Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
GNOME GUI

Dave Mason On GTK+ 2.0, Pango, Gtk And More 77

Ur@eus writes: "We [at Linuxpower] have just put up an interview with David Mason of Red Hat Labs. David answers questions on plans for GTK+ 2.0, Pango, GtkFB, GNOME and Orbit 2.0. Lots of interesting info if you want the scoop on whats moving on the infrastructure front of GTK+ and GNOME." There's a lot here on the immediate future of those projects here, including some information on what features will distinguish GTK 2.0, and unfortunately only a teasing reference to adapting the ultra-cool aRTS project for GNOME. (That in particular makes me drool.)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Dave Mason On GTK+ 2.0, Pango, Gtk And More

Comments Filter:
  • I really hope the arts intergration comes off as well. I prefer KDE and I really think arts works well there. If gnome also uses the same sound server we might have something a little more standard...
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I know this is a troll, but I'm going to bite anyway.

    KDe 'slowly on the decline', would that be because whilst Gome using GTK has produced a great deal of fluff but not much good code, whereas KDE is a proper integrated desktop environment.

  • This was so pointless.

    I want functionality you eye candy crack addict.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    GPL == GNU General Public Licence, not GNU Public License. Check your facts before being a pedant.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Let me preface this by saying the flamers will tell me to rip out my code profiler and start doing it myself. To them I say, I am already working on it. But my limited knowledge of Gnome/X programming means I have to teach myself how to do it before I can be productive.

    My biggest complaint about Gnome and GTK is that it is getting extremely bloated extremely quickly.

    For example, I have a Dual Pentium 100 machine with 64 megs of RAM. I was running what started out as a bare bones RedHat 6.2 install. I then proceeded to download X 4.0.2 from XFree86, and Helix Gnome (Now Ximian Gnome) which is better then the stock Redhat 7 install, but still quite bloated.

    On this system, all 64 Megs of RAM were consumed by Gnome and X, and a substantial portion of the virtual memory. However, on my Dual Pentium III 500 system with 256 megs of RAM, everything runs so nicely. About 180-190 Megs of RAM is consumed with 1-2 megs of virtual memory used.

    The kernel was upgraded to 2.4.0 custom compiled for each machine.

    My point is, someone really has to sit down with the GTK and Gnome libraries and start optimizing them for size and speed. Its starting to get worse then Windows. Windows 2000 runs nicely in 64 megs of RAM on a K6/266 laptop.
  • So, where exactly is the "Raleigh" theme for GTK 1.2? A search on gtk.themes.org doesn't bring up anything...
  • Sorry to be pedantic, but.."About 180-190 Megs of RAM is consumed with 1-2 megs of virtual memory used"

    In a modern system, applications only access virtual memory- that's what the VM subsystem handles.

    Perhaps you mean swap?

  • No, under the GPL you must release source code along with any changes. There's nothing in there requiring you to make your changes public.
    Even that isn't correct. There is no compulsion to automatically release source code along, you only have to offer to release the source to anybody you distribute binaries too (and follow through on that offer if and only if someone requests the source).

    However it is normal to make source freely and immediatly available just to cut the administrative overhead of fulfilling your obligations under GPL at a later date.
  • by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @01:07PM (#457709) Homepage Journal

    On this system, all 64 Megs of RAM were consumed by Gnome and X

    One of the fastest forms of interprocess communication under Linux is shared memory. However, top reports shared memory use incorrectly. For example, if two programs are loaded into RAM, and each is using 16 MB (8 MB for itself and 8 MB shared between the two), top will report 32 MB in use instead of 24. Under Linux, processes and threads are pretty much the same except that threads share memory; top barfs on multithreaded applications such as Mozilla [mozilla.org]. When X is running, top also reports your video card's RAM as in use by X and whatever apps are using MIT Shared Memory for their pixmaps.

    someone really has to sit down with the GTK and Gnome libraries and start optimizing them for size and speed

    Another example of the shared memory bug in top is in libraries. Under Linux, a library's code segment is marked read-only; it can be shared among several processes, making top misreport the memory the library is actually using.


    Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them? [pineight.com]
  • I don't see what's the point discussing about the look, if there are other more interesting things to discuss.

    IMHO, bith GNOME and KDE are not being very creative in the definition of a modern GUI, but following the old path already walked by Xerox/Smalltak, Apple, X11 and Windows.

    What's new up in the desktop and user interface? Themes? Is that the most notable achievement?

    Indeed, companies as Helixcode are not very innovative in their products. The only really new thing they've created is their new trendy name -Ximian.

    It's not only me saying that, in every Icasa's interview he _himself_ says that they are reproducing icon by icon, step by step, cell by cell, MS programs (bloats and bugs...).

    The GUI is going the change drastically in the following years, and OS companies are copying very old user interface paradigms and adding bloat and bloat: super colourful icons, themes, skins, gadgets, widgets and the slashdot news strip. But the basics are still the same, square windows and a 3 buttons mouse (well, sometimes) that still is useless for copying 7 bits ASCII text from a text editor to a text box in the browser.

    What's about smart popups, sound, speech recognition, touch screens, smart desktops with really new capabilities (it seems that Apple is going in this direction) to organise documents in a more useful way to the user than the old and annoying tree-like folders and files and the always hidden trash bin?

    What's about a CSCW desktop where you can share your documents, calendars, music, photos with your colleagues without starting 18 different programs and FTPing files to a server because your mailserver doesn't accept more than 3MB?.

    GTK, GNOME, KDE or Ximian, still _very_ old paradigms with nicer memory eating and eyes hurting icons.

    I see the next innovation will be the task bar in diagonal instead of the oldfashioned horizontal or vertical one.

    --ricardo

  • The desktop battle is over. They're integrated enough by now that whichever one you use is a matter of personal preference.

    KDE won. Gnome won. Trolls like you lost.

    --
    Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
  • On Slashdot:
    Anonymous Coward will never be a moderator. From what I've read in the FAQ: Create an account, stay on about a year, browse an average amount, make sure "Willing to moderate" is checked, and keep your karma above +10, and you may get moderator points about once a month.

    On Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]:
    Create an account; bang, you're already a moderator with unlimited points. And you can moderate the stories also.

    On Everything [everything2.com]:
    Create an account, write about 30 or so good write-ups, and you'll get 10 mod points per day. Continue adding content to the database and you'll get more mod points.


    Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them? [pineight.com]
  • yes.. like that.. as part of the default gtk+ widget set??.. that and if they make sockets a little easier, then, I'll build my own damn web browser.. somethink a step up from lynx, but just a browser.. with some neat features too.. I have ideas now.. maybe after the gtk+ 20 release, I'll build a browser in a weekend...

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.

    • Copying: copying the program from network to disk, or from disk to RAM.
    • Modification: translating the program from a gzip'd tar file to an uncompressed tar file.

    Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them? [pineight.com]
  • Don't use top that will fix the problem.
  • Is there a fancy text widget in Inti, theres none documented?
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Dude, you need to learn how to code OOP style using GtkObject. Using another toolkit is not going to help you get rid of globals if you code the way you're coding now. You need to learn to make new objects/widgets that store the data you need on them. You're other option is to use gtk_object_set_data().

    I'm guessing you're running into the problem of only being able to pass 1 gpointer data to a callback. Am I right? Here's how to solve it:

    gtk_object_set_data (GTK_OBJECT (button), "stuff", my_stuff);

    then, in the callback:

    my_stuff = gtk_object_get_data (GTK_OBJECT (button), "stuff");

    And you can set any number of datas on each object as long as you give each a different name. But I still think you're best bet is to inherit the gtkwidget into you're own widget that does all the data manipulation.
  • Debian does not ship with GNOME as the "default". Debian 2.2 did not ship KDE due to licensing issues. The next version of Debian will include both GNOME and KDE, there is no default. Ganesan
  • One thing unix people seem not to realize is that the look of Windows (and Mac before it) is constrained by the need to be usable on very low quality monitors and by people with limited vision. (On unix, users of low-quality monitors tend to just stick to the CLI.) Both companies did a great deal of research on usability of this sort, and it's a professional touch that is seldom recognized by GUI amateurs. Black checkmarks against white backgrounds, for example, are designed to be visible on 2-color monitors, or by people with very poor eyesight. "Graceful degradation".

    It's not surprising that the platform that expresses the greatest scorn for the value of GUIs shows the least understanding of them. Nevertheless, Linux GUIs are growing up. Clearly, people with real GUI expertise are joining the kernel experts who started this new platform, and I have every reason to hope that eventually Linux may boast the best GUIs of any platform. (I say this because I think Win & Mac really need to stick with a single, consistent GUI, while Linux can fork into the OS for all sorts of devices with different constraints and different high-quality GUIs for different users with different needs.)

  • > Most people don't realize Windows uses two toolkits - but over time, MFC and Borlands VCL have merged to look and feel exactly the same

    What are you jibba-jabbering aboot?

    Windows does not use Borland's VCL - like MS's coders would touch Borland with a 10 foot pole even it it was in thier best interests! Borland's VCL wraps the Windows API. I should know, I program with it every day. Likewise MFC wraps the same API.

    Windows apps generally look the same because there is only *one* widely used windows UI toolkit the WIN32 API. Yes, there are others out ther like Qt, but they fistly are not widely used and secondly do not look the same. These facts are probably related.
  • by Ukab the Great ( 87152 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @11:19PM (#457721)

    I am currently working on a fork of GNOME that replaces the broken UI concepts from Windows with sound UI concepts from the macintosh (e.g. alt command keys instead of ctrl, global menubar, obeyance of fitts law, etc). So far, I've gotten it to the point where recompiling code that uses gnomeui macros produces mac shortcuts, gets rid of those underline accelerators that clutter menus (yes, I'll come up with a better non-mouse solution), and puts the cancel button in dialogs on the left and ok on the right, as is consistent with the western concept of negatives being on the left and positive being on the right. Cancel and OK should be replaced with more descriptive terms, but first things first. As for the problems with consistency between applications, I'm also working on "porting" (for lack of a better term) the code of many GNOME programs to a usable and consistent state. All menus, keyboard shortcuts, dialogs, for similar features will be consistent across apps. I'm screwing with people's code because they didn't screw with it enough.

    Why am I doing this? Isn't forking counterproductive? Of course it is. But I am very greatly disturbed by Miguel et. al duplicating many of Microsoft's UI mistakes. When Microsoft designed the windows UI, they made a lot of decisions that were based on being different from(and in some cases, the exact of opposite) apple. The problem with this was that Apple put many years of HCI research into the design of the MacOS UI. By doing the exact opposite of apple of what apple did, Microsoft was going directly against interface designs that were scientifically proven in usability labs to be more effective, efficient, and intuitive. For example, it has been proven that an application menubar at the top edge of the screen can be accessed much faster than a menubar on the window of each application. This is not UI dogma or personal opinion, it's proven fact. But microsoft didn't care about end user's experience, they cared about their legal status. So they ended up throwing efficiency and usability out the door and doing the opposite of what was proven to work. The list goes on an on, ad nauseum. And when GNOME blindly copies the Microsoft (Where do you think the "Exit" menu item came from? The 'Q' in ctrl+q stands for something), they are perpetuating UI mistakes that need to be put to rest. GNOME should be about creating and designing new and improved user interfaces, not perpetuating bad decisions made in the past. I won't be party to putting users through another 10 years of UI misery to keep backwards compatibility with a backwards design.

    I'm not saying that my ultimate goal is blindly copying MacOS. The mac interface certainly can be greatly improved upon. But I believe that when a UI builds on someone else's design, that someone else should be someone who knew what the hell he was doing. Microsoft does not fit that description, and Apple fits it better than anyone else who has yet come along.

    I know that talk is cheap until you back it up with code, so no one will probably take me seriously. But it won't be too far into the future that I'll post a devel version of the modified gnome-libs and gnome-core on freshmeat. This UI insanity has to be stopped.

    In five seconds the PenguinCow revolution will begin...

  • Most people don't realize Windows uses twot oolkits

    What are you jibba-jabbering aboot?

    `Windows' meaning the average Windows users applications, not the Windows itself. I thought the meaning implied was obvious.

  • "Is this treading the dangerous waters of non-backwards compatibility?


    Not that I can see. The new version is adding a new feature. This happens all the time. In order to be non-backwards compatible, the 2.0 features would have to be something other than a strict superset of 1.2 features. The article doesn't imply this at all. It would have to be the other way around to be non-backwards compatible. (I.e. Someone wrote anti-aliasing support for GTK+ 1.x, and no one was forward-porting it to 2.0, so that 2.0 would lack a feature that 1.x had).

  • They didn't mention that pango should bring gtk a better text widget. Pango should supply a text widget that actually has horizontal scroll bars, and better performance. This is good as it will make the text editors in gnome/ gtk better, more usable. Hopefully it will make it easier to make a html widget for gtk / gnome, that will give gnome a lightweight web browser (that doesn't require mozilla to be downloaded).

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • by Havoc Pennington ( 87913 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @09:56AM (#457725)

    GTK 2 will have a different default look; to get an idea what it will be like, try the "Raleigh" theme Owen released for GTK 1.2, which is sort of a prototype for the GTK 2 look. It removes some of the Motif-esque ugliness and looks cleaner. Still a simple, fast theme, no MacOS-X snazziness, but of course the point of themes is that you can switch them. ;-) For the default we want something that will be fast over a remote X display (and fast in general), not use too much memory, and reasonably conservative overall.

    I think it's fair to say that the primary focus of GTK 2, aside from a few major features (Unicode/Pango, text/tree widgets) was API usability. GTK 2 should be a good bit easier to program. Basically as soon as we notice a FAQ or a question with no good answer on the support mailing lists, we file a Bugzilla bug and try to fix that problem via API enhancements. Better to eliminate the need to ask a question than to add it to the FAQ.

    There are also various end-user usability enhancements, such as improved focus handling, etc.

    Specific suggestions are welcome in Bugzilla [gnome.org].

  • Raleigh, the default gtk theme in the RH 7.1 beta, looks quite nice. They've cleaned up the worst of the default widgets, and there was a rumor that this might become the default for the stable gtk series.
  • Nope, even before themes Qt defaulted to Motif look on X11 and ,obviously, Windows look on MS OS.
  • Well since arts is already used in KDE and now that gnome is willing to adopt is this a sign for further integration ? Next stop, gstreamer in KDE ??
  • you win.
  • If you look back four or five years at the average linux desktop, you will realize that it was very primative. During this time they have been catching up to other OS's and have been doing a fairly good job.

    People keep saying that KDE and GNOME aren't innovating, but what are they supposed to innovate. In my eyes, true innovation will come first with new hardware. Currently, I think that our desktops are fairly optimized for the usage of mice and keyboards and there are few things left to invent that will make usability much different.

    I think that customizability and eaze of customizablity is the best thing to do right now. It is what prevents repetative tasks. Konqueror for example actually makes life easier by providing plugins to view most common file formats. This is not new by any means, but it is a good thing.

    Right now we really need to focus more on content producing software as that is what is truly lacking. I believe that KOffice has the best short term potential, because it seems as if much of the other effort is going towards open office, which will take some time to finish if they plan to switch toolkits and provide integration with gnome( aren't these the current plans?).

    I think that the next step in desktop innovation will be voice recognition. Not for writing content, but for navigating the desktop. It will be very hand when you can just walk in to the room and yell Slashdot at your computer and it will be loaded before you sit down :)

    Matt Newell
  • No, under the GPL you must release source code along with any changes. There's nothing in there requiring you to make your changes public.
  • Actually, linux does not differentiate between processes and threads. Processes can share( and inheret) and number of things including memory.

    Matt Newell
  • Look here for the theme and the patch that you need to apply to GTK+ 1.2.8 to make it work.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • by Tralfamadorian ( 115732 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @01:48PM (#457734) Homepage
    Doh, I meant http://www.gtk.org/~otaylor/gtk/ui


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • It won't be binary compatable for sure, but it'll be mostly source compatable. Many applications written for GTK 1.2 have just worked (or required minimal changes) when ported to 2.0. That being said, if you want to use the cooler new features (new text and tree widgets) you need to change the code a little.
  • What I am missing in GTK is font antialiasing. I have toyed around with this in KDE2 and it looks so much better! In fact, it made me switch over to KDE2 completely. See Keith Packard's page [xfree86.org] for a HOWTO on how to install it and sample screen shots. This is a must have.
  • Funny. A few months ago I would have been typing this on a dual P100. It's still in the next room. And a friend of mine used to have a dual P120 that was mighty fast for the time. What didn't exist again?

    -

  • That would be great, wouldn't it?
    Apparently Apple has done this with Aqua, but I know of no such project for GTK+/GNOME. In the meantime you might want to look at the SkinLF project [l2fprod.com], which can use GNOME og KDE themes in Swing.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04, 2001 @07:32AM (#457739)
    I think I am speaking for the large number of GTK+ users when I ask for a more modern default look for the toolkit. As it stands, GTK+ is a mish-mash of Motif, MacOS and Windows. I'm sorry, but even the QT/KDE look is more original in places. If GTK+ is going to make it big, some serious work needs to go into improving the usabilility of the widgets, as well as the API (I want to see a standardised C++ API for GTK+!)
  • "Windows 2000 runs nicely in 64 megs of RAM on a K6/266 laptop."

    Well, on a PII 400 with 64 MB of RAM, Windows 2000 ran like a sack of cack until an additional 64MB RAM was fitted.

    I'd dearly love to know how you're getting "nice" performance out of a K6-266/64 box.

    FWIW, the *minimum* spec for W2K is a PII300 with 64MB. And we all know how well Windows runs in "minimum" conditions.
    --
  • This sounds interesting. Anywhere we can read more about this?
    --
  • i don't know why you were modded down??????

    i agree with you, while i work on GTK+ apps, a few friends are using VC++ and are laughing at how ugly my widgets are.

    guess changing the look is harder than i think.

    peace yo.
  • On the GTK+ development mailing list, they said that they were going to change the default theme to be less motif-ish.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • OK, put it this way: Windows Toolkits that look the same (MFC, VCL, JFC, VBRUN etc) all wrap the higher level aspects of the Win32 api - this gives you operations for creating and managing Buttons, comboxes, listviews, web browsers & stuff.

    Windows that don't look the same as the MS standard(Qt, and Java/Swing?) do not use these higher level APIs. They obviosuly have to use something at the bottom of thier platform-independant code, and so use just the very low level Win32 API stuff (draw line, blt btmap etc).

    It is unsuprising that that MFC and VCL look the same - they are relatively thin wrappers around the same rich API.

    Qt on win32 is a thick wrapper around a thin API & thus can & does roll it's own way of doing things. Ahd thus looks out of place.
  • Looks like KDE and Gnome might come closer together in the end...

    Arts has been what esd was for Gnome (only more ambitious...). If Gnome were to switch to arts, that would be cool, as all apps would use the same sound server. At the moment you can run an esd with an artsdsp wrapper, but that is a hack.

    Also if GTK2.0 with Inti (?) becomes more C++ caqable, things like gtkembed and so on in QT, could make merging parts of the project easier.

    Great news, I hope the Gnomes will do that.
    --
  • damn, i replied too fast above.

    did they mention what *less-motif-ish* was going to look like????

    peace yo.
  • I think he is saying that he will not "license" the program to you unless you agree to the GPL. He is not describing the GPL, he is telling you that this program is available to you ONLY if you agree to the GPL.

    this is similar to what most software companies do: if you don't agree to the terms of the license you cannot use the software.

  • by Athos ( 11806 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @09:04AM (#457748)

    Not quite what you're looking for, but a start: GTKSwing [sourceforge.net].

    Actually, better yet is Java-Gnome [sourceforge.net].

    Amazing what you can find on Google with a couple of well chosen keywords, isn't it?


    --

  • Bzzzt, wrong!

    If you don't agree to the terms in the GPL, you are not allowed to use, modify or distribute GPL-licensed code. Exactly the way any other license works!

    RTFL! (read the fucking license)

  • This is at best stupid and at worst counter to the spirit and word of the GPL. There's no point in refusing license to people who won't accept the GPL, because accepting the GPL only grants rights. It's not as though users gain some advantage by denying the GPL- although that also means that adding "you must accept the GPL" is hardly an imposition. After all, as long as the user doesn't try to redistribute the software it's impossible to tell if he's actually accepted the GPL or not. Hell, the GPL itself states explicitly that:

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)

    That means that you can't violate the GPL just by running the program, so if you accept that you've agreed to the GPL so long as you comply with its terms, simple use of the program can't constitute a violation.

  • Perhaps you should RTFL. The GPL states:

    Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.
    The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program)
    [emphasis is mine]

    That makes it pretty clear that the GPL does not restrict you from running the program. If you don't want to copy, modify, or redistribute the software you can just ignore the GPL, because it applies only to those areas.

  • The GPL is a license, not a contract or agreement (EULA). It cannot restrict usage. It can only restrict distribution of the work and derived works.

    I am not a lawyer, but I've been here for a while and heard this all before, several times.
    --

  • by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Sunday February 04, 2001 @02:40PM (#457753)
    There's absolutely no reason why the user the GNOME and KDE projects are aiming for will pick all their applications based on toolkit. In fact, far more likely is that they will piock them based on quality.

    Unfortunately, GTK and QT loook different. Consistency is one of the key ways of getting a user used to your system. There's no reason why a user should change the look and feel of half their application from one program, and the other half
    with another.

    Once that occurs, both projects should write a common set of human unterface guidelines and hash out a set of common controls, UI standards, etc. This may (will) mean modifications to the toolkits to support the samre variety of widgets.

    The GNOME team should focus on making KDE applets integrate into their desktop. The KDE team should focus on making GNOME apps behave the same.

    Both projects are doing fine. Unfortunately, both projects are enhancing the Linux desktop at the same time they are damaging it. MOst people don't realize Windows uses two toolkits - but over time, MFC and Borlands VCL have merged to look and feel acactly the same. Nobody undertands the value of a style guide when the first app is produced. When the second m thirs, and forth app is produced they do. Consistency is important

    Unfortunately both teams seem to have no idea about this, from my investigations and discussion with various GNOME developers and one KDE developer. This is the biggest problem with GNOME and KDE.

    AFAIK there are no efforts to fix it.
  • They didn't mention that pango should bring gtk a better text widget. Pango should supply a text widget that actually has horizontal scroll bars, and better performance.

    Umm, what makes you believe that Pango has anything to do with any of the stuff that the new text widget does better, other than stuff involving, well, displaying text in various languages?

    Hopefully it will make it easier to make a html widget for gtk / gnome

    You mean a widget such as GtkHTML [gimp.org]?

  • I think he is saying that he will not "license" the program to you unless you agree to the GPL.

    The GPL gives the aRTS project right to do a very interesting things: they have the right to distribute the program to only the people they wants to distribute it to. It does nothing to force anyone to give anything to anybody. If they want to distribute aRTS only to vegetarians, or registered republicans, or people who have given them $1,000,000.00, that's completely within their rights (at least, as far as the GPL is concerned).

    However, the GPL also says You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted
    herein
    . So, although the original licensor may have restrictions on who he will give the program to, once he gives it away under the GPL, any recipient under the GPL is explicitely allowed to stick the who thing up on a public archive to allow anyone who wants to pull it down -- whether those future recipients want to agree to the GPL or not.

    Since I'm obviously not a lawyer, I have no idea if the blurb on the front page qualifies as some type of restriction on use, or if the aRTS project is themselves in violation of the GPL just by virtue of their public misunderstanding of the license of thier own software.
  • While I don't think KDE is fading away or anything like that anytime soon, I do think that KDE is not as widely spread as Gnome. One big reason is that RedHat, the most widely used among new people, uses gnome by default, and those are the people who care more about desktops. Second, of the ones who bother to change, GPL zealotry dstill stands against KDE, even though it isn't at all valid anymore. Just because of the fact that QT was at one time not GPL, and also that it is owned by a company, it is evil and should not be used.. That kind of idiocy also makes KDE less popular..
    And finally, the C zealots who claim that C++ is too slow, despite the fact that there is no longer any discernible difference in speed in modern compilers.
    So all in all, I think the install base of Gnome to be larger, but I'm not certain. In any case, the only things keeping it down still are myths and misconceptions. In my opinion, KDE is much more sophisticated and has their act together better than Gnome does, and more than gnome propbably ever will... Gnome is pretty good now, much improved over the old days, but still trailing, in terms of Anti-Aliasing (gtk fault) and general consistency..
    Gnome is ok, but KDE really needs more recognition for the stuff they have accomplished..
    All this coming from someone whose only project is a GTK app :)
  • by Anonymous Coward
    MOst people don't realize Windows uses two toolkits - but over time, MFC and Borlands VCL have merged to look and feel acactly the same.

    One of the interesting things about Windows is that MS Office sold the platform to a far greater degree than the platform sold MS Office. Interestingly, MS Office always seems to use it's own toolkit that has new various features and GUI tweaks, which are then cloned by other apps within a short period of time.

    The point being that the "style guide" doesn't matter so much as the object example of an app everyone uses. Most Windows users feel that if an app looks/feels like Office it looks right, and if it doesn't look/feel like Office it's wrong. Since no Unix GUI app has the marketshare on Unix that Office has on Windows (except Netscape 4, but that's Motif, aka legacy), there is no common standard for "looks right". So everyone does their own thing, and since they are Unix longhairs, they really don't have a very good sense of taste anyway.
  • It is not. The author of arts explicitly created the possibility to create a seperate GUI for whatever platform you wish. This specific case does therefore not say anything about further integration. It just means arts is constructed the way it should be.
  • I stand corrected on that point. I've never actually used Debian, but had heard from somewhere that it shipped with Gnome as the default.
    ----
  • I don't see what's the point discussing about the look, if there are other more interesting things to discuss.

    They're discussing the look because the new look looks much better than the old look. Oh, and the ``feel'' should be better too :)

    I see the next innovation will be the task bar in diagonal instead of the oldfashioned horizontal or vertical one.

    Huh? What is so innovative about a diagonal task bar? I suppose if you don't care whether the innovation is useful, then you would consider a diagonal task bar innovative as no one else has done it. There is a reason why task bars and panels are horizontal and vertical: because that's what people like it (the way we read, etc. How many devices do you own that have a diagonal interface?), and they're at the edge of the screen so that they don't interfere with everything else that one is working on.

    Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, so would you please clarify what you mean by diagonal task bar?

    Also, understand that GNOME/Ximian, KDE serve to make programmers' lives easier, and therefore applications better, not just to be innovative with menu items being made invisible if you don't use them often enough (an MS ``innovation''). :)

    In closing: right now KDE/GNOME don't have much room to innovate with that stuff as they appear to be building a strong foundation first. Understand that the MacOS and Windows OS have been around longer than either of these two products, and were worked on full time during the whole duration of their existance, so you're naturally going to see more innovation from them whilst GNOME is building itself to that point.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • Wrong-o. In the US, you have the "fair use" right under software copyright law to 'copy' data from one component of the computer to another if doing so is necessary to run the program. Since the GPL is based on copyright law and intends to grant more rights than copyright law (see 'copyleft' PR), it does not abridge anyone's right to copy the program from 'disk to RAM' while not agreeing to the GPL. And the tar file comment is just bizarre since "the program" isn't a tape archive file, it's inside of that file.

    Anyway, the GPL clearly states that "running" the program is not restricted, and certainly RMS knows enough about computers to know that running a program might involve copying the data from disk to memory.

    So what are you trying to prove? That you are bigger GPL extremist than even RMS? I suppose there some members of the SS that wanted to be a bigger Nazi than Hitler was, too. (And yes, that analogy was meant to put this dicussion to bed!)
  • So where does all this put KDE, now that SUN and, allegedly, HP are backing GNOME as the next desktop? Isn't KDE a dead issue? And how does GNOME/GTK fit with all the zillions of legacy Motif apps that Sun's customers are using?
  • Uh, the statement quoted is Fitts' law...

    That said, I agree with the concept that KDE need to be more innovative in terms of their UI concepts, and look forward to this work as it develops beyond basic concepts.

    William

    --
    Lettering Art in Modern Use
  • God !!!
    This site is ugly ..
  • "But I am very greatly disturbed by Miguel et. al duplicating many of Microsoft's UI mistakes"

    See, for me Apple GUI is something I can't stand and therefore I am happy that Miguel is duplicating Microsoft stuff.
    I bet way more people would feel more confortable with MS style than anything else.

  • Slight nitpick: the GPL also covers making derivate works, and linking is by some (including RMS) considered to amount to making a derviate work.

    This interpretation means that when you run a dynamically linked program, you are creating a derivate work, which is covered by the GPL. This is what prevents non-GPLed plugins from being used with GPLed programs.

    What this means in this context is that in order to run a dynamically linked binary of a GPLed program, you may have to agree to the GPL, at least if you go by the letter of the license (there's little doubt that the intent of it is on your side).

  • there are so many more things I wish I knew about GTK programming myself, the API documentation is a bit more poor, in my opionion than others. I can see, however, cases in which tying abstract data
    directly to a widget would be little better than using globals/big structs. I also would like to know where the documentation for stuff like pulling off inheritance in C is.. OO code in C gets way too messy... Maybe I ought to look into gtkmm more :)
  • I completely disagree. To me QT looks like Windows, hardly original. I do agree that the default GTK+ theme isn't the best looking but GTK+ is completely themeable.
    ----
  • why are you so angry????
  • How fitting to find Dave Mason on Slashdot.

    What could be more appropriate here than "We Just Disagree"?

    --

  • No, he's right. Virtual memory is a combination of both physical and swap memory.
  • Yes, that's accurate. When I said "release", I was thinking "make availible"; Obviously if no one is interested in the source there is no obligation to provide it.

    (Mental image of software programmer forcing users to take the source goes here)
  • It is the default on just about every distro except for Red Hat. Whoever keeps saying that KDE is less popular or is dying out or fading away is clueless.

    Not true. There are at least 3 major Linux distributions that ship with Gnome as the default (Redhat, TurboLinux, and Debian), IIRC. Also, HP and Sun have both made announcements that they will be shipping with Gnome as the default environment replacing CDE on HP-UX and Solaris respectively. Dell has also made an agreement with Eazel to ship Gnome + Eazel's NUE (Network User Environment) based around Nautilus on it's Linux desktop and notebooks offerings. With these announcements and others including the fact that Sun, Eazel and others are unifying around Gnome's component architecture, Gnome's future is quite bright.
    ----

  • by cduffy ( 652 )
    I'm an honest programmer myself, and I think 'yer nuts.

    Then again, I use libglade to do the GUI building and straight GTK only when making changes. My first GTK-based program used GTK ground up, and it admittedly was much less fun (and, perhaps more importantly, the code is still quite unreadable).

    I'm presuming you're a C programmer. If you have the flexibility to work with whatever language you like, however, try using PyGTK (with libglade) -- it's really astoundingly easy.
  • wow, i made a mistake, so f*cking sorry, i'll just kill myself ok?

    take it easy dude.
  • QT looks like windows?

    Well, that's possibly because YOU'RE USING THE QT WINDOWS THEME!!!!

    Sorry to be so emphatic, but you should do a little better research.

    QT has built in Mac-like, Motif-like, GTK-like, SGI-like, and BeOS-like themes. You can also make your own, and with KDE2 you can use GTK pixmap themes.
  • I checked out the link to the aRts website, and it looks like a cool project. However, I noticed that they have incorrect information about the GPL on the front page. I sent them this note:

    Hello! I just found your website though a link from Slashdot. Looks like a neat project! However, on your front page you have an incorrect statement about the GNU Public Licence. You state:

    "Read the COPYING-file inside the archive carefully. If you don't agree to the GPL, you aren't allowd to use and make changes on the program!"

    The GPL does not restrict use of a program. In fact, it explictly states:

    "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted..."

    Please don't spread misinformation about the GPL. Thank you.

    -Tom Swiss / tms@infamous.net


    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Working...