RE: GtkGLExt (was Re: Gtk 3.0)

[Shawn Bakhtiar <shashaness hotmail com>]

Well... this seems to turn on a few flames... so let me put some of this to rest.
For anyone to say OpenGL is "niche", and does not apply to everyday apps, I again remind you of iChat and the 
OS X Panel. Granted it has only recently found prominence in the desktop but it is quickly making way as OGL 
hardware acceleration becomes standardize (has been for some time). 
To look back at the past decade and say "look desktops are all 2D", not realizing it has to do with memory 
and CPU/GPU issues, which are no longer issues is simply wrong.
The next decade of desktops, more importantly GUI (Graphical USER <-- hello!!! Interfaces) WILL have a 
blinding array of 3D widgets which will be like eye candy to most users, and as they see it they will want it 
more and more. 
I do NOT work at a facility which requires 3D visualization to accomplish its tasks, but users are starting 
to ask and want. "Can I do a walkthrough of our warehouse to see how much material I have?", "Can we have a 
little computerized white box, with a virtualized pallet to do color matching in?" This has NOTHING to do 
with scientific engineering or "niche" market. It has to do with the future of interface design. I work in a 
ink manufacturing plant, and by that argument, we should mix it all by hand, since that is how they did it 
5000 years ago! 2D is NOT the end of all GUIs. It simply is not! R2 space can not hold as much 
date/widgets/whatever as R3 even if the axis were infinite! they (users) want 3D buttons that pop, role, 
jump, and wink at them too. They want there pictures to start bending, bouncing, and getting all organic on 
them. 
To say that GTK does NOT need OGL, is to say they sun is not going to rise in the morning. To say that 
GTKGLext (a great tool to be sure) is good enough, is to slap a hand in the face of all of use who see where 
this is going. 
The greatest problem with the linux community (one I myself am having to learn about) is this indelible ego 
that the data and function has to be correct and nothing else. Sorry.... if the user can not visually keep up 
or understand what you present, it won't make a difference how good the app works in the back, it IS the eye 
candy that gets the user to use it. GtkTreeview in 3D? I can thing of a dozen categorization applications in 
seconds.

FYI - OS X is a FreeBSD engin, with NextStep as its windowing system. It uses OGL IN the windowing system 
(quartz / composer), and it is the hottest desktop on the market. No one, and I mean no one, has even come 
close!
And lets not forget all the work that is being done on Compiz.... why? For the masochism of it?!? No! Because 
that is where the future of desktop are, in 3D space!
IMMHO, if Gtk is to keep up, as the cross platform interface it promises to be, it will need OGL to be fully 
modularized or integrated somehow. I don't even think GtkGLExt is that far, other than the OS X side of it, 
which with demand will certainly improve.
P.S.the comment: " Ah. You are such a loser. Go away.", has no business on this forum, the point is a good 
one, and your minimization of it, a poor show of understanding.

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> Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2009 19:48:06 +0100
> From: yeti physics muni cz
> To: jose carlos pereira ist utl pt
> Subject: Re: GtkGLExt (was Re: Gtk 3.0)
> CC: gtk-app-devel-list gnome org
>
> On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 04:22:36PM +0000, Carlos Pereira wrote:
> > We must atract more scientifc/engineering applications for Linux and  
> > GTK, because this is exactly the kind of stuff that enterprises and  
> > universities are demanding.
> >
> > If we have fantastic operating systems and desktop environments in the  
> > free software world, but most of the scientific/engineering aplications  
> > only run in Windows/Mac OS X, people will be forced to use them, even if  
> > they would rather prefer to use Linux/BSD... I have many friends in this  
> > situation...
>
> I'm afraid you explain it from your viewpoint.  But looking at your
> reasoning from the `desktop' viewpoint there are troubles.
>
> 1) Objective.  There will never ever be a scientific `killer app'.
> Every little branch of science, or even an individual scientific
> problem, has specific needs.  Hence the applications are inherently
> scattered and each individual app is used only by a small group of
> people.  Even the `universal' commerical tools such as Matlab are far
> from being universally used [among scientists].  This makes hard to see
> sci/eng apps matter *at all*.
>
> 2) Subjective.  Do your graphs have round corners and include the user's
> IM status?  Can your data acquistion software synchronize the data with
> an iPod?  Are your reports summarized to 140 characters and sent to
> Twitter?  No?  Does your app help people with some difficult to
> understand and much more difficult to solve problems instead of
> facilitating idle chit-chat while consuming power for visual effects?
> Ah.  You are such a loser.  Go away.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yeti
>
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