Re: KDE and Gnome

[Julien Olivier <julo altern org>]

On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 16:45, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-08-26 at 11:19, Julien Olivier wrote:
> 
> > I know that. And that's why I say that the situation sucks. Maybe a
> > solution for the future would be to find a way to have "special" buttons
> > in GTK, QT etc... for cancel, apply and OK. Then we could configure the
> > way we want QT or GTK to display those buttons.
> 
> That doesn't work.  We'd have to define "special" buttons for just about
> every conceivable button.  Dialogs do a hell of a lot more than "OK" and
> "Cancel" (which in many cases wouldn't even be HIG compliant, since OK
> is a pretty damn useless name for a button - the HIG explains why).
> 

OK, then there is no solution that I am aware of...

> 
> > > * Windows doesn't always have a unified look: Norton AntiVirus, McAffee 
> > > VirusScan, ZoneAlarm, Direct Connect, Office XP, Easy CD Creator, just to 
> > > name a few. Not to mention all the amateur freeware apps out there that use 
> > > flying colors and look totally inconsistent.
> > 
> > Well, having a themeing library should't prevent you from creating an
> > app with a totally different look. But you should have the possibility
> > to give a standard look to your app. Currently, when you create a GTK
> 
> You have that ability.  Use a real mainstream tookit and not a cracked
> out niche/custom one.  If you use a weird toolkit, you must not have
> cared about conformity.
> 

Well, if you use native themes (not bluecurve), GNOME and KDE have very
different looks by default (GTK's default VS Keramik). So even
mainstream toolkits can have clashing looks.

More over, if someone uses GNOME and changes its theme, it just changes
GTK theme. So, even if his GTK theme used to look like his QT theme, it
won't be the case anymore after changing his GTK theme.

> > app, you have 2 possibilities: whether you create an app with the
> > standard look or you create a skinnable app (like XMMS). You don't have
> 
> XMMS is dying, thankfully.  The sooner, the better.  The UI is worst
> monstrosity I've seen in a long time.  I still can't figure out how half
> of it works.
> 

I agree but that's not the point. The point is that you always have the
possibility to creacte a skinned app and, so, override the default
standard look if you really want to.

> > more choice now. And the same goes for KDE: whether you use QT's look or
> > you make your app skinnable. So having a themeing library wouldn't
> > change anything, except that you can't choose between KDE look or GTK
> > look (look which anyway depend on the QT and GTK themes the user use).
> > And for third party toolkits (not GTK and not QT), having a themeing
> > library would _allow_ them to get a standard look without _forcing_ them
> > to do so.
> 
> If they cared about integrating w/ GNOME/KDE, why in the nine hells
> would they use a niche/custom toolkit anyhow?  Mozilla's interface was a
> mistake, one which has already been corrected w/ Galeon/Epiphany/Camino
> and more for other platforms.  OpenOffice.org is another mistake, one
> which is based mostly on the fact it's legacy code that can't be easily
> converted.  Many other apps based on a Motif are also that way only due
> to legacy code.  How would new theming methods help all these legacy
> code anyhow?
> 

It would help them because at least they would know which look to
emulate. I mean, if you want to create a toolkit on Linux, which look
will you give to it ? Windows look ? GTK's default look ? QT's default
look ? MacOSX' look ? How do you define what is Linux' default look ?
Without a themeing library, you can't even say what is the standard look
as it depends on the toolkit AND the theme used on this toolkit. Even
the "standard" themes of th 2 main toolkits (GTK and KDE) clash, to say
the least.

> Besides, as I mentioned in my other mail, standard look/feel falls aside
> to other issues (like VFS) anhow.  The _only_ solution that's going to
> solve all the integration problems is to switch to a single codebase,
> like GNOME or KDE.  Otherwise, there will be differences.  And people
> _want_ these differences.  Just because it's inconvenient to you doesn't
> mean we should strip away the diversity people actively work to create.
> 
> > 
> > So that would be a "win win" situation :)
> 
> No, it'd be a waste of time.  ;-)
> 

Well, I really don't think so. But it's all about open source. So you
have the right to think it's a waste of time and someone else can hack
on it if he wants.

> >