriously when it doesn't even offer a visible cursor for text fields?

However, I believe there are some licencing issues related to XUL

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Re:GTK? by MighMoS · 2004-12-17 12:09 · Score: 1

Gnome is a desktop environment (DE). Linux is so customizable, that there is no 'standard' DE. A DE draws things like the panel (start bar in windows), the Desktop, and provides a whole look and feel, as well as most configuration tools. This is opposed to a Window Manager (WM) which is pretty minimal (like blackbox for windows). It should be noted that a DE does use a WM.
Re:GTK? by mandolin · 2004-12-17 13:33 · Score: 0, Flamebait

GTK+ is the only 100% free-of-cost open source industrial-strength GUI toolkit available today.

I'm suprised the gtk release notes actually say this, because it's fairly obviously false. It's a shame those reponsible didn't catch this and expunge the statement.
(I see www.gtk.org's "Introduction" section does not share this problem.)
Re:GTK? by fermion · 2004-12-17 14:16 · Score: 0

Absolutely. We don't want the ignorant masses on /. . (dot dot...dot) We don't want those foul evil MS users to sully up out space. We would never want them to know that there was software before MS, and there will be software after MS. We don't want them to know the *nix is not just an alternative, but the granddaddy. And we certainly don't want them to know that the MS tax is optional.

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Re:GTK? by Jugalator · 2004-12-17 14:32 · Score: 1

Besides, for well established major packages like GTK there's Google. Heck, you don't even need to click the link as what GTK is, is in the link summary. :-p

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Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 15:21 · Score: 0

No, no, no.

"That not-nihilist person, with his exploring character, is smart enough to click on the gtk.org link then, doesn't he?"

It should be:
That not-nihilist person, with his exploring character, is smart enough to click on the gtk.org link then, isn't he?

You think! I'm too busy not clicking on links.

Nihilist.
Re:GTK? by cortana · 2004-12-17 16:21 · Score: 1

Mozilla on Linux uses GTK+... I guess IHBT.
Re:GTK? by ubernostrum · 2004-12-17 16:50 · Score: 1

Take your sig for example...

What's a sig? You shouldn't use specialized terms like that in a forum where not everyone will understand it, or if you do you should explain what they mean. For example:

Take your sig (your "sig", short for "signature", is a short, sometimes funny, sometimes self-descriptive bit of text which you can enter on your user preferences page, and which is appended to each and every comment you post) for example...

That's how you should have responded. But no. You'd almost think that this was a site geared toward programming nerds or something, from the way you were slinging the jargon around...
Re:GTK? by Narchie+Troll · 2004-12-17 20:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

What are the others? Fltk isn't what I'd call industrial-strength; Qt is in some cases neither open-source nor free-of-cost.
Re:GTK? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 22:24 · Score: 0

Why don't you just say that you don't know what it is and that you're too stupid/lazy to RTFA? Oh, I know, it's *your friend* who doesn't know what GTK is... *wink*wink*
Re:GTK? by m50d · 2004-12-17 23:57 · Score: 1

Well, as a Qt zealot I would say that will be a happy day.

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Link by penguinoid · 2004-12-17 10:28 · Score: 0, Redundant

Link to the blurb about GTK 2.6.0 as opposed to the GTK main page

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QT GTK by 54v4g3 · 2004-12-17 10:30 · Score: 0

GTK is all and fine, but I really prefer QT.
QT has all of those nice features, like transparent menus, etc.
Maybe it's just because I'm a kde user, but I also think QT is alot faster than GTK.

They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 10:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

...which is good. The file chooser improved a lot on GTK2, but it could still use some polish.

BTW, does anyone knows if GTK supports the Composite render extension available on X.ORG? Or perhaps it has nothing to do with it and doesn't need it? I tried enabling compositing on XFCE 4.2rc2, and while the desktop looked MUCH better (with true transparency, window shadows and the works), it slowed my system to a crawl.

Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:40 · Score: 2, Informative

That's a video driver issue, unfortunately. There's only one driver for Xorg at the moment that accelerates the necessary operations for translucency. (the non-free nNivia driver).

There's a planned port of the Kdrive acceleration architecture that'll make it much easier to accelerate it with other drivers.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 10:44 · Score: 1

That's a video driver issue, unfortunately. There's only one driver for Xorg at the moment that accelerates the necessary operations for translucency. (the non-free nNivia driver).

Yes, i'm aware. I'm running the latest binary drivers from nVidia, and even "experimental" extensions like XRenderAccel desktop works just fine, and gives a nice speed boost to my desktop. OpenGL renders great as well, but for some reason, Composite + XFCE work awfully slow, like it's working on software mode. I though perhaps GTK had something to do with it.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by flithm · 2004-12-17 10:44 · Score: 5, Interesting

Just so people don't get the wrong idea about Composite or Xorg, on my relatively modern (but by no means uber) computer xorg + composite + translucency + drop shadows doesn't slow it down one bit. In fact with all the effects on the windows actually appear to slide around smoother than they did before, although I'm sure this some kind of psychological effect.

Also of note is that I have one graphics card driving two monitors, and it's still not an issue.

Don't be afraid to try Composite on Xorg! And if you run into problems submit bug reports! Xorg has great promise. Let's all help to make it as good as it could be (and no I'm in no way related to the Xorg project. I just think eye-candy is where its at).
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by blixblix · 2004-12-17 10:45 · Score: 1

I think it's the job of the windows manager, such as metacity, to implement the new xorg extensions not the graphics toolkit.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 10:48 · Score: 1

Nonono, don't get me wrong; i have nothing but praise for the work the X.Org team is doing! It just strikes me as odd that it would run so slow, and thought perhaps GTK had a problem with Composite.

I've been following the project closely, and i think it's becoming to be all that XFree should've been by now.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:54 · Score: 1

What are your suggestions on the file-chooser?

Speak out and help the community.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by damiam · 2004-12-17 10:58 · Score: 1

GTK shouldn't have anything to do under composite. Does the same behaviour occur when using non-GTk apps? Are you sure hardware acceleration is set up for your video card?

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 11:01 · Score: 1

Absolutely. Something weird was that Gkrellm2 rendered with glitches, but ran just fine, albeit slower, just like the rest of the desktop. Anyway, i want Composite on :) I'll dig on it tonight.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by The+Bungi · 2004-12-17 11:03 · Score: 1

Wow, and only four years behind Windows (and OS X, I guess).
It's really disheartening when Eugenia from OS News fame has to run a contest to make a friggin' file chooser work. In 2004. My gawd.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by MSG · 2004-12-17 11:05 · Score: 1

although I'm sure this some kind of psychological effect

I don't think it was. The way I understand the Composite extension, all windows draw to an off-screen buffer, which the compositing manager displays. When using the a compositing manager, you don't have to ask the client applications to redraw themselves when exposed by moving a window, so moving windows should be considerably less CPU/network/context switch intensive.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 11:19 · Score: 1

Well, i hate to bitch, but let's see... the basic idea for the new GTK file chooser is quite good, and makes browsing directories much easier, but i still feel too much window space is taken by widgets and empty space, which sometimes makes hard to read directories and filenames. Still, i really like the buttons with the path separated in directories.

Better keyboard control would be nice too; that they added typeahead support is a bless and well welcome.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:22 · Score: 0

on my relatively modern (but by no means uber) computer xorg + composite + translucency + drop shadows doesn't slow it down one bit.

Funny, on my somewhat modern (but fairly slow) computer, xorg + pretty much anything slows it down tremendously.

My video card is i810 based, so that could be the problem - I think you need hardware 3D to make it work.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Pflipp · 2004-12-17 11:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

Put differently, the file chooser hasn't been fucked up more since Eugenia started her contest. I hate not being able to do a tab-based regexp search, as common in ye olde GTK+. Yet, patience may be the solution.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:27 · Score: 0

Wow, and only four years behind Windows (and OS X, I guess).

It's really disheartening when Eugenia from OS News fame has to run a contest to make a friggin' file chooser work. In 2004. My gawd.

What's your point? That we should all point to and bash free software developers cause they are behind respect to enterprises that have been working on UI at least 10 years before we got a free OS with an usable free GUI? That compatibility should be broken in free apps anytime you want to copy a feature from commercial OSs?

It's really disheartening when you offer some good software for free and they rush to say "X company did this N years before, what a crap." even if they'll end up using it, together with a pirated copy of windows and no mac hardware cause it's too expensive for them.

At least you could give some constructive criticism instead of being an ass.

P.S.: and even after your post, the path buttonbar in the GTKfilechooser looks incredibly nice and unique to me.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by scheme · 2004-12-17 11:30 · Score: 1

I think it's the job of the windows manager, such as metacity, to implement the new xorg extensions not the graphics toolkit.
How is the window manager going to change the way an application handles menus and similar things? The window manager deals with the window borders around the application and placement of windows and not with the stuff the application displays within a window.

Ideally both the graphics toolkit and the window manager need to support the xorg extensions to get the best results.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:46 · Score: 1

Good point. But you come up with the problems, please come up with suggestions.

The margins, I believe, are a matter of themeing. The lower buttons are distinguised easillier by the bigger margin, but this too is adjustable.

The only wasted empty space is on the left of the lower buttons, which's surface depends on the window-size. As the window-size gets greater that space is not much of an issue. Any other use of that space looks unnatural.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by OmniVector · 2004-12-17 11:50 · Score: 1

that's not entirely true. windows still doesn't have compositing. os x has had compositing since 10.0, but didn't get gpu accelerated compositing until 10.2. tiger, coming out mid next year, will offload even more of the 2d drawing onto the gpu (instead of just the compositing.)

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- tristan
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by silvaran · 2004-12-17 12:03 · Score: 2, Informative

You really need to have hardware acceleration enabled to use composite effectively. I've found that with the NVIDIA binary drivers, and RenderAccel enabled, it feels much, much smoother than without the composite manager running. If you have an NVIDIA card, you can do this in your video device section:

Option "RenderAccel" "true"

Then run "xcompmgr -c" on the active $DISPLAY while X is running (unless your window manager du jour has built-in composite support) and you're ready to go.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Lisandro · 2004-12-17 12:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Agreed. Windows, for example, opens a window slightly bigger and with less space dedicated to the directories shortcuts, which improve usability a great deal. It could work well with the new GTK dialog.

Like i said earlier, it's just a matter of polish. Generally speaking, i like the new file dialog.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by MighMoS · 2004-12-17 12:15 · Score: 2, Informative

Um, not entirely. The window manager....manages windows. As such, it has complete control over the window as a whole, as well as drawing borders around it. Check out Luminocity if you're interested.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by be-fan · 2004-12-17 12:45 · Score: 1

In every X toolkit (and in Windows and OS X), menus are seperate windows.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by IdleTime · 2004-12-17 13:19 · Score: 1

I looked at the file dialog and with the danger of beeing modded as flamebait, I have to say that it is some of the ugliest stuff I have seen.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 13:37 · Score: 0

That's the theme used, it looks quite nice with others.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 14:15 · Score: 0

It's really disheartening when Eugenia from OS News fame has to run a contest to make a friggin' file chooser work. In 2004.
It's was more disheartening when Bill G. had to write a memo to finally impose some friggin' coding standards on his company. In 2002. (And still not fully realized in 2004.)
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by marmite · 2004-12-17 14:32 · Score: 1

Composite will make things seem smoother, because of the way things get drawn in off-screen memory before being blitted on screen.

Composite doesn't really have much to do with drop shadows, per se. It allows windows to be moved off screen and for a compositing agent to draw them onto the screen as it likes.

Most (all?) drop shadow implementations currently use the RENDER extension to draw the shadows. All drivers (except the NVidia binary ones) implement RENDER acceleration through the XAA (X Acceleration Architecture) hooks. Currently XAA only really accelerates RENDER if you're compositing text (so xterm with AA fonts is faster). There aren't any hooks for "Blend this region onto the screen" yet -- it has been rumoured that those will be added soon.

Note that the Xserver with KDrive DDX does have hooks for doing blending and compositing onto the screen, and thus can draw drop shadows (amongst other things) fast on supported cards... It doesn't support GLX (or a bunch of other useful things like XvMC) though.

--ralpht

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by Alien+Being · 2004-12-17 14:45 · Score: 1

There should be a text input working in parallel with the gui. Sometimes, it's easier to just type the name, especially with the help of auto completion. It's also convenient to cut/paste the pathname in the file selector.

IMO, it would be great if you could rightclick on any file or dir and bring up an action menu (open with foo, copy to ->, etc.) Here's a typical scenario: The file chooser opens so that I can insert a picture into a document. The preview helps me find the picture, but i notice that it needs to be modified before i can use it. I rightclick and choose "open with the gimp".
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by johnnyb · 2004-12-17 15:32 · Score: 1

"The file chooser improved a lot on GTK2, but it could still use some polish."

What I've never understood is why, in newer releases, they don't provide the filechooser with a backwards-compatible link library so that the older programs will at least interface with the operating system somewhat like newer programs. Something like an LD_PRELOAD that we could do so that every application doesn't wind up with it's own file chooser.

That's the big problem w/ many Linux apps -- they are all their own beast. To use a single Linux distribution, you have to understand about 10 different file->open dialog boxes and about 20 different file->print dialog boxes. I can do it just fine, but trying to convince others is harder. It would be nice if someone found all of the standard API's and built a generic LD_PRELOAD for all of them. Hmmm..... sounds like a fun project for when I get time.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by coaxial · 2004-12-17 15:35 · Score: 2, Informative

There should be a text input working in parallel with the gui. Sometimes, it's easier to just type the name, especially with the help of auto completion. It's also convenient to cut/paste the pathname in the file selector.

A lot of people agree with you. [url:http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136 541] The gtk2.4 filechooser was a big mistake. I have no idea if this is fixed in 2.6. It really should be since people have been bitching about this dialog the moment it was placed in wide release. Of course this isn't the only dubious "improvement" in GTK/GNOME's usability.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by coaxial · 2004-12-17 15:56 · Score: 1

What's your point? That we should all point to and bash free software developers cause they are behind respect to enterprises that have been working on UI at least 10 years before we got a free OS with an usable free GUI?

Well just because something is gratis and has liberal licenses doesn't give it an execuse for incompetence. Many of these useability problems have been well researched and fixed years ago. There's no point in rediscovering all these advances. The new toolkits should just use them. That's the problem

P.S.: and even after your post, the path buttonbar in the GTKfilechooser looks incredibly nice and unique to me.

It may add to usability, but it's not unique. It's a feature that various toolkits over the years have incorporated. I believe NeXTStep had something similar with a graphical view of the full path above the 3 pane (grandparent dir, parent dir, current dir) chooser. I've also seen it in some other old school toolkit (not Motiff, not Tk, but one of their contemporaries).
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by ernstp · 2004-12-17 16:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

That's because you are using NVidias binary driver, right?
Then you have the RENDER extension hardware accellerated, and RENDER is used to compose and draw the transparent bitmaps.
Some X.org OSS drivers also have accellerated render, not as good as nvidias though.

(ATI's driver sucks :-)
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-12-17 16:55 · Score: 1

Don't forget Qt. I've enjoyed beautiful file dialogs in KDE for as long as I can remember....
GTK's only redeeming trait, near as I can tell, is that the Unix version of wxWidgets uses it.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by fucksl4shd0t · 2004-12-17 16:58 · Score: 1

Well just because something is gratis and has liberal licenses doesn't give it an execuse for incompetence. Many of these useability problems have been well researched and fixed years ago.
Aha, but you see, GNOME suffers from a terminal case of Not Invented Here. In fact, anything touched by the GNU must be completely rewritten, or thrown away and a new component written from the ground up. So they have to relearn all the hard lessons the rest of us learned 14 years ago.
*sigh* The sad thing is, this new file dialog still looks like something from Amiga Workbench 1.3.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by peterjm · 2004-12-17 18:02 · Score: 2, Informative

you're obviously on crack - or you have translucency turned on for that one little window that's never above anything else.

try joining xorg on freenode. The channel topic says it sall "composite is slow, we know".

now, don't get me wrong. I love what the composite extension can do; But don't go getting people's hopes up, "ooh, my 900Mhz celeron proc with a 32 meg graphics card will look just like my dads powerbook" cuz it ain't gonna happen.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by St.+Arbirix · 2004-12-17 19:47 · Score: 2, Informative

Bug report #11120759:
Assumption that all graphic hardware manufacturers have binary drivers for the current stable Xorg release which allow for translucency and shadows to work is incorrect.

Affects: Many, if not all ATI cards and Xorg >= 6.8.0

Workaround: harass the hell out of ATI

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by BenjyD · 2004-12-17 21:12 · Score: 1

The Fedora core 3 has a text input on the file chooser that pops up when you start typing and progressively searches the directory as you type.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by ssj_195 · 2004-12-17 21:31 · Score: 1

Don't forget Qt. I've enjoyed beautiful file dialogs in KDE for as long as I can remember....
Agreed on this point (but not on your second one :)) - to the poster asking how to improve GTK's file choosing dialog, I would simply say: Copy QT's One.
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by The_Dougster · 2004-12-17 21:43 · Score: 1

Wouldn't that be something like Gentoo? You set up your USE=gtk2 and compile the entire system against it, rather than a bunch of binaries which are linked against who knows what version of pick a widget set. I know my system seems pretty consistent.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by LuSiDe · 2004-12-17 22:43 · Score: 1

Enlightenment's composite extension is far more faster. I just spend 10 minutes searching the benchmark source i read the other day but couldn't find it. So you have to take my word on it or search too.

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Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by johnnyb · 2004-12-18 01:28 · Score: 1

I haven't used Gentoo, but I was pretty sure that the version of Gtk used was based on the version the application was coded for, so if it hasn't been ported to Gtk2 yet, it just uses the Gtk1 widgets.

Otherwise, I imagine RedHat and others would have more consistency between apps.

--
Engineering and the Ultimate
Re:They're improving the file dialogs... by oliverthered · 2004-12-19 14:14 · Score: 1

Is it composite that's slow, or xrender?

What's the performance using open-GL/ open gl overlays instead of xrender?

--
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Backwards compatibility... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:31 · Score: 0

Bah, there I go porting my programs yet another time...

Re:Backwards compatibility... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:41 · Score: 0

Bah, there I go porting my programs yet another time...

Nope. The whole GTK 2 series is backwards compatible at ABI level. GTK 2.0 programs will work fine with the latest 2.x release. Only major releases (that is, GTK 3.0 that isn't even planned right now) will break backwards compatibility.

Of course, if you want to use the new features of the latest releases then you'll need to port them, but you're not obliged in any other way.

Re:Priorities, priorities by eno2001 · 2004-12-17 10:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

Asshole mods. Actually, I think the monkey got it right. This kind of news IS "stuff that matters". After all, why else would anyone be reading Slashdot other than the articles about computer related (with a free/open bent) technologies and software? If you aren't reading for that reason, then you're in the wrong place. That's why I've devoted my JEs to discussing technology/software/asking linux related questions, etc... Oh yeah, and the occasional dig at Slashdot and trolling.

--
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o

seconded by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:35 · Score: 0

I just clicked on the link given since I wanted to know what's new... getting the main GTK page is not helpful.

Re:seconded by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:00 · Score: 0

You only have to click on one more link after getting to the main page.
Is that so much to ask?
Try here http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list /2004-December/msg00038.html, which just happens to be the very first link under 'News' at the bottom of the main page.

Why are people so f***ing lazy?
Re:seconded by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:02 · Score: 0

You mean I have to scroll down after I click on the link? That's no good!

I love Gnome and GTK by bonch · 2004-12-17 10:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

...but when are they going to just go full-on GTK# running on a Mono framework? :D

Beat Microsoft at its own .NET game.

Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:20 · Score: 1, Insightful

Hopefully that will not happen anytime soon. The mono runtime doesn't work properly on the BSDs yet (mostly due to bugs in glib's threading system and boehm-gc). What about systems that don't have support for JIT yet? Should those run mono apps in interpreted mode? No, thanks.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:48 · Score: 0

You mean use Java/SWT with GCJ instead?
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by aldoman · 2004-12-17 12:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

But how long do we as an OSS community stop very new and exciting development in the premise of 'it doesn't work on 0.5% of systems'?!

Linux _desperately_ needs to have a working, easy to use RAD environment. Something as simple, or simpler than Visual Basic. I want to be able to create a simple Linux application by dragging and dropping some form elements onto a page and double clicking on a button and typing a few lines of simple code and have it all working.

Glade is good, but it's not easy enough.

Mono has the possibility of bringing this to fruition. I want to see sharpdevelop making good GTK# apps in a few hours.

--
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Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:35 · Score: 0

mmmm, maybe http://gambas.sourceforge.net/ is what your looking for...
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by binner1 · 2004-12-17 12:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

One thing that will really screw up the VB crowd moving to GTK+ is the way that windows are designed. Designing a window for GTK/Gnome (optionally using Glade) means building a hierarcy of widgets in containers. In Windows with VB, you just put the widget where you want it.

GTK/Gnome is more 'difficult'** up front but reduces the work by the programmer when it comes to resizing a window. Windows is 'easier' up front but makes the programmer painfully aware of the location of widgets after the fact (window resizing, etc).

Personally, once you've gotten over the 'lack of free form design' shock, I like the GTK/Gnome approach much better.

**I haven't coded anything for Windows in a few years, so things may have changed with .Net and WinForms (?) in the meantime. I also don't think the GTK way is difficult...it's just different.

-Ben
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by arodland · 2004-12-17 12:45 · Score: 1

Yeah... let's tell off all those people yelling about how open-source software is lower quality, by making sure every schmuck can make apps that are every bit as bad as most VB apps! That'll be really, um, competetive!
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 15:17 · Score: 0

Put the keyboard back on the shelf and get out the crayons.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 19:28 · Score: 0

And lose the linux desktop.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 01:55 · Score: 0

Try Qt Designer. It allows you to drag and drop widgets onto a form, set up layouts in an easy way, and has an INCREDIBLY easy way of setting the tab order (you click the "Tab Order" button, then click on every widget in order).

It also has a built-in code editor, which will create form init events for you, and a graphical signal-slot editor which will create the slot shells for you as well.

Best of all, it Qt comes with extensive documentation and there's an excellent online book called C++ GUI Design in Qt introducing you to the toolkit

In addition to QtDesigner though, there's also the graphical Qt tool for translating your programs as well. It's actually one of the most sophisticated RAD suites out there. In terms of translation and layout management it's miles ahead of the Borland and MS tools (speaking as a guy who uses Delphi at work).

The Qt Designer code editor is a bit shakey, but it's possible to use KDevelop in conjunction with the Qt tools, in which case you get the best of both worlds.

Note, this is not to denegrate the great work performed by the GTK+ folks, but for RAD application developement, Qt has the better tools and for most modern programmers taught OOP from the get-go in Java or C++, it's easier to get to grips with.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by justins · 2004-12-18 02:03 · Score: 1

Linux _desperately_ needs to have a working, easy to use RAD environment. Something as simple, or simpler than Visual Basic. I want to be able to create a simple Linux application by dragging and dropping some form elements onto a page and double clicking on a button and typing a few lines of simple code and have it all working

The sad part is, 99.9% of the Linux development community holds you in the utmost contempt, or at the very best, doesn't understand your needs.

--
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Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Late · 2004-12-18 02:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

"I haven't coded anything for Windows in a few years, so things may have changed with .Net and WinForms (?) in the meantime."

Not really. WinForms has a sensible class structure and generally cleaner design than MFC, but basic positioning is still considered more or less absolute.

Where I work we have bought and external toolkit (Syncfusion) which offers layout managers and then we just use gridbadlayout just like most Java developers do. Syncfusion would integrate nicely into the Windows Form designer for drag and drop, but we have chosen to create a simple XML description language and generate the user interfaces from description files (with a preview tool of course).
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 06:17 · Score: 0

Dream on loser. We dont need any more degenerate
OSS applications coded by retarded drooling inbreds
such as yourself.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Bob+Uhl · 2004-12-18 12:27 · Score: 1

Slightly before Microsoft patent-sues GNOME out of existence...
I love gtk+/GNOME, but Mono is idiotic. Microsoft will not let it stand, should it ever become a threat.
Re:I love Gnome and GTK by randomblast · 2004-12-18 13:25 · Score: 1

You have a very good point, which I agree with, but I would have said something more along the lines of....

"RAD languages like VB are not good because they're so easy to use. If anyone can write a program that will be used within their company or whatever, but doesn't approach the design and implementation with the mindset of a real programmer, the product will be flawed."

But I do disagree with part of your sentiment; if a program is OSS you don't _have_ to use it, everybody has the choice of using an app or not, and if it's not any good, nobody will use it.

--
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Re:I love Gnome and GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-19 12:19 · Score: 0

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Love,
bonch (aka rd_syringe aka Overly Critical Guy)

Thanks!! by NotoriousQ · 2004-12-17 10:36 · Score: 4, Informative

My thanks as usual to the people who build GTK and Pango. I guess that I have not yet really learned to appreciate the people behind the curtain, the GLib people, but since they make GTK possible, thanks to them as well.

Currently GTK is one of my favorite toolkits. The reason: Pango. I use multiple languages in my documents, as well as the compose button, and all GTK apps handle it perfectly (I use utf-8 of course). And although the input methods are somewhat redundant architecture that should be lower than the level of the toolkit IMHO, GTK input methods are the best, especially when combined with UIM.

Thank again to all the people involved.

BTW: is there a keyboard shortcut to switching input methods. UIM has it, but I sometimes need to switch to cyrillic translit (can not use ru phonetic since the keyboard is in dvorak) from Chinese and back, and that is a bit painful?

--
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Re: Thanks!! by Black+Parrot · 2004-12-17 10:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

> Currently GTK is one of my favorite toolkits. The reason: Pango. I use multiple languages in my documents

I just recently discovered that GTK+ with Pango has cool monolingual uses as well, since it supports a simple markup language that lets you very easily do things to the text in your menus, buttons, etc., such as italicize, sub- or superscript, etc.

Google for "pango markup language" for more info.

--
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Re:Thanks!! by GMFTatsujin · 2004-12-17 11:10 · Score: 1

Let me chime in here with a "Me too!"

GTK is what makes my desktop go. I love it. Nice job, folks.
Re:Thanks!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 15:37 · Score: 0

I currently use Linux software for everything except my job: I use Windows software to write in Latin, because I haven't figured out how to use unicode characters for vowels with macra (long marks) in an easy, consistent and intuitive way in KDE or gnome.

In MS Office, I've got keyboard shortcuts set up to create vowels with macra quickly and easily, to the point that my typing speed is not at all impacted. In KDE or gnome, I'm reduced to using a character map application and the clipboard, which blows ancient, golden donkey.

I realize this makes me a moron, but please do have patience and hear me out, for the parent post has instilled me with new hope, which for morons like me sustains my faith in humanity and a merciful God who approves of free software.

Is there a way to map keys (such as alt+control+a or alt+\, a) in either kde or gnome to an arbitrary unicode codepoint? Being able to do so in abiword, OO or kword would help immensely, but being able to do so consistently across the whole desktop environment would mean a thousand times more.
Re:Thanks!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 17:17 · Score: 0

Not sure if this will help, but there is a way to set up a "Compose" or "multi_key" in X, that can get you some of these characters. To get you started:
Gentoo tips and tricks.
Re: Thanks!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 16:08 · Score: 0

Qt also lets you do this, except it uses a subset of HTML instead. And as far as multilingual uses goes, I've never had a problem with Qt applications and UTF-8. It seems quite odd to promote these things as features - are there many toolkits that don't support this stuff?

But I run Gentoo! by IO+ERROR · 2004-12-17 10:38 · Score: 1, Funny

By the time this finishes compiling, gtk+ 2.6.1 will be out!

--
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?

Re:But I run Gentoo! by Excelsior · 2004-12-17 12:08 · Score: 2, Funny

And by the time distros other than Gentoo have support for gtk+ 2.6.1, gtk+ 3.2.4 will be out.
Re:But I run Gentoo! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:12 · Score: 0

Heh. Touché.
Re:But I run Gentoo! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:55 · Score: 0

2.6.0 is in Ubuntu Hoary already
Re:But I run Gentoo! by TeknoHog · 2004-12-18 00:12 · Score: 1

By the time this finishes compiling, gtk+ 2.6.1 will be out!
Of course, your favourite binary distro releases it without spending any compilation time... or any testing/management time for that matter...

--
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Rated 'm' for michael-mode by BattleCat · 2004-12-17 10:40 · Score: 0

Looks like Michael is either in his not-so-funny-but-creative mood, or he's preparing to work for S&P (or F-rated-Fitch ? Or M-rated-Moody's ?)
And, btw, can we have 'rated-xxx-for...' ?

Re:Rated 'm' for michael-mode by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:59 · Score: 0

What the hell are you talking about? Who is Michael?

A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widgets.. by Abcd1234 · 2004-12-17 10:41 · Score: 3, Informative

If you read the release notes, it's interesting to see that many of the changes are the creation of widgets that are intended to replace stuff in the Gnome libraries (e.g., the new icon viewer widget). It makes one wonder where the line should be drawn between the widget set and an aggregate library. Moreover, I wonder what the drivers are for moving these things back into Gtk if they're already present in the Gnome stuff (other than to reduce dependencies).

Re:Obligitory by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:41 · Score: 0

Yes... but does it run Linux?

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A new GTK release by GreatBunzinni · 2004-12-17 10:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

Here is a new GTK release and I bet that once again it will be almost impossible to install it easily and successfully through the config/make/make install way. Damn those dependencies. Damn them to hell.

--
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.

Re:A new GTK release by Skater · 2004-12-17 15:19 · Score: 1

So, you use GnuCash too, eh?

--RJ

Ahh. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:45 · Score: 1, Insightful

Everyone seems to think there's some kind of big KDE vs GNOME 'you must choose one or the other' thing but personally I think a shoddy desktop environment is worse than none at all and I'd rather just forgo them both and use the command line plus my GTK apps. Why GTK? Because I just happen to like gaim, galeon, and xchat, and there really isn't anything for Qt I like. The simplicity is nice.

Re:Ahh. by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:13 · Score: 1

Hmmm, could they make gnome ask for your permission to launch a program that uses QT libraries?

That could be a really good mem-saver for users with limited experience.

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Re:Ahh. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-20 09:48 · Score: 0

there really isn't anything for Qt I like

K3B?

GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by viva_fourier · 2004-12-17 10:45 · Score: 3, Funny

Sorry to disappoint you chemistry geeks out there, it's been verified: I did a search on GTK and did not find any Grand Theft K 3d chemistry gaming references...apparently it's some toolkit for gimps.

Move along, nothing to see here.

--
and now back to the fallout shelter...

Re:GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:57 · Score: 2, Funny

Grand Theft KDE?

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Re:GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:15 · Score: 0

With jokes like that it should be called Grand Theft Karma.
Re:GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:17 · Score: 0

GTK = Grand Theft Kudos
Re:GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by iabervon · 2004-12-17 11:36 · Score: 2, Funny

The "you die if you fall into water" property got merged into GTA, so the potassium version didn't matter much.
Re:GTK != Grand Theft Potassium by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:06 · Score: 0

The "you die if you fall into water" property got merged into GTA

Uh oh. In that case the "JFK assassination video game" may run into intellectual property issues if they follow on to their plans for the "EMK driving simulator video game"

They all (most likely) know how to google it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 10:46 · Score: 0

And there is a link too.

Re: GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:49 · Score: 1

When will propertary software emerge from the dark ages of today and match the brilliant portability of linux? My guess is never.

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Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 10:51 · Score: 1

For using it without gnome libraries.

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Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-17 10:56 · Score: 1

Don't think in terms of reducing dependencies as far as packages to install. Think in terms of reducing dependencies as in eliminating Gnome altogether. I hate Gnome. I think it sucks, and I refuse to use it. Every time I try using it, I end up hating it more. Same goes for KDE. The more useful Gtk+ (isn't that the actual name, as opposed to the inaccurate-as-always story blurb?) becomes without any additional libraries, the more likely it is that applications will be written directly atop Gtk+ rather than on top of Gnome, and the more likely I am to use those applications as a result.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by damiam · 2004-12-17 11:00 · Score: 1

Much of the stuff in the GNOME libraries would be equally useful in non-GNOME applications, so it makes sense to make it available to them.

--
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Same link as in story by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:00 · Score: 0

This is the exact same link as in the story if you click on GTK.

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:02 · Score: 0, Troll

hahahahah
mac os x = im uber trendy and wear turtlenecks all the fucking time

Will it work with wxwidgets? by bigberk · 2004-12-17 11:07 · Score: 1

Over the holidays I want to sit down and play with wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) to try and make some cross platform GUIs. I believe wx compiles against GTK, though I haven't tried this yet myself. Anyone have experience with this? Do changes in GTK impact wx? (ideally they shouldn't)

Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by stef0x77 · 2004-12-17 11:20 · Score: 1

Only the development version (2.5.x) of wxWidgets works with GTK2. The stable version (2.4.x) uses the old GTK.
Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by Spellbinder · 2004-12-17 12:09 · Score: 1

thats wrong
i use it with 2.4 with gtk2
but you can run it with gtk1.2 too

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Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by MighMoS · 2004-12-17 12:24 · Score: 1

Maybe its just me, but using one toolkit to draw another just seems redundant. GTK+ has been ported to Windows, and has the WIMP theme to make it look 'native'. I know someone somewhere has a use for it, but I don't, and neither does any application I use.
Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by VZ · 2004-12-17 12:56 · Score: 2, Informative

We haven't tested wx with 2.6.0 yet so it is possible that currently something is broken (as you say, ideally it shouldn't be, but in practice GTK+ minor version upgrades have often proved to have not so minor compatibility problems). However our next 2.5.4 release will definitely work with it as will the next stable 2.6.0 (of wx, not GTK+). Hopefully they will match each other as perfectly as their versions do ;-)
Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by VZ · 2004-12-17 13:01 · Score: 1

You can use 2.4 with GTK2 but support for GTK2 is already much, much better in 2.5.3 and, of course, improving all the time, so you should really consider using 2.5 instead.
Re:Will it work with wxwidgets? by urmensch · 2004-12-17 14:45 · Score: 1

GTK+ on Windows suffers from a lack of developers and consistantly contains bugs that are *very* annoying. I doubt that WxWigets bound to GTK+ would sove anything. However, WxWidgets might make it easier to target "native" toolkits on several platforms (win32, GTK+, QT and OSX. Also, the last time I installed a GTK app, the WIMP theme could definitely be improved.

And then the obvious question rises... by Tribbin · 2004-12-17 11:07 · Score: 1

Where do I have to click to install this?

*ducks for cover*

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Re:And then the obvious question rises... by n9mdh · 2004-12-17 11:45 · Score: 1

http://packages.debian.org/testing/admin/synaptic. html
Re:And then the obvious question rises... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 02:03 · Score: 0

for windows is 2.6.0 not out yet, you can install the 2.4 version though:

YAY! by exigentsky · 2004-12-17 11:07 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I guess we can't give it the "slowest toolkit on Linux" award. Now to come up with a new award will be challenging, but I'm sure the GTK+ team hasn't forgotten the Slashdot whiners,

Re:YAY! by diegocgteleline.es · 2004-12-17 11:39 · Score: 1

I also have the impression that GTK is not the fastest toolkit on earth, but it looks like they're improving!. Just look at the release notes:

Performance improvements
The chunk size for incremental transfers of big selections has been increased, reducing the number of necessary roundtrips. GTK+ uses sync counters to speed up window resizing. The efficiency of GtkListStore and GtkUIManager has been improved by changing the used algorithms and data structures. Icon themes are cached in an mmap()able cache file to reduce memory consumption and disk seek overhead. The cost of intra-library function calls has been reduced by avoiding PLT redirections.
Re:YAY! by sim82 · 2004-12-17 12:18 · Score: 1

It's not exactly slow, I just think gtk 2.4 has a rather, uhm, strange redraw concept, ain't it?

Will gtk 2.6 be usable for interactive work? 2.4 feels more like some kind of batch processing gui.
Re:YAY! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:53 · Score: 0

either stop trolling or turn on renderaccel on your nvidia card.
Re:YAY! by afd8856 · 2004-12-17 21:23 · Score: 1

What about those who use remote X? With the X server running on low-end PIIs? The answer is not that simple.

--
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:10 · Score: 1, Funny

When will open source emerge from the dark ages and match the brilliant quality and capability of Mac OS X?

Probably when Apple decides to use an open source kernel for its OS *giggle*.

Re: GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:11 · Score: 0

If portability is the only argument for Linux, then it is a very sad state of affairs indeed.

Re:Obligitory by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:14 · Score: 0

It does run for old people in Korea.

those eyes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:14 · Score: 0

dude anyone notice that the gimp thingy's eyes MOVE slightly?
holy shit that really fucked me up big time, i nearly choked on my cheetos, i shouldn't be driving heh

Re: GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:16 · Score: 0

If portability is the only argument for Linux, then it is a very sad state of affairs indeed.

Add price, software availability, non-restrictive license and a kernel where enterprises with extensive OS design experience have worked (IBM, Novell, Sun,...).

And everyone (except trolls) rejoiced.

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:16 · Score: 0

Some advice to you my friend:

The secret to be a successfull troll is not to try to hard, the trolling has to be subtle yet annoying.

Better luck next time!

Pretty release notes for spoiled developers please by bmetz · 2004-12-17 11:16 · Score: 1

C'mon guys, it's 2004: time to start publishing release notes in HTML.

--
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Better for windows users now by bulletman · 2004-12-17 11:18 · Score: 1

From the readme:

The ms-windows (Wimp) theme engine and the IME input method module have been integrated into the GTK+ sources.

I've always had trouble getting Wimp working under pygtk, and I am happy to see that wimp is now built in by default. GTK is a great toolkit only held back on Windows IMO by how it looked. Kudos to the gtk team! Stephen

Re:Better for windows users now by Junta · 2004-12-17 12:17 · Score: 1

I always do wxPyhton for cross platform. Even if you give GTK a theme that looks mostly like native, some aspects of the look and feel simply won't be addressed by theming... wxWidgets is a truly underrated approach to cross-platform native applications...

--
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Re:Better for windows users now by aCapitalist · 2004-12-17 12:53 · Score: 0

I've been amazed how nice a development environment Python and gkt+ is with gladewin32.sourceforge.net packages and the python bindings. Gtk+ looks great on windows these days.
Re:Better for windows users now by msaavedra · 2004-12-17 12:53 · Score: 3, Interesting

The difference between Wimp and other GTK engines is that it uses the windows GUI engine to draw most things, so they are identical to the native windows controls. It does a better job of this in Windows XP than in previous versions, though. Wimp still causes quite a bit of pain in Windows 98. As for wxPython, I've switched away from that to pyGTK, for a couple of reasons. First, the stable version of Wx uses a really ancient version of GTK on unix. Second, I really disliked the API. I have heard that it is similar in style to MFC, and if that is the case, I'm glad I've been able to stay away from Windows-only programming as long as I have.

--
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Good. by Pflipp · 2004-12-17 11:21 · Score: 1

Now all I want for Christmas is kernel 2.6.10+reiser4.

--
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Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:25 · Score: 0

GTK is also the prefered Mono.Net library for GUI windows apps, so there's no Gnome there.

It is a hard balance, but whether a GTK app could go on OSX or Windows without Gnome might be a good way of deciding it.

Mono and GTK2 File Dialogs by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:27 · Score: 0

Does anyone know if Mono allows you to popup GTK2 File Open/Save etc. dialogs?

I didn't see anything about it in the O'Reiley Mono Notebook...

Re:Pretty release notes for spoiled developers ple by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:30 · Score: 0

HTML is out.

I'd say tricky non-standard XML with a stylesheet attached.

Re:Pretty release notes for spoiled developers ple by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:36 · Score: 1, Funny

C'mon guys, it's 2004: time to start publishing release notes in HTML.

That's sooo 90s. The fashion is publishing release notes in flash, dude. Now this is progress.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by MarkLewis · 2004-12-17 11:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, Gtk# originally started as a managed wrapper just for GTK+ (hence the name), but has since grown to include the rest of the Gnome libraries (gnomeui, pango, etc) as well.

The fact that they haven't changed the name is misleading, but all the base GNOME libraries are available.

What GTK2 File Open Dialogs? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:38 · Score: 0

What GTK2 File Open Dialogs?

Re:What GTK2 File Open Dialogs? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:43 · Score: 0

What GTK2 File Open Dialogs?

Me no know nothing! Ugaahhh!
Re:What GTK2 File Open Dialogs? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:58 · Score: 0

There is a rumor that they do actually exist, gEdit even uses them!

Here's some example code:

http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/tutoria l/ html/ch13s02.html

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by mpcooke3 · 2004-12-17 11:43 · Score: 1

Yes it's important to move all the gnome stuff into GTK that way people like you will be forced to install gnome (now called GTK7) just to run your crappy little apps written way back in 1987.

mwa ha ha ha

These Gentoo compilation jokes are so damn funny.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:48 · Score: 2, Funny

..that by the time I've stopped laughing at this one the next one will have been told!

(Moderators, please stop modding those up, they've been old for ages.)

Re:These Gentoo compilation jokes are so damn funn by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 11:51 · Score: 0

(Moderators, please stop modding those up, they've been old for ages.)

That's cause they were probably compiled in gentoo. =)

Speed improvements by arvindn · 2004-12-17 11:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

Some X protocol round trip reduction improvements have made it to this release, so if you've been frustrated by a gnome program over an ssh session taking 30 seconds to start (I sure have!) then 2.6 will probably speed things up.

Re:Pretty release notes for spoiled developers ple by diegocgteleline.es · 2004-12-17 11:59 · Score: 1

Like this? http://www.gtk.org/gtk-2.6.0-notes.html

(No, it doesn't use fancy html features but it's HTML. The "announcements" liked in the story are announcements for developers. Developers like pure ascii)

Re:These Gentoo compilation jokes are so damn funn by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:01 · Score: 0

As I said... You just proved my point ;)

Unrelated to story: by X0563511 · 2004-12-17 12:20 · Score: 1

Posting as a reply here so this shows near the top...

WTH is this? Slashdot seriously screwed up. It happened four refreshes in a row.
http://img26.exs.cx/img26/7753/slashdotgoof5yc.jpg

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For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...

Re:Unrelated to story: by Hockney+Twang · 2004-12-17 12:47 · Score: 1

This is a known issue in Firefox, has to do with the not so graceful way that it renders malformed code. But since IE renders it properly, and everyone knows that designing IE-only is ok, it won't be changed. I'm not certain if the Firefox team will feel compelled to alter their program in order to render bad code more like IE does. Try this however, hold CTRL and then scroll your mouse wheel up and then back down. That will make two adjustments to the size of text on the page, and will fix the problem. (If you don't have a mousewheel, use the + and - keys.)
Re:Unrelated to story: by Chuck+Bucket · 2004-12-17 13:00 · Score: 1

this firefox extention fixes it: Slashfix

It was annoying the heck out of me too...

PCB$#

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Re:Unrelated to story: by aichpvee · 2004-12-17 22:22 · Score: 0, Offtopic

How come I've never seen that on /.?

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The Farewell Tour II
Re:Unrelated to story: by m50d · 2004-12-17 23:39 · Score: 1

It's a bug in firefox, acknowledged as a bug in firefox, and fixed in mozilla trunk.

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I am trolling

Fortran? by Aardpig · 2004-12-17 12:22 · Score: 2, Funny

Bah, no bindings for Fortran. It would be nice to see a decent open-source GUI toolkit for Fortran; a front end does wonders for the ability of PHBs to appreciate a piece of code.

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Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.

Re:Fortran? by brank · 2004-12-18 20:29 · Score: 1

Fortran didn't have dynamic memory allocation before F90, so GTK bindings are probably impossible until GCC 4.0.

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it's green.
Re:Fortran? by Aardpig · 2004-12-19 04:46 · Score: 1

Fortran didn't have dynamic memory allocation before F90, so GTK bindings are probably impossible until GCC 4.0.

What, and Fortran 90 has been around for *how* long? The fact that gcc does not support Fortran 90/95/2003 is no reason why bindings could not have been created for *other* vendors' compilers.

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Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Re:Fortran? by brank · 2004-12-19 06:06 · Score: 1

Yes, but that requires someone who a) wants pure Fortran and b) uses a compiler other than GCC. See this slashdot article.

Realistically, people writing Fortran in modern times only use it for the backend/"number crunching" parts. All the languages likely to be used for the UI have GTK bindings, even Ada.

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it's green.

GTK?-Hidden directory. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:23 · Score: 0

What's a rant? :)

Seriously I hope these improvements make it into all gtk and gnome programs. For an example of something that needs the loving. Try pan, go into posting profile, then open the preexisting profile. Now go to signature and browse. Note that you can't go into a hidden directory.

Re:QT GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:26 · Score: 0

no, it's because you are a KDE bigot who has their head up their ass....oops, sorry for being redundant.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:29 · Score: 0

It's morons like you that give slashdot a bad name.

GNOME (and KDE for that matter) are toolkits to allow software developers to quickly put together applications. They have another function, and that's to provide a set of guidelines to make all the apps look and work in a similar way.

Stupid dumbasses like you moan because you've never written a piece of software longer than 4 lines of "hello world". You don't understand that every bit of addition software that spends months reimplementing simple printing routines (for examples) adds massive amounts to the development effort and huge amounts of bloat.

GNOME and KDE are for building apps with... read it, understand it.

They're improving the file dialogs...Keys. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:33 · Score: 3, Informative

"I hate not being able to do a tab-based regexp search, as common in ye olde GTK+. "

Control+L

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Phleg · 2004-12-17 12:39 · Score: 1

Moreover, I wonder what the drivers are for moving these things back into Gtk if they're already present in the Gnome stuff.

My assumption is that the parts being moved aren't really Gnome-specific. Applications that want to use those dialogs would have to include libgnome and libgnomeui, which are only available under Linux and very tied into the GNOME environment. For instance, an application which wanted to use a standardized About dialog would have to include the GNOME libraries. This moves it into GTK+, allowing cross-platform applications to use it.

Really, libgnome should only be for highly GNOME-specific code, such as the VFS.

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No comment.

Re: GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 12:58 · Score: 0

And everyone (except trolls) rejoiced.

After rejoicing, they sat back down at their computers, looked at their messy, convoluted, buggy and terribly incomplete desktops, and came back down to the real world of Linux. And what an ugly world it was.

Soon they moved back to Windows and this time did nothing to hide their glee and awe at the speed, consistency and stability of NT5.

With their computing lives complete, they turned their attention to girls, physical activity, sunshine and glorious independence.

Re:QT GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 13:02 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Ah, but QT is not 'truely free', so GTK has it beat, unless you don't care about GPL!

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-17 13:12 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Sir, it is truly morons like you that give Slashdot a bad name. That you post anonymously only does a disservice to more intelligent and insightful GNFOS trolls who use that name. If you have a point to make, I'm waiting for it, but you'll really need to make it both coherently and logically, because thus far you have done little but pretend you know that which you must not.

I've written more millions of lines of code than you have lived years on this earth. I did general-purpose distributed computing before it was cool. I wrote a Lisp interpreter in 6 hours. In short, I know a thing or two about writing code.

And you, sir, are wrong. Gnome and KDE are desktop environments. That they include thousands of googaws that make building applications easier is a disadvantage, and it's just that disadvantage that moving such googaws into the appropriate location, such as the upstream widget toolkit (in this case, Gtk+) can alleviate.

Right now, to get even one googaw or trinket out of Gnome for use in an application (the GtkHTML widget comes to mind as a past example of this, but as I haven't done any GUI development in several yearsI won't specify precisely which widget I am presently referring to), you end up installing the entirety of the Gnome libraries in an effort to ensure you meet the dependencies. Oftentimes, application programmers don't even know what their applications depend upon to build and/or run.

The disadvantage is that the line between widget toolkit and desktop is blurred and was blurred from shortly after the beginning of it all. Gtk+ and glib are a good example of two libraries with a unidirectional dependency and fine line of separation. If it's part of the graphical toolkit, it is in Gtk+. If it is a data structure or other non-graphical widget, it's in glib.

With Gtk+ versus libgnome*, though, the line is blurred. So many different libraries provide graphical widgets at the exact same level as Gtk+ provides them that an application developer often must choose between omitting functionality made possible by the Gnome widgets, implementing his own widgets to replace them, and writing code that depends upon higher-level Gnome libraries than it needs to.

If all the widgets were either consolidated into Gtk+ (as is the current trend) or consolidated instead into separate libraries with very well-defined territories, then application developers could get away from the type of bloat that is most annoying to many users: dependency bloat. There is nothing more obnoxious than finding a new piece of software (take, for example, mail-notification the project) and finding out that you have to install an entire desktop environment (here, Gnome) because it provides some minuscule piece of code that it depends upon.

The Gnome libraries could be rededicated to providing a functional and useful desktop environment and high-level IPC, and the applications that do not need those features could do just fine depending only upon specific libraries from a set of granular, well-defined libraries.

Re: GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by diegocgteleline.es · 2004-12-17 13:12 · Score: 1

"With their computing lives complete"

That's how I feel since I use 100% open source, strange.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-17 13:14 · Score: 1

Hey, the version of Netrek I run was released in 1997. ;)

MOD PARENT UP +5 INFORMATIVE by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 13:19 · Score: 0

Already there. by Balinares · 2004-12-17 13:29 · Score: 1

Linux _desperately_ needs to have a working, easy to use RAD environment.

I think that the KDevelop IDE already allows for true RAD in Python and Ruby (with an embedded GUI designer that ties into the editor functions), but if you want a VB workalike without the VB idiosyncrasies, give Gambas a go. It's about to reach 1.0, and seems to work really darn well, from what testing I've subjected it to.

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-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 13:32 · Score: 0

In short, I know a thing or two about writing code.

I'll go along with that. A thing or two is all you do know. You sir, are also a pretentious blusterer who's spun out a one line brag into a page long rant that misses the point completely.

The Gnome libraries could be rededicated to providing a functional and useful desktop environment and high-level IPC, and the applications that do not need those features could do just fine depending only upon specific libraries from a set of granular, well-defined libraries.

This final paragraph proves, conclusively, that you simply haven't bothered to read and understand any of this. Just what part of modular software development don't you understand (Oh, that's right... LISP, I should have guessed)? You, by all accounts, want virtually everything shovelled into GTK*... which would, no doubt, piss off the many GTK users who don't want many of the features of GNOME (and there are plenty... try reading the lists). The widgets in question have moved into GTK because they are now stable and proven. They always belonged there... and were always going to move there. The GNOME/GTK software stack actually takes dependencies and good software engineering seriously -- they aren't like you, a wanker who looks at a list of dependencies and thinks that 40 modularised dependencies of 1MB each is *BAD*, but a 40MB blob of code under a single name is *COOL*.

* Except, strangely, high-level IPC (what happened, did you throw that into try and look like you know that the fuck you are jabbering about?).

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 13:37 · Score: 0

LOLZ!!1

Insightful?

how much of a speed boost? by green+pizza · 2004-12-17 13:38 · Score: 1

I would like to know if 2.6 has finally brought 2.x up to the performance of 1.2 (or maybe even better?).

On Solaris I still build most applications with GTK+ 1.2.x because I've found 2.4.x to be significantly slower, even without AA fonts, and all of the pretty eyecandy. Doing the same thing as 1.2, it seems that 2.4 is just plain slower.

GTK is.... well... SLOW! by green+pizza · 2004-12-17 13:44 · Score: 1

As many other posts have pointed out, GTK is widely used and very flexible GUI toolkit. It has great C and Perl bindings and has been used in a few of my applications.

But, it's SLOW. If you're used to Xaw3D or even Motif, you'll find GTK to be slow. Applications built against GTK 1.2 aren't too bad on semi-modern hardware. A Pentium 3 500 MHz or a 300 MHz UltraSPARC II can run such applications with ease. It'll be a tad sluggish on a Pentium 233 MMX or a 170 MHz UltraSPARC I.

I'm looking forward to trying version 2.6, but I can tell you from experience that version 2.4 is *far* slower than 1.2, even when AA fonts and all of the other fancy eyecandy features are disabled. Blame it on Pango? Blame it on the latest glib? I don't know for certain where the problem is, but it's slow.

For now I write most of my GUI apps with Perl/Tk (hackish, I know) or with Motif/OpenMotif (ugly code but fast). I've even used Xaw3D on a recent project (retro in a strange way).

But GTK? Version 2.4 is too damn slow and folks are moving away from version 1.2 in droves.

Re:GTK is.... well... SLOW! by m50d · 2004-12-17 23:59 · Score: 1

I think it's pango. It allows you to do all lots of nice effects, antialiasing, and really nice i18n. However, the price for that is being very slow. Sometimes I wish they'd make a ascii only version that ran very fast, but I realise that's being a bit selfish.

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I am trolling

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Burnon · 2004-12-17 13:45 · Score: 3, Informative

Much of the motivation on the devel mailing lists seemed to be oriented around the idea that the gnome libraries had things in them that weren't quite ready for the gtk/glib guys to commit to supporting in the API-stable 2.x series forever. So the code was put into GNOME libraries to get GNOME apps out the door. When implementations and APIs for things that are generally useful to people doing GTK-only stuff got clean enough for everyone concerned, then they got picked up.

No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive. by master_p · 2004-12-17 13:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

I prefer Qt, as I think C++ is better overall, but I've got to give credit to the gtk/glib guys. They've done a tremendous API, all in C!

Re:QT GTK by DashEvil · 2004-12-17 14:03 · Score: 0, Flamebait

You're right. QT is under the GPL and that really isn't `truly free'.

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

Not a troll! Re:But I run Gentoo! by IO+ERROR · 2004-12-17 14:13 · Score: 1

No, I really do run Gentoo, and it really is still compiling.

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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?

Re:Not a troll! Re:But I run Gentoo! by The_Dougster · 2004-12-17 21:54 · Score: 1

Mine takes about 24 hours for a complete rebuild of every package in the system from scratch, which is pretty amazing. Hell, it takes me almost that long to compile just the Kernel on my Netwinder.

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Clickety Click ...

Re:QT GTK by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 14:27 · Score: 0

YHHT, HAND and FUQT.

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 14:34 · Score: 0

Use gtkmm.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-17 14:56 · Score: 0, Flamebait

You certainly are dedicated to being an idiot. Somehow you've managed to agree with most of what I said without even realizing it, because your reading comprehension level is so low that you couldn't be bothered to figure out what I was saying. For example, you claim that I said 40 modularized dependencies of 1MB each is bad, which is not the case at all. Re-read what I said, but this time read each word and look it up in a dictionary if you have difficulty understanding it.

Why do you post anonymously? Did you have trouble understanding the account sign-up procedure, or are you just that certain that nobody likes you and the only way you can post at a non-negative initial score is by not having an account?

Type in the path!!! by rice_burners_suck · 2004-12-17 14:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

I'm glad they brought back the ability to type a path in the file dialog, with search-ahead. This was sorely lacking in GNOME lately.

Re:Type in the path!!! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-21 15:24 · Score: 0

You still can't hit enter in the save dialog, though. How fucking retarded is that.

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 14:57 · Score: 0

Nope, try again, QT isn't opensource! Stick with GTK and try GTKmm as the parent said, it's the only way to stay within the GPL.

only Qt/X11 and Qt/Mac are GPL'd by codergeek42 · 2004-12-17 15:00 · Score: 0, Insightful

Qt is only open-source for Mac OS X and X11 (*nix). For Windows applications, it is not open-source. GTK+ is, however.

Re:only Qt/X11 and Qt/Mac are GPL'd by Al+Dimond · 2004-12-18 02:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've always wondered about that... would it be legal for somebody to take the Qt/X11 code or the Qt/Mac code and make a GLP'd Qt/Win version? If Qt/X11 and Qt/Mac are GPL one would think it should be legal, anyhow.

Not that it would be easy, or any more necessary than the Windows port of GTK+ (which is nice sometimes but certainly not necessary to have a running Windows system), just possible.

building pango is a b*tch on Mac OS X by ubiquitin · 2004-12-17 15:17 · Score: 1

I just spent the past day rebuilding fontconfig, libiconv, libintl, etc. to get pango to build on Mac OS X. This is painful. darwinports and fink are both helpful but not enough. Still don't have it building. Any slashdot gnome wizards want to take a whack at this one?

creating libpangox-1.0.la (cd .libs && rm -f libpangox-1.0.la && ln -s ../libpangox-1.0.la libpangox-1.0.la) gcc -dynamiclib -o .libs/libpangoft2-1.0.0.600.0.dylib .libs/pangofc-font.o .libs/pangofc-fontmap.o .libs/pangofc-decoder.o .libs/pangoft2.o .libs/pangoft2-fontmap.o .libs/pangoft2-render.o .libs/module-defs-fc.o -all_load opentype/.libs/libpango-ot.a /sw/lib/fontconfig2/lib/libfontconfig.a -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/sw/lib ./.libs/libpango-1.0.dylib -L/sw/lib/fontconfig2/lib /sw/lib/libexpat.dylib -lfreetype /sw/lib/libgobject-2.0.dylib /sw/lib/libgmodule-2.0.dylib /sw/lib/libglib-2.0.dylib /sw/lib/libintl.dylib /sw/lib/libiconv.dylib -install_name /usr/local/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.0.dylib -compatibility_version 601 -current_version 601.0 ld: warning multiple definitions of symbol _locale_charset /sw/lib/libiconv.dylib(localcharset.o) definition of _locale_charset /sw/lib/libintl.dylib(localcharset.lo) definition of _locale_charset ld: common symbols not allowed with MH_DYLIB output format with the -multi_module option /sw/lib/fontconfig2/lib/libfontconfig.a(fccfg.o) definition of common __fcConfig (size 4) /usr/bin/libtool: internal link edit command failed

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http://tinyurl.com/4ny52

Re:building pango is a b*tch on Mac OS X by nizmogtr · 2004-12-17 16:05 · Score: 1

try adding -fno-common to your CFLAGS, also this must be compiled with the -fPIC flag. The other dependent libraries must be compiled with the same CFLAGS. Which pango version are you building ?
Re:building pango is a b*tch on Mac OS X by ubiquitin · 2004-12-17 16:22 · Score: 1

Hey thanks for the advice! Just gave it a shot, waiting for the compile to finish.

Get the same result for both pango 1.4.0 and 1.6.0. When you say that dependent libs need the same CFLAGS, would this mean I should recompile xft2 and glib then with the flags you mention?

Curious what -fPIC does.

Doubtless, slashdot isn't the optimal forum for this discussion, do you know of a GNOME-OSX mailing list anywhere by any chance?

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http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Re:building pango is a b*tch on Mac OS X by nizmogtr · 2004-12-17 17:41 · Score: 1

-fPIC is position independent code and its used for compiling shared library. Forget compiling xft2. Try setting the following flag, PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/X11R6/lib/pkgconfig:/sw/lib/p kgconfig/; assuming your gtk install prefix is /sw. The above variable will point configure to the .pc files which should automatically configure pango to use apple's x11 xft. I think apple X11 has xft support, but I am not sure if about xft2? Nevertheless, pango works, and I do have antialias fonts in gtk. Sorry I am not familair with any gnome-osx mailing lists.

Two Questions by KidSock · 2004-12-17 15:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

On Windows, if you type a sequence of characters quickly in a list control (such as in a file dialog) the focus jumps to an item that begins with those letters. Will GTK every implement that?

Also, is there is a way to change the standard file dialog without recompiling everything? I want to set my own custom file dialog.

Re:Two Questions by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 18:35 · Score: 0

I can't answer how, but yes, both of those are supported. Why don't you try searching the Internet or reading some documentation?
Re:Two Questions by dspeyer · 2004-12-17 19:44 · Score: 1

It is possible to modify your file dialog without recompiling everything every time. You do need to recompile everything once. Make sure you get the source for the exact same version you have, and compile it all to get the .o files.
After that, make your changes to gtk-file-selector.c and make libgtk-x11-2.whatever, then copy that file into /usr/lib or wherever your gtk lives. You should probably back up your old version first.
Check out this selector before you start implementing your own. You may find ideas or code you want to copy.

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Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Re:Two Questions by alerante · 2004-12-18 00:35 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure this has been a feature of the GTK+ 2.4 list and file controls for quite a while. Typing a sequence of characters will cause a small text box to appear just below the list, with which you can search for items.
Re:Two Questions by Arkaein · 2004-12-18 03:06 · Score: 1

I don't think you understood the question you answered. I'm pretty sure that KidSock wanted to know if it is possible to implement custom file dialogs on a per application basis and also different dialogs within a single application, not changing the core Gtk file selector for everything, which seems to be what you are suggesting.

As much as I hated programming in MFC (Windows C++ toolkit), this was definitely doable there, if poorly documented. This should be possible in Gtk, I would hope. A quick Google search doesn't bring up any direct advice, but the GtkFileSelection docs seem to imply (at the bottom) that you can use the GtkDialog interface to add controls to the dialog.

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The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
Re:Two Questions by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 18:21 · Score: 0

yes, infact gtk+ has an even better form of typeahead. It allows you to move ahead in a list by not only the first character but by a sequence of characters. You'll notice that as you type in a gtktreeview that has typeahead enabled you'll get a small popup to appear at the bottom right corner of the tree. As you type in the box the select in the treeview will jump to the closest matching searchable column.

It's pretty nice and much more powerful then what you're used to in windows.
Re:Two Questions by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 21:53 · Score: 0

I'm on a modem and short on time, so I won't search out a web page on this, but I'm pretty certain that you are correct.

I remember there was a funny ruckus because a screen shot showed a file selection dialog that contained a checkbox that said "Frob the file". Eugenia thought this would confuse newbies, but really it was just an example of how the application can add things to the dialog. For subsequent screen shots, this was changed to "Lart the next person who asks about this".

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 15:28 · Score: 0

Qt is GPL.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by GreyWolf3000 · 2004-12-17 15:31 · Score: 1

I, too, am really baffled by how the AC took your post.

At any rate, I think toolkit libraries should be able to load and unload different segments into memory like modules in the kernel. If your application needs a calendar widget, it makes a call to load the specific component Toolkit::Calendar and then checks to see if it loaded Toolkit::Calendar properly. The most likely cause of an error would be Toolkit::Calendar not being part of Toolkit's installation on the system.

A mechanism to automatically retrieve missing toolkit components would be cool. The system I'm dreaming of would work like CPAN mixed with Firefox extensions.

Actually, this isn't just limited to toolkits. It's an idea I've been brewing around in my head for a while--develop a common package management interface library that abstracts the local package management system and is able to retrieve minor extensions and components of packages inside software. Dependencies don't come in to play when you try to install software, they come in to play when you try to do something. So the user doesn't specifically interact with the package manager either, unless he needs to install an application. But in current schemes applications will either fail dependency checks or install every possible dependency (including ones that probably won't be needed).

Whatever extensions to the software you need would get taken care of when you use them. They could even get removed if you haven't used them in a while.

This would require not only (re)writing software to add hooks to the package manager interface but also designing the software to specifically avoid having optional dependencies and extensions modify binaries. If the binaries change then you need a new binary when you require new functionality--which cannot be transparently done on the fly.

Or I could be on crack. It is late and I'm tired.

Diskspace is almost free these days. The real crunch is memory space--when your application is run on someone else's computer, it's like being invited over for dinner. It's a delightful exchange, but you have to mind your manners and not intrude.

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Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by downbad · 2004-12-17 15:44 · Score: 1

The kernel has very little to do with OS X's "brilliant quality and capability." This is evidenced by Darwin's remarkable unremarkability. ;)

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Djupblue · 2004-12-17 16:41 · Score: 1

GTK has C++ bindings, its called GTKMM. Its still in beta but its improving!

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ernstp · 2004-12-17 16:58 · Score: 1

The filechooser depends heavily on gnome-vfs, at runtime, no?

Still, I don't think you have to install gnome-vfs for gtk+ to compile/work. Some nice programming in there for sure...

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 17:26 · Score: 0

YHBT HAND.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-17 17:28 · Score: 1

If crack is what it takes to understand what I'm saying, then that's what it takes. At least I'm not 100% alone out here! ;)

Repeat after me .... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 20:35 · Score: 0

Quoting verbatim off a non-slashdotted page is called Karma Whoring ...

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 22:13 · Score: 0

The kernel has very little to do with OS X's "brilliant quality and capability." This is evidenced by Darwin's remarkable unremarkability. ;)

As opposed to Mac OS 9's remarkable kernel, crashes et al included?

Yeah, I'm sure that Apple using a bsd-derived kernel didn't add to the quality of their current OS iteration... *rolls eyes*

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by lamikr · 2004-12-17 22:37 · Score: 1

Good idea but...

Dependencies can not only be checked in a situation
when you will first time need them. Think that
you are with you laptop in the land or space trip
to moon without internet connection (or server is down) and when you try to use application it fails
to install critical component.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-17 22:55 · Score: 0

If I may jump in here. I think the problem is that you keep changing your story, redefining your own terms and using ever-bigger words to obfuscate. While I don't condone the AC flamer's attitude, you really should learn to be consistent.

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by m50d · 2004-12-17 23:53 · Score: 1

It didn't look like a troll. 3[?] years on there are still a huge number of people who don't use KDE because of all the FUD from the debian people about it. This really needs to be sorted.

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I am trolling

FLTK by slurpburp · 2004-12-18 00:32 · Score: 1

Yes, I agree. I buy better faster hardware so that I may run code faster. NOT so I can run more bloated code. One of the reasons I was attracted to Linux [in the first place] was that I was tired of m$ doing thi svery thing! Try FLTK. It codes fast, it loads fast, it runs fast, and it has a very small footprint.

Windows by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 00:35 · Score: 0

It'll be good if the windows vesion could keep up with the Linux.

The last time I used it in Windows for a cross plateform app I could only really use it with Mingw + gcc (which is lacking in performance). Be nice if it worked with a larger range of compilers.

Still a long way off being a serious cross plateform tool, but its getting there!

Re:QT GTK by NumbThumb · 2004-12-18 00:57 · Score: 1, Flamebait

QT ist simply the better API, and the GUI it creates is much more flexible and convenient. The file selection dialog is a very good example: the file chooser in GTK is close to unusable, and makes me want to hit the developers whenever i am forced to use it (no, i have not yet tried the noew one). KDE's file selector is very nice and uses the same components as Konqueror does. The same thing is true for almost all the GUI components, including menus.

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I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by GreyWolf3000 · 2004-12-18 03:20 · Score: 1

The idea is that critical components are already sitting on the hard drive. It's only obscure extensions that you have to retrieve.

The situation you'd worry about would be taking a new laptop to the moon--if you've been using it for a while then all the extensions you need should have been asked for and retrieved beforehand.

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Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 03:43 · Score: 0

I did general-purpose distributed computing before it was cool. I wrote a Lisp interpreter in 6 hours. In short, I know a thing or two about writing code.

Ooohh wow. He did CS in college! Lets all give him a big round of applause for his incredible achievements.

Really? by Grendel+Drago · 2004-12-18 03:49 · Score: 1

Thanks!

Still, I'd rather have the old tab-based method back. It's familiar, damn it. And it seemed more... keyboard-centric instead of mouse-centric, which I like. This is like it's been put in for old codgers like me, to shut us all up. (I'm sorry, but CTRL-L?!) And not for actual usage.

I forget who it was that said that a single mouse move and click (including time to move hands from the keyboard) was worth up to eighteen keystrokes in time. Perhaps that's a bit much, but I will lament the slow passing of the keyboard-centric GUI.

--grendel drago

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Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by drooling-dog · 2004-12-18 04:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

Use gtkmm.

Indeed. It's a very nice implementation, and much cleaner than the underlying GTK+ interface. I'm surprised that it isn't used more widely than it is.

Re:QT GTK by rotty · 2004-12-18 07:27 · Score: 1

QT ist simply the better API

Don't compare apples to oranges. QT has a C++ API, whereas GTK+ is plain C. Better compare QT against gtkmm, the GTK+ C++ bindings.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by ari_j · 2004-12-18 09:43 · Score: 1

I don't see where I was being inconsistent or intentionally obfuscating anything. The short version, in case there was any lack of clarity or consistency that did sneak in, is I would prefer to have one very good widget toolkit and then separate libraries for the Gnome features that are not widgets (things like bonobo, the panel, and preferably a separate library for system-tray-type functionality so that non-Gnome applications can take advantage of compatible system tray implementations outside of Gnome, such as XFCE4 has).

To my knowledge, this is the exact story I've presented from the beginning. If I've failed, I apologize.

Re:GTK 2.6.0 = Mac OS 1994 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-18 18:23 · Score: 0

must be why i keep my in the bathroom.

Re:QT GTK by NumbThumb · 2004-12-19 00:50 · Score: 1

QT has a C++ API, whereas GTK+ is plain C

That is precicely the problem: Using C to implement a GUI-API is simply brain dead. C is for the kernel, for drivers, for heavy duty calculations like cryptography, etc. For a graphical user inteface, an object oriented language is the way to go.

Wrapping a procedural API into objects does not really help, at least not if you do not re-implement half the concepts. A good (bad) example for this the the abominable MFC.

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I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.

Re:QT GTK by rotty · 2004-12-19 01:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

an object oriented language is the way to go.

Altough C is not an OO language, it can be used in an OO way. And this is exactly what GObject, the object system upon which GTK+ is built provides; GTK+ has an OO API, not a procedural one, despite it's written in C. Wrapping this in C++ (or another OO language) is relatively straightforward; you get a nicer syntax, but the concepts stay the same.

Re:No matter how hard C is, gtk/glib is impressive by Chainsaw · 2004-12-19 02:30 · Score: 1

Nope, try again, QT isn't opensource! Stick with GTK and try GTKmm as the parent said, it's the only way to stay within the GPL.

So, what you are saying is: to stay within the GPL, you should the LGPL:ed GTK+ instead of the GPL:ed Qt. This makes no sense to me at all. Could it be that you don't have a damn clue about what you are talking about?

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War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.

One better.... by oliverthered · 2004-12-19 14:19 · Score: 1

Instead of just doing a head match on the list do a regexp match.
so instead given the list

United Arrab Emerates
United Kingdom
United States of America

'u s a' would match 'u*s*a*' and go streight to 'United States of America'

Why re-invent the wheel, why you can have a rocket ship.

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thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Re:A lot of stuff in Gtk is replacing Gnome widget by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-26 18:45 · Score: 0

To be able to run GTK+ powerful apps on Windows.

The less GTK+ apps depends on Gnome, the more GTK+ apps could be ported to Windows.

Remember: Opensource community loves Windows.

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