Re: KDE and Gnome

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 15:14, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 07:03, Julien Olivier wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Well, there's a lot more to an interface than the color of its widgets. 
> There is the whole feel/behaviour.  I can't stand using KDE apps (or
> even Mozilla) because they act nothing like the other apps on my
> desktop, even if I install a matching theme for them.

Sorry, I was talking of the look, not the feel.

> Buttons are in
> different orders in dialogs.

Well, the situation kinda sucks. Why can't we find a consensus on this
problem ?

>   Configuration panels are huge messes of
> useless crap I can't find my way thru.  Widgets are laid out with no
> thought to organization or cleanliness.  etc.  Even a good deal of GTK
> apps I can't stand to use because the UI is complete and utter crack. 
> (like gSynaptic.)
> 

That's a totally different problem because this lack of organizatio is
not a direct consequence of the usage of one toolkit. It's simply a bad
design and it can happen in GTK apps as well as QT apps, as you said.

> All this effort to make unified themes, or even use a single toolkit,
> isn't going to fix the above.  The only way to fix it would be convince
> all developers on a single UI design philosophy, which is impossible. 
> Not to mention there will always be developers who try to do completely
> insane and pointless things like the Mozilla cross platform UI, where it
> fits into one platform (Windows) and feels totally alien on others
> (GNOME, OS X, etc.)
> 

In my opinion, there should be a way to make toolkit _look_ the same for
the following reason:

I, as a developer, don't want to choose a toolkit because of its look. I
want to choose a toolkit because it's the best trchnology. And if I
choose QT over GTK (for example), and respect GNOME's HIG, I'd like my
app not to look too much of a stranger in GNOME. And that can be
achieved by unifying the "look" and standardizing the way the "feel" is
defined.

> The best solution for unified look is to just use GNOME apps.  Don't
> like how Mozilla looks?  Then why are you using it instead of
> Epiphany/Galeon?  OpenOffice too Windows-ish for you?  Try
> Abiword/Gnumeric.
> 

OK, that means that I can't create presentations because I don't like
OOO's look as GNOME doesn't have a presentation program. And that also
means that, for a developer, it's impossible to create an app that will
please everybody. Or you have to create a KDE frontend, a GNOME frontend
and a MOTIF frontend. That sucks...

> The only other solid option is to do what Abiword did - separate the app
> core and GUI layer, so you can implement different interfaces (GNOME,
> Windows, OS X, KDE, whatever).  I'm very sure KDE could have a native
> Abiword interface if anyone cared enough to code one.
> 

That would be a solution but don't expect every programmer in the world
to start separating the app core from the GUI. That would be great but
that's not the case.

> We'll never magically get all apps to integrate, tho.  There will always
> be people like the Mozilla developers, or people who purposefully pick
> odd-ball non-mainstream toolkits because they don't care about or
> actively dislike the modern desktops.  Let's accept that and move on. 
> ;-)
> 

You're right ! You'll never have one and only one toolkit. And that's
why we should try to find good ways to help apps integrate well with
other toolkits. It's probably never going to be 100% perfect but that's
not a reason to give up, especially when there _are_ solutions.

> > 
> > But, well.. that needs to be:
> >  - discussed
> >  - agreed between all the differents toolkits (not just QT and GTK)
> >  - implemented
> >  
> > (snip)
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > desktop-devel-list mailing list
> > desktop-devel-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list