Re: KDE Gnome Qt gtk--

[Nathan Froyd <maestrox geocities com>]

Dean Olson wrote:
> 
> I feel that I must point out that one of the most important differences
> between KDE and Gnome is that of programming preferences.  GTK is
> primarily C oriented while, my understanding is, KDE is heavily C++ based.
> There is a slight difference of opinion when it comes to what kind of
> language people are comfortable programming applications with.

I agree. Somehow, I can't imagine writing a widget set in anything other
than C++. However, it's obviously been done (Motif, GTK, etc.). KDE and
GNOME probably devise a lot of differences from this simple fact alone.

> Also, since GTK allows coders to develop their own custom widgets, there
> is obviously a very strong argument for sticking with a less proprietary
> development library.

Actually, there's no clause that says Qt'ers can't devise their own
widgets. It's almost necessary to do so, or there'd be no reason for the
whole thing to be written in C++ (inheritance, don'tcha know. :) The
documentation for Qt shows very clear examples of creating custom
widgets.

> If Gnome and KDE can agree upon certain conventions for easing the
> transitions from one toolkit to the other, then I believe that both
> projects can benefit from their respective separate development paths.
> There might be some duplication of effort, but at the same time, parallel
> efforts often yield surprisingly different results.  I don't think that
> mere duplication of some applications is any reason not to explore
> different ways of developing these applications. Because of this, I don't
> think that Gnome would benefit from trying to emulate QT.

Why doesn't somebody just take the code from KDE and recast it for GTK
(or GTK--)? Isn't that the whole idea for GPL'd software - so you don't
have to reinvent the wheel?

Carsten Kind wrote:
> 
> 1. The KDE-Desktop is the most advanced desktop for Linux.
> 2. The difference between Gnome and KDE is simply avoiding Qt or not, the 
> goal is the same.
> 3. Qt is the best available graphical Toolkit
> 4. gtk specially gtk-- is the closest completly free Toolkit to Qt.
> 5. The arguments of KDE-folks and Gnome-folks in spite of librarieschoosing
>    is reasonable.

Don't know about Qt being the BEST toolkit - I'll probably decide after
trying to write stuff in GTK. ;) What can be said is that Qt has very
logical ways of doing things - mostly because of the C++ inheritance
issue. Widgets inherit a lot of useful functions from the base class
QWidget.

> suggestions:
> 1. What do the KDE-developers think about converting their apps to gtk--?
> 2. What do gtk-developers think about getting closer to Qt?
> 3. What do Gnome-developers think about avoiding multiple code with KDE and
>    support their work ( or reverse KDE-folks help Gnome) ?

Certainly getting GTK closer to Qt would be nice. See above for
KDE/GNOME issues.

> What would happen?
> 1. The discussion if Qt is free or not is obsolete.( I think it's free > enough, but that's a different point)
> 2. KDE will be established as standard desktop in the world of Linux.
> 3. Other applications  orginally not written for KDE could get KDE apps,
>    because other widget-sets could be emulated by the 'kde-toolkit' gtk.

Qt is not free enough, IMO. I understand that Troll Tech (producers of
Qt) would like to avoid multiple versions of Qt floating around, but I
don't think I've ever seen somebody willing to modify something that big
enough to release another version without talking to the author - more
often it's stuff like patches - something else that is sorely missed
with Qt. Something like Raster's gtk_imlib_* stuff would be impossible
with Qt.

I like Qt, but a replacement toolkit would be nice. Somehow I don't
think KDE will take over completely (imagine rewriting GIMP for Qt).

Of course, these are my opinions. Feel free to correct me on anything -
I haven't done very much with GTK (yet).

Nathan