Re: Harmony + GNOME (Was: Re: C++)

[Andreas Kostyrka <andreas rainbow studorg tuwien ac at>]

On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Joel Dillon wrote:

>  Well, at this stage I would just like to know what the view of the Gnome
> people is on non-gtk widget sets and Gnome. So I'd like either for noone
> to raise any objections, or for a few people to object but for someone
> important in Gnome to say that other widget sets than gtk can be used if
> they fit the look and feel guidelines.
There are pros and cons:
+ Actually, GNOME as such is much about choice. So having the different
  toolkit would be even more liberating, right?
- Different look and feel. It's really difficult to have the same look and
  feel. (But in theory doable. Curious question: Why don't the Harmony
         people GTK/GDK as underlying ``drawing engine''? It's more work, 
         etc., but the benefits are probably greater.)
- protocol compliance. DnD, CORBA, color sharing, etc.
  Again difficult but doable.
- And there is always the problem of upgrades: All GTK apps look
  different, and the user sees that a certain app doesn't look and feel
  the same. In basic, the ``compatible'' toolkit authors had to play
  constant catch up.
- Themes: ``Ok, now I have this cool 3D rotating button theme. Why don't
            they work with this app?''
          I understand that themes as such are a problem for any custom
          widget writer, but with GTK at least the standard elements
          change at the same time.

Andreas