Unifying GTK & QT Theme Engines

An anonymous reader writes "Some guy on kde-look recently released code that makes gtk apps use the current qt theme. Seems this would be a major development for unifying the 2 environments. From the URL: This GTK theme engine uses the currently selected QT style to do it's drawing. Basically, it makes your GTK apps look like QT ones. "

The finbe print . . .

[randyest]

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

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

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


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

That some guy is...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Bluecurve

[pe1rxq]

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

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

Jeroen

Re:Bluecurve

[Ralph Yarro]

Isn't this what Redhat's Bluecurve does?

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

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

Re:Why do we need two widgets?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

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

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

Re:ummmmm...

[Ralph Yarro]

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

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

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

Re:Accountability Problems

[platypus]

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

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

Re:Okay, now...

[twener]

Seems like you will be able to choose for the next major OpenOffice version whether you want a Gtk2 or a Qt/KDE version [openoffice.org]. And guess which will have the higher integration into its desktop. :-)

Re:Accountability Problems

[platypus]

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

Yeah, just like the linux kernel ...

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

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

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

Re:Accountability Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoth the article:

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

Yeah, still debatable. Not that it particularly matters.

Re:Thank Goodness

[Roberto]

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

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

On KDE, the widget look and the color are separate, and can be configured at will.

Re:Lawsuits by Canopy?

[Ralph Yarro]

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

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

Re:Thank Goodness

[WWWWolf]

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

I used to use a slate blue NeXT theme, until I acknowledged that Gray is the Only True NeXT color =)

Re:Why do we need two widgets?

[scotch]

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

What do you mean by smaller and more efficient?

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

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

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

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

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

HAND

Re:Okay, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if you follow the roadmap for OO v2, you will see that the OpenOffice team are working on closer integration with GNOME/GTK. On the KDE side, one guy (a KDE fan) has put up the page you linked to and done some press releases... that's all... NOTHING ELSE. KDE/Qt integration and widgets for OpenOffice are vapourware.

Re:Just a style

[Anonymous Coward]

It is strange because there was a lot of GNOME flamage about how KDEs approach was so inferior and antiquated (CORBA is the future, remember? it will always be ;-), yet KDEs component framework is the successful one, go figure!

Read this, and understand it: GNOME is not demphasising Bonobo, Corba or anything like it. CORBA, BTW, also runs many enterprise systems the size of which KDE developers cannot even imagine. I'd suggest doing a bit of research before spewing your gibberish in future.

Hehe

[davidsansome]

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

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

Re:Unification in the *nix world

[SignificantBit]

3 words for you: "copy and paste"

Re:Unification in the *nix world

[jamienk]

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

In a word: Windows has NO consistancy at all! And it really fucks up my productivity.

Re:Unification in the *nix world

[good soldier svejk]

The real problem surfaced when Gates cleverly decided not to sell his OS but to license it.

Actually, IBM insisted on this. They were still defending a Federal anti-trust suit and therefore treaded gingerly into the PC market. Later the Meese Justice Department dropped the suit.

Re:Unification

[spitzak]

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

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

Yet idiots keep posting here their belief that Windows has a single toolkit and that is why it is "unified". That is FALSE. The reason there is unification is because of toolkits copying each other, something that is finally happening in Linux as well.

Re:Unification

[Quattro Vezina]

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

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