Re: KDE and Gnome

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

(snip)

> > Also, interfaces need to be standardized. When you start an app in the
> > Windows world, you *expect* the interface to look the same. You *expect*
> > Ctrl+C to copy and you *expect* Alt+F4 to close. Having the *look*
> > change is very confusing to newbies. I have installed Linux for a couple
> > of people and the one thing that they say that they don't like is how
> > apps look different. This *must* change.
> 
> I'd say you're using the wrong distribution. RedHat and Mandrake, both desktop 
> distros, have unified themes that make GNOME and KDE apps look the same.
> 

Bluecurve is just a hack to unify the look. I say it's just a hack
because you can't change QT theme and have GTK follow it automatically
and vice versa.

> 
> > Now, I'm not into some kill KDE or kill Gnome. Nor do I like Bluecurve.
> > It was terrible (IMHO, anyway).
> 
> And this is a problem that will never, ever go away. RedHat offers a unified 
> look, but some people dislike it.
> No matter what unified theme GNOME and KDE adopt, there will *always* be 
> people who dislike the look. Some people absolutely love Bluecurve, others 
> want to kill it. Some people like flat themes because they "look more 
> professional", others think flat is boring and want XP-ish themes.
> Etc. etc. etc.
> Forcing any unified look into stock GNOME and KDE would be a bad idea.
> 

The oly sensible to have a unified look in X is to define a standard for
pixmap themes usable in QT, KDE, GTK, GNOME, Mozilla, Java, Wine etc...
Or, another possibility would be to use a shared themeing library. Each
client would ask the library to draw each widget. So each toolkit would
use this shared library to draw widgets and you would only need to
create themes for this themeing library.

But, well.. that needs to be:
 - discussed
 - agreed between all the differents toolkits (not just QT and GTK)
 - implemented
 
(snip)