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GNOME GUI

Interview w/Jim Gettys 59

Posted by Hemos from the getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-u dept.
infodragon writes "Linux Power has a really good interview with Jim Gettys, one of the origional X developers and now actively involved with GNOME." He's also done much work with the handheld iPaq.
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Interview w/Jim Gettys More

Interview w/Jim Gettys

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  • Hi Jim! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hi Jim!

    I'd just like to tell you that X is a bloated monstrosity and Gnome with its "we're trying to write object oriented code with C which was never meant for that" bollocks is making it even worse. Please stop.

    Kind regards,
    AC

  • Christian Schaller is dead. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hi UrAnus,

    Did you think we would not recognize your incoherent although anonymous ranting?

    A year ago you wrote that KDE was dead on LinuxPower. Now, KDE is stronger than ever, the GNOME architecture is a complete mess and they don't even plan to fix it for GNOME 2.0. GNOME 1.4/Nautilus was a complete failure, putting Eazel out of business all for a buggy FILE MANAGER. Ximian is not updating anything.

    Which project is in trouble now?

  • Ironic (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @01:15PM (#156999)
    Kind of ironic that this guy who did so much with X was named after the process that allows you to log into a non-graphic terminal...

    Signed: Paul Xdms.

  • Re:Handheld iPaq (Score:3)

    by Dicky ( 1327 ) <slash3@vmlinuz.org> on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @02:45PM (#157000) Homepage
    Versus the non-handheld version?

    The marketing name 'iPAQ' is used for a variety of products, including a rebadged Blackberry 'pager', a range of legacy-free PCs, and even some servers. Most people associate the iPAQ name with the handhelds, but that isn't all they are.

  • Just a note: most popular toolkits now work "at the lowest level". Besides Qt, GTK does. So does the smaller ones (fltk, jx, etc).

    I think this is the proper way to do this. For somebody trying to support a program on multiple platforms, it is far more useful to have exact cross-platform identical interfaces, than to have this mythical and worshipped "common look and feel".

    I would also like to find that mysterious user who is confused because the edges of the buttons look different between their programs. I think "common look and feel" is a crock, and all examples offered where it confuses people is when one of the options is also a completely stupid user interface (like Athena scrollbars). And this crock is forcing bloated toolkits (both Qt and KDE are bloated, and MFC is horrid) on everybody.

    PS: I tried a "common user interface" and was forced to go back (in my case I tried to change all the menu shortcuts to Ctrl+ZXCV away from the Alt keys used before). It is painfully obvious that people easily learn differences between programs, but cannot handle the slightest changes in those programs over time.

  • to have a unix config file named after him, along with Frank Hosts.
    --
    the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
  • Active involvement in the W3C [w3.org] and IETF [ietf.org]; particularly, he was an author of HTTP/1.1 (RFC2616) and several HTTP-related RFCs (e.g. 2145), in addition to which he's an all-around pretty swell guy.

  • There are no doubt that X is a good piece of work, since M$ is copying more and more from it. In Windows XP they have copied the ability to run the windowsystem remote on another computer.

    I wonder how long it will take before they copy the ability to have several desktops. That is at least one of the features I favor the most of X which Win doesn't yet have.

  • The link should go here: (Score:3)

    by Drakino ( 10965 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @02:57PM (#157005) Journal
    The above link for Jim's work on the iPaq should go to http://www.handhelds.org [handhelds.org]
  • It's a lot more dramatic than just 8-64M of RAM (emphasis mine):
    Keith and I believe that a basic X environment will end up a bit over one megabyte of code, when this is done, while preserving complete compatibility (a full X implementation).
    Exqueeze me, but one megabyte?!? Anybody but Jim Gettys saying this and I'd say there were on serious hallucigenics. I wonder what the difference between "basic X environment" and the XFree86 that I'm running right now. I'm sure that means none of the 24 extensions, a single visual, and a bunch of other things, but it's still amazing.

    And oh yes, it's fascinating that he says the network transparency of X is "well under a megabyte". If that's really true, then that's also great news, and a good thing to keep in mind when people go off critizing X for bloat with respect to network capability.
    ----------

  • Re:Ironic (Score:1)

    by jg ( 16880 )
    I was born before getty was, thank you very much... Ken and Dennis must have been thinking of me...
  • The whole argument in favor of X is based on the assumption that network transparency is essential. However, particularly on slow connections with high latency (typical for mobile networks), the last thing I want to do is to display my ui remote. Instead I want to do that locally (memory/cpu is no longer an issue, Jim's own argument) and only use the connection to send data. The whole concept of single tier, server based applications is dead. These most server apps have at least 2 tiers and an additional client tier.

    The added value of running a network transparent xserver over a framebuffer based approach is limited, especially when considering that X alone does not provide enough functionality to do things locally, you need additional stuff like qt/gtk anyway (unless you want to write your programs on top of X). Embedded gtk/qt will be both faster and smaller, which unlike Jim Getty is suggesting is still important in the embedded world.
  • You missed the point. He says that the benefit you gain from using Qt/E or the Gtk framebuffer stuff over X with Qt or Gtk is small. Specifically, it is likely to be outweighed by advantages of network transparency and the ability to use stock Qt/Gtk/X programs.
  • I won't get into GNOME vs. KDE, since I think they both pretty much suck right now (hey, I think the Windows UI sucks too, and I'm not even a Mac user...).

    But there's a few points of yours that I think are debatable...

    Mozilla is slow on an Athlon 900 machine with 384MB RAM, and this is at a 0.91 stage

    I think either your machine must have some problems hardware-wise or your configuration must suck, because since Mozilla hit 0.9, it's been kicking the crap out of Netscape 4.x on any box I run it on, Windows or Linux... it runs great on my P2 266 with 128meg and Windows, on my K6 300 with 192meg on either Windows or Linux, and on my lowly P233mmx/64meg laptop on Linux. I happily ditched Communicator on everything the week 0.9 came out and haven't looked back...

    Although GTK will be around for a while, QTs cross platform (X,Framebuffer,Win32,Quartz) capabilities make it very popular for anyone writing cross platform apps.

    I think you're wrong here... as I understand it, Qt costs money if you want to use it on anything but Linux... people are likely just to hop on the native toolkit and re-do the front end.

    Dunno why wxWindows [wxwindows.org] doesn't get more attention... I was going to wrap that around Gecko and call it a cross-platform browser, until Mozilla stopped sucking.

    AFAIK there's no GNOME application design guidelines similar to the Windows / MacOS / KDE ones

    Yeah, well, with the latest Windows Media Player and Quicktime Players, Apple and MS have seemed to toss those docs in the incinerator anyway. Bitch about them before you bitch about the GNOME folks, most of them are doing this stuff for free... anyway, with a properly designed widget set and a few common dialogs, you shouldn't have to deal with design docs, the toolkit should just grant common UI principles as a side-effect of using it (which, in my experience, GNOME/GTK seems to do a pretty good job of).

    Outside the Unix world (which is the world Linux needs to win over for the World Domination)

    Er, why? If Linux succeeds at world domination, then there won't be any "outside the Unix world" anymore =).

  • Have you ever heard that Qt is licensed under GPL (and another licence, but you can choose the one you prefer)?

    The version of Qt that is licensed under the GPL is only the Unix/X11 portion. If you want the Windows version you have to pay for it.

    From Trolltech's website (http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faq/free.html [trolltech.com]) :

    The Free Edition is the Qt for Unix/X11 toolkit, licensed for development of free/Open Source software.

    ..and...

    Qt/Windows is only available as Professional/Enterprise Edition, not as Free Edition.

    Sure, you could port it, but what's the point? There's other freely available toolkits that you could port without pissing off the original developers... or you could just use one that's free and cross-platform [wxwindows.org] already.

    Question 2: Have you ever read GPL?

    Question 3: How many times does GPL mention Linux (or GNU/Linux)?

    Yes and none =P.

  • Telephones are the paragons of usability, but I suspect telephone network infrastructure is extremely unfriendly to the novice user, but functions remarkably well.

    Jim is building the infrastructure, not the interface. They have diametrically opposed design requirements.

  • Since the dawn of GNOME, people have been saying that it was dead. GNOME is, in case there's anyone left who's not paying attention, not going anywhere.

    What's more, comments about KDE as the ultimate platform for developers because of Qt, are misplaced. Qt has only one major problem: it's written in C++. But that one's a problem from which I have never seen a toolkit recover without the marketing dominance of Microsoft. Even the very best C++ toolkits are relegated to the backwaters of the developer world because of the cross-platform difficulties (e.g. even Sun had to pass on Qt because it would require choosing acc (thier compiler) or gcc (the one everyone uses) for the shared library format); towering complexity of any sizable code (try to get an average-skill C++ developer up to speed on a project that's been under development for a year or so, and you'll be spending months explaining why you used the language the way you did); and the algorithm-hiding features of the language (e.g. massive overloading, mind-boggling inheiritance rules, four casting operators, etc).

    GNOME is written in C. You know, that language that Linux, X, GCC, BSD, Apache, Bind, Sendmail and most of the rest of the civilized world's software is written in. If you want to use a C library from C++ you can. Or from Python, Perl, Scheme, or any of dozens of other languages. C++ libraries can be bent and twisted at the cost of performance and flexibility to be used with most of these.

    Here's a quote from the KDE pages on language bindings for Qt and KDE [kde.org]:
    The level of functionality provided by the bindings vary, from those that only allow you to access a small subset of KDE to bindings that
    almost rival C++ native code in scope. [Emphasis mine -AJS]
    Now check out what GNOME has to say about language bindings [bagfors.nu] and you'll find a very different story. The matrix is a little hard to read because there are so many languages in it....

    Is KDE/Qt nice? Of course, and I recommend it to anyone who finds that they don't like GNOME. I respect the folks that wrote the tools, because they're good tools. I just don't think that they took some very important points into consideration.


    --
    Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
  • fucking werd.
  • >>>> this is a multi-part message, since Slash 2.0 breaks IE 5.05 quite badly >>>>>>>>>>>

    X is definately not needed, but hey, its UNIX. You nuts still use tty software and termcap databases to write to your GeForce3 Linux terminals. There are two main arguements for X

  • 99% of the time, X is used on a workstation or desktop machine. (Who installs a GUI on a server?) As such, his comments about X's bloat have apply to only 1% of the population, and have absolutely zero significance. In reality, most of couldn't use TinyX. ('cause if we could, we would already be using it!) It doesn't have a 3D infrastructure like XFree86 (plus it can't use the NVIDIA 3D drivers, the best OpenGL drivers around on Linux), and it doesn't have all the feature necessary to compete with the GUIs of Windows and other OSes. Problems with 'top' aside, there is only one thing that is important. KDE2/X/Linux swaps more than Win2K on my machine, apps start significantly slower (ex. KDevelop takes far longer to load than Visual C++), and while using the UI is lightning fast on Win2K, X is significantly slower, even using simple window managers like WindowMaker. (And that it isn't even a fair comparison, since Win2K has tons more features than WindowMaker/X). It flickers more, the mouse jerks at times (that, in particular is positively uncivilized), and windows switch noticibly slower. *That* is what matters, not some bullshit about how stripped down X can occupy very little space.
  • I'm pretty sure that both network transparency and multiple desktops were not pioneered by X. Besides, there are programs that let you do virtual desktops on Windows too. (And, let's not forget that BeOS has the best implementation of virtual desktops available, allowing you to set them to different resolutions, color depths, and referesh rates.) Also, I'm just waiting for X to start copy MS and make the damn thing fast, standardized, and well-integrated with media technologies like OpenGL and high performance audio.
  • * Re: Moz stability. its also slow on Windows on an Athlonn 500 / 128, a Pii 400 w/ 128, a PII 300 running at 450 w/ 128. I've also ran it on my friends machines who are Mozilla fans and consider their installations to be fast. I still consider its GUI incredibly slow on these machines, and I think people who look and run mozilla objectively would agree.

    * Re: bitching. The GNOME, alogn with KDE, and Linux, and other free software and Open Source projects aim to compete with closed source counterparts. They compare themselves to their equivalents and I have the right to as well. Nobody makes a good user interface who thinks that users pick apps based on price rather than quality. This, believe it or not, is a contribution.

    * Yes, media players suck, but there is a MS standard UI `skin' for media player to, and just because they make some bad choices does it mean that OSS is excused.

    * Yes, but before Linux runs the world there is.

  • Re: Shortcuts
    * There's no way to create a shortcut on the desktop withotu navigating to a specific binaries directory and draging it. Having to open Naultilus and navigate to /usr/local/bin to create a Quake 3 link is fairly poor.
    * There's now way to edit existing launchers.
    * I was told both fo the above by a Ximian employee in monkeytalk after I wondered where these features had gone.

    My GNOME is Ximian 1.4 with updates as of today on Linux, and regular GNOME 1.4 release on Solaris. And yes, Naultilus is still amazingly, unusably slow on both platforms.

    GTKs cross platform bindings are in alpha for both Windows and BeOS. I think they might be for OSX too, but I'm not sure.

    And yes, Galeon is good. Everything Mozilla should have been.

    This isn't FUD. I use and like both, and I don't think GNOME is going to go away either. There's just going to be twenty times as many KDE users, who will still use a large amount of GTK based apps.
  • All of them are using 0.9, apart from the Athlon, which is running 0.91 and (since recently) Netscape 6.1 beta.

    The rendering engine is fast (hence my comments in favour of Galeon but moving around the GUI isn't very responsive at all, in all ersions I've tried on all platforms.

    And yes, the new (0.91 / 6.01) GUI is nice indeed.

  • Re:GNOME is dying (Score:5)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @03:36PM (#157022)
    Okay, I'll contribute my $0.02. I use KDE and GNOME's latest released frequently throughout my day between four machines across Linux and Solaris, simply because I like to stay current on these things.

    As of right now:

    KDE has a current stable release that's around two months old. GNOME has a current release that's unstable, and a stable release that's a year and a half old and not particularly capable. Again, on the same note,KDE has a working stable file manager and browser. Nautilus is still massively screwed, Mozilla is slow on an Athlon 900 machine with 384MB RAM, and this is at a 0.91 stage - a little to late to be worried about stability concerns. Galeon, unlike the rest, works properly, but still isn't finished. And GMC is...well, you know GMC.

    KDE's desktop can create shortcuts. GNOME's used to be able to do this, but the Nautilus developers decided software antialiasing was more important than the ability to create a launcher without a text editor. This is a bizarre and unusual concept of usability.

    Although GTK will be around for a while, QTs cross platform (X,Framebuffer,Win32,Quartz) capabilities make it very popular for anyone writing cross platform apps.

    GNOME still doesn't present the window management / desktop as seemlesly as KDE does. End users don't see why they have to configure their look and feel from more than one place. The GNOME control center's `apply' `warning you made changes!' is unnecessarily scary. Sawfishs meta options aren't GNOME ones, and theres still much duplication in functionality between the two.

    AFAIK there's no GNOME application design guidelines similar to the Windows / MacOS / KDE ones. Feel free to correct me otherwise.

    Outside the Unix world (which is the world Linux needs to win over for the World Domination), C++ is vastly more popular than C - not that QT doesn't work with C (or that GTK doesn't work with C++ for that matter).

    Both are severely broken in that they don't work with each other properly, and GTK/QT apps pened in KDE/GNOME look and work poorly. Not that they're in the menus to find or anything...

    And both can't install standard packages graphically in a useable way (ie, multiple packages, retrievable from multiple sources with dependencies). GNOME's actually much better in this regard than KDE with Red Carpet, but I' not sure how easy it is for third partis to create Red Carpet `channels'.
  • If you read the interview you'll see that Jim Gettys points out that X is not bloated. More precicely, it gets the bloated reputation from moron unix users who dont know how to read top or ps correctly.

    Further, he points out that the full X implementation for the ipaq runs in less than 700k of ram. (if you want Xrender extensions that'll cost you about 300-400k).

    So lets cut the crap, X is not bloated. If you were trying to be funny.. ah well. nice try, but no cigar.

    I encourage people to read the interview before commenting.
  • Well spank me and call me Susan. I thought I was being funny. Instead, I was being a moron. Thanks for setting me straight.
  • This is a really great posting. I wish that it was not anonymous so that I could contact you.

    I do a lot of usability work. I'd be more than happy to help folks, but I have had a hard time figuring out who needs help and on what. I'm not a programmer, at least not a good one, so I am out of the loop on projects. Sure, I visit places like SourceForge but that doesn't help me much.

    If you have an Open Source project with an interface I can look at, let me know. I might be able to run a few tests and we'll improve the interface. I'd be especially pleased if there was some way to earn some money doing this, but that is probably a capitalistic pipe dream.

    Cheers,

    - John

  • Usability and Jim Getty (Score:3)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @01:25PM (#157026) Homepage
    Jim Getty [w3.org] sounds like a great guy and great designer. I know a few people really respect his work. However, I wonder how much attention he pays to usability [google.com]. That is one of the key problems with Open Source in general. Designs look great but are not always functional, especially to novice users. Some day, usability will be seen as being more important than raw functionality, right?

    By the way, you might be interested in this set of slides [merlins.org]. They are from Linux Expo '99 where Jim is doing a demo of Itsy [compaq.com]. (Was that an early version of the iPaq?)
  • While I do use linux quite a lot (which sort of qualifies me as a linux geek), I think that most linux geeks think of a GUI only as a cool feature, not as a tool for helping people less obsessed with technology to simply just do their work. Every time I mention some sort of usabililty principle around a linux geek, I get the response of "That's what you want. That's not what I want. It's a matter of opinion" even though this UI principle has been proven effective in usability labs to allow the user greater, more effective use of their computer. I recently met this one guy who's well known throughout the GNOME community who justified some very bad and confusing UI design he did with the sentance "because I like it". When I mentioned some usability problems with this piece of software he created, this person couldn'lt understand what problem was. "It wasn't pretty enough?" he asked. Most of GNOME (and for that matter, KDE) is really the same way. I'm not saying that just the linux world is soley at fault, because most of the industry (including M$ and most other Windoze developers) are really the same way. The main difference is the windows world just cares about money and usability doesn't matter, whereas the linux world cares about being geeky and usability doesn't matter. Usability is simply not a priority despite everything these two groups of people say. I have been thinking more and more that it is time for UI designers and other people who want to create quality user interfaces to start a rebellion and design their own OS and desktop environment.
  • Some day, usability will be seen as being more important than raw functionality, right?

    More important? Personally, I don't care how "usable" somthing is if it doesn't function. Maybe, almost, equally important but never more.

  • Maybe some people still think that a pure GNU CDE is a worthy cause to spend some time on.

    Heh. God help them.

  • Heh. Someone with mod points like CDE! It was a joke, for chrissakes!
  • No, my comment was a joke, not yours. I've never heard any one refer to any random desktop environment as CDE or Common Desktop Environment. CDE is a particular product. I mean, I don't refer to all cars as Buicks... But then again, it's common for people in the American south to refer to any soda pop as coke. /me shrugs.
  • Just look at BSD. ;-)

    Seriously, I don't get it. I'm disappointed in Jim. With KDE/Qt being so much more advanced and polished at this stage, he's likely to have chosen another sinking ship. You'd think he'd know how to pick the winners by now.

    His words on Qt/Embedded are also quite puzzling. You'd think he hasn't learnt anything about the computer market either... His vaporware X is certainly not suddenly going to appear and kill Wince or Qt/E off the scene, those two are already well on their way to "embedding" themselves in the market.

    What he also doesn't understand is that KDE/Qt provide is a wonderful API to the developer. Raw X is simply way too complicated to do present day development. If it's Linux/X against Wince, Wince wins hands-down. If it's Linux/QtE against Wince, then that is another matter. Development time and facilities *do* matter in the embedded world.

    At least he is straight up and says he does not speak for Compaq.
  • * Re: Moz stability. its also slow on Windows on an Athlonn 500 / 128, a Pii 400 w/ 128, a PII 300 running at 450 w/ 128. I've also ran it on my friends machines who are Mozilla fans and consider their installations to be fast. I still consider its GUI incredibly slow on these machines, and I think people who look and run mozilla objectively would agree.
    What are they using? I am using 0.9.1 now, and since 0.9 it is rock solid and fast! (My machine is NT4 running on PIII 700 with 192MB RAM). Everyone looking over my shoulder asks what this beautiful thingie is...
  • I don't think most people would think 8 to 64 millibits more or less would be bloat :-)

  • Re:GNOME is dying (Score:3)

    by Guillaume Laurent ( 155210 ) on Wednesday June 13, 2001 @06:13AM (#157035) Homepage

    Qt has only one major problem: it's written in C++.

    This is actually Qt's greatest asset.

    But that one's a problem from which I have never seen a toolkit recover without the marketing dominance of Microsoft.

    You should go out more often : RogueWave [roguewave.com]
    Ilog [ilog.com]

    try to get an average-skill C++ developer up to speed on a project that's been under development for a year or so, and you'll be spending months explaining why you used the language the way you did

    Too often true in practice, not true with Qt/KDE.

    You know, that language that Linux, X, GCC, BSD, Apache, Bind, Sendmail and most of the rest of the civilized world's software is written in.

    As I said, you should go out more often. There's a whole universe outside of the tiny rosy world of free software.

    If you want to use a C library from C++ you can.

    But it's highly suboptimal. Frankly it generally sucks big time.

    The matrix is a little hard to read because there are so many languages in it....

    And how many are complete enough to actually be used to develop a big application right away ?

    The conclusion of my experience of 3 years helping to maintain Gtk-- and trying to develop with it, followed by 1 year of programming with Qt professionnally and with Qt/KDE at home is that Qt/KDE is, without a doubt a vastly better and more productive development platform than Gnome is at this time.

    The language bindings point is totally moot, and after all these years and so few mainstream Gnome applications written in anything else than C, may be people should re-evaluate it. I wrote about it [telegraph-road.org] two years ago already, and as far as I can see most of my claims are still true.

    When I started using Qt at work, I found myself to be more proficient with it after just a few days than I ever was with GTK+ or even Gtk--, where I constantly had to lookup either in some barely existant documentation or at the source code itself, or needed to add yet-another-wrapper for some strange struct I'd need.

    A direct consequence of this is that whenever I wanted to write a patch for a KDE app, even fairly large and old ones (konsole, kmail), I could get a moderately complex feature done in just a few hours, over code I had never seen before.

    Contrary to what you think, the level of entry of KDE for a programmer is way lower than for Gnome. Even a C++ beginner can produce useful code after just a few days of learning. This is not true for all C++ toolkits or projects, but it is true for Qt and KDE.

    This is the reason why KDE's development pace is so quick, and why so many high-level applications like konqueror, kdevelop, or koffice could be written by teams of less than half a dozen people. Programming under KDE is just so easy.

    I suggest you try it. You'll be surprised, as I was too when I switched.

  • He makes some very interesting remarks about the bloat the many people attribute to the X server. For instance, depending on the graphics card, the X server can look like it is using an extra 8 to 64mb of space that it isn't, due to the way it maps the display card. There is also some good information on current efforts to remove some of the bloat caused by other parts of the server, such as I18N.
    --
  • What do you think the future of X is and do you think we still need it?

    I have noticed that both kde and gnome have run without X using either QT embedded or GTK embedded. I know with X you can have graphical displays over terminals but aren't terminals kind of dead in this day and age with client/server replacing dumb terminal/mainframe topologies?

    Would you be in favor for an X lite for non terminal users or would you favor something like gnome with gtk emdedded.

  • You're kidding right? The files you link to typify my dislike of KDE icons... especially greatkonq.png. What is that shit yellow orange crap doing all over the icons? Why does the clipboard have a line of light on it like it's a fat clipboard? Who has a clipboard that fat? (it must be 2 inches deep to catch that ammount of light). The scissors in your picture look wide and stupid. The printer icon has a bend in it (at the end, on the left). The home looks nothing like a home AND AGAIN there's a shiny area - the door - that's catching far too much light. Most doors go into the house. They don't protrude from house to beautifully catch the light as it passes by. The little addon pencil icons (to signify 'writeable'?) has a shadow going in a different direction than the icon. And what the fuck is with the shadow on the top-right of each bit of paper? A shadow that wide would have to be blocked by a larger object than a curled corner.

    Many of KDEs' (and Gnomes') icons have objects pictured in them that go to the edge like it's a fucking canvas. Like it won't look stupid and remind me I'm using a computer and that the reason I can't see the end of the 'writeable' pencil is because that's the edge of the icon. An icon should stand on it's own because it's going to be shown beside others and it's not going to have a border. The icon for Matrix.mov is a perfect example of an icon artist drawing as if there's going to be a border.

    And the zoom icon - a magnify glass. It's glass starts off as a light colour, then gets immediately darker, then lighter again - as if it's a sphere. It's not a sphere. It's a convex lense. That comparitive colour change would only happen if there was a much larger physical change in the object's depth.

    And the overuse of the plain old paper 'file' icon used everywhere. Really? It's a file? Never would have guessed. Thanks for putting a pointless sheet of paper behind the picture of the movie film - I really needed that reminder I was dealing with a FILE - cheers.

    This post is angry crap. Please don't dismiss it as trolling or flamebait (instead, I am a dickhead). But until KDE pays a bit more attention to this I won't use it. Gnome icons look good and I click enough of them each day.

  • ... as I understand it, Qt costs money if you want to use it on anything but Linux...
    Question 1:
    Have you ever heard that Qt is licensed under GPL (and another licence, but you can choose the one you prefer)?

    Question 2:
    Have you ever read GPL?

    Question 3:
    How many times does GPL mention Linux (or GNU/Linux)?

  • Qt vs Wrappers (Score:3)

    by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Tuesday June 12, 2001 @10:10PM (#157040) Homepage
    ...or you could just use one that's free and cross-platform already. [wxWindows]

    You could, although you would have more power using Qt. I haven't used wxWindows, but what I do know about it is that it's a wrapper toolkit. This has advantages (app looks correctly on the target platform) but one big disadvantage is you have to work with the Least Common Denominator. I'd imagine you can't get real specific in your program because some widget or control may not exist on one of your target platforms. I believe wxWindows includes some of its own extra widgets (for those situations) but it means the ones that do exist are not extendable.

    Qt solves this problem by working at the lowest level on each platform. All widgets are remade in Qt, from a color selector to a file dialog, so every widget is under your full control. It also mimics the native look of the target platform. This is one of the big powerful parts of Qt: Styles. Not only look, but the behavior as well can be changed. This is why Qt looks like an MFC app on Windows, SGI-like on SGI, and Aqua-ified on MacOS X. Insane? Maybe. But definitely powerful.

    Sure, Qt is not free on Windows, but I believe paying for a license is worth it. There are many Trolltech customers who use Qt only on Windows simply because they think it is better than other Windows development alternatives! Maybe because it's easier to learn and maintain? I would agree, considering a "Hello, World" app in Qt is roughly 10 lines.

    Anyway, use what works best for your project. I just wanted to point out that Qt is a pretty cool deal.

    Have fun!
    -Justin
  • I was about to post the exact same quote here, but you beat me to it. Hats off to a fellow CITIZEN KANE fan!

    hyacinthus.
  • I've seen this GNOME is dying argument quite a few times, and it Irks me every time. I use GNOME, enjoy it, and do what I can to support it (which admitidly at this point is not much, but I'm learning GTK at a rather brisk pace and hope to become more involved soon). So, I'd like to say a few things in defense of GNOME. First off, It is very easy to create links in Nautilus. Left click and drag, select create link. Done. Also, I'm not sure why you are having instibility problems, but my Woody version of GNOME seems rock solid. GTK is also has all of the cross platform capabilities that QT has (FB, BeOS, OSX, Windows, etc). Galeon works better great, and since its based on Gecko, its not another format like konquer is. Finally, on the whole "C isn't object oriented" fiasco, SO WHAT. It hasn't caused me any problems. It doesn't seem to breed instibility, and it does what it is ment to do. The fact that C++ is more popular than C seems a moot point too, since GNOME has C++ bindings (gnome--) and something being popular does not mean its better. More people still use Windows than Linux, but that doesn't mean its superior. Oh well, I hope my rant hasn't ruffled too many feathers! :-) Now, I respect other people's oppinions, and certiantly on something as trivial as which Desktop to choose, but spreading FUD still makes me angry.
  • I thought getty was somehow related to my Linux console...
  • Um, actually... This was not mean't as a joke.
    I used the term "CDE" in it's general sense Common Desktop Enviroment here, not as the name of a specific product.
    And, as far as I know, GNOME is the only Common Desktop Enviroment being actively developed by the GNU Project.
  • You'd think he'd know how to pick the winners by now.

    Winner by number or winner by quality ?
    Is Linux a "winner" in your sense ? Or is it M$ Windoze ?
    Maybe some people still think that a pure GNU CDE is a worthy cause to spend some time on.
  • Optimised
    Usability

  • "I entered into this campaign with one purpose only, to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy of Boss Jim Gettys' political machine, now in complete control of this state. I made no campaign promises, because until a few weeks ago, I had no hope of being elected. Now however, I am something more than a hope. Jim Gettys, Jim Gettys has something less than a chance. Every straw vote, every independent poll shows that I'll be elected. Now I can afford to make some promises. The working man, the working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests. The nation's ordinary citizens know that I'll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the underfed. But here's one promise I'll make, and Boss Jim Gettys knows I'll keep it. My first official act as governor of this state will be to appoint a special district attorney to arrange for the indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Boss Jim Gettys."

    - direct quote from Orson Welles' "Kane" character in Citizen Kane

  • You'd think he'd know how to pick the winners by now.

    Maybe he does.

  • ipaq (Score:2)

    by hyehye ( 451759 )
    is very cool. if only the e-economy hadn't collapsed and i could get good consulting positions and afford one :)
  • This is a truly sick joke man...
  • You've got to be kidding. In order to talk to someone, I have to memorize a 10 digit number? I have to dial those using accurate motions in a rotary phone or on a tiny touchpad with a layout different from any other keyboard?

    Telephones are only "usable" because we are used to them. The same hold for Windows and MacOS. And the same holds increasingly for Gnome and KDE.

    Most real-world interfaces are messy and complex because of physical constraints. What they have going for them compared to computer UIs is that they are fairly stable and standardized over long time frames. What they also have going for them is that companies aren't as successful lying to their customers about usability as Apple and Microsoft are. Learning to use a word processor is hard, as hard as driving a car. At least it usually doesnt kill people.

  • X11 has adapted to the people who use it: programmers, developers, researchers, academics. That's because those people can fix it if it doesnt do what they like.

    In that, it seems a lot better to me than Windows or MacOS, which seem to have adapted mostly to what sells boxes (a good showroom floor and out of box experience); by the time people have bought them, it doesnt matter anymore. Trouble is, what is particularly usable after a few weeks or months isn't wwhat sells boxes.

    So, you have a situation where Windows and MacOS dont really have high usability for anyone, while Linux at least is an effective tool for experienced users. If anybody ever figures out an incentive for someone to develop something that has the long term usability of non-experts at heart, well, maybe then we can make progress. But that's more an economic/motivational problem than a technical one.

  • GTK is also has all of the cross platform capabilities that QT has (FB, BeOS, OSX, Windows, etc).

    First quote from GTK on Win32 FAQ:
    "I do this work in my free time, so don't ask me for release timetables etc"
    Another quote this time from GTK on BeOS FAQ:
    "Stuff is working, although still at an alpha stage. Crashes are common. Menus work now, drawing is mostly correct, images work, pixmaps work, etc. Lots of stuff todo, see below. "

    This is NOT something I want to see when considering cross platform toolkit for a serious project.
    QT works 100% correctly on each of the platforms it supports. There is no "a guy" who does this in his free time and might drop everything tomorrow.
    Please, if you accuse people of spreading FUD check your facts beforehand!!!

  • I don't give a f** about license as long as product is working well.
  • read more carefully. He said QT embedded and GTK framebuffer , not QT and GTK.

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