Re: CSS to look more like Gtk+ 2

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On 19 December 2016 at 14:39, Nicolas George <george nsup org> wrote:
> This will probably be my only intervention on this topic.

Would we be so lucky.

> Le nonidi 29 frimaire, an CCXXV, Emmanuele Bassi a écrit :
> > I honestly could live without the contempt and entitlement that have
> > been expressed in this (and other) threads.
>
> Contempt is usually a symmetric thing. If users felt less contempt from
> some developers about their needs and preferences, maybe they would
> express their complaints and requests in a milder manner.

This is provably false, since there's plenty of free software
developers and users that have no problems in keeping the discussion
civil and without expressing contempt towards something they receive
for free, from people that are generally not even paid to work full
time on a project.

It's usually the people that believe that they are entitled to
anything that think they need to express themselves offensively.

Luckily, you are in a minority; this does not mean I get to enjoy it,
or you get a free pass at being an asshole.

> > "gtk3-nocsd" is a massive hack that undoes what application developers
> > want to achieve in the first place.
>
> I will not contradict this.

Thanks.

> > It's entirely your prerogative to hack on your own copy of GTK+, but
> > that's simply a broken approach. GTK has nothing to do with
> > client-side decorations, outside of:
> >
> >  * providing an API for using them from applications
> >  * using them for the dialogue windows it creates — *if* the
> > configuration toggle for them is set
>
> "I did not kill anybody, I only designed and built the guns."

> This is, mutatis mutandis and with all proportions of severity scaled,
> exactly the same argument, and it amounts to nothing.

I honestly live in the hope that you realise how obtuse this hyperbole
makes you look like, and that you just forgot to delete this
paragraph.

There is *nothing* even vaguely similar between making a GUI toolkit
API and making deadly weapons.

> I will assume that CSD were implemented in Gtk+ because application
> developers requested it; if it was an initiative from the Gtk+
> developers, it is even worse.

We receive patches and improve the toolkit depending on what
application developers need — and those needs are usually specified in
Bugzilla. Features don't happen in a vacuum, and since every line of
code has a cost in terms of maintenance, we make damn sure we add
stuff when people need it and can maintain it.

> When CSD were requested, the Gtk+ developers should have taken a stand:
> "no, CSD are an awful UI design, we will not implement it in our
> library". They did just that when application developers requested
> window-in-window multi-document interface, and I supported them
> heartedly.

> Instead, they (you?) took a stand against users, not only by
> implementing it but also by making it impossible to disable it.

Clearly we thought that client-side decorations are a worthy addition
to the capabilities of the toolkit, otherwise we would not have added
them.

Not only that, but like every other platform has progressively removed
multi-document interfaces with windows-within-windows, so they have
started adding client-side decorations to their own toolkits — see
Apple's macOS and Microsoft's Windows.

The fact that *you* don't like them is entirely inconsequential; you
are not the final arbiter of what GUI applications should look like.

> > This is ridiculous.
> >
> > The people that "get to decide" are:
> >
> >  * application developers
> >  * toolkit developers
>
> Nice view on the whole Libre software thing.

This is the *only* view possible in Free Software. That's what the
Free Software four freedoms give you.

Your view of Free, Libre, and Open Source software seems to indicate
that you're owed something just because somebody else made it
available.

> > Additionally, you're entitled by the license used to take the code and
> > do what you want with it.
> >
> > Those are the only two things you can "decide": whether to involve
> > yourself in the development upstream, or fork it and take matters in
> > your own hands.
>
> A fork is exactly what you will eventually get.

And I would have nothing but respect for somebody that actually
attempts at successfully forking GTK+. At least it would be somebody
complaining about being able to remove the freedom of application
developers to make the applications they want.

> > GNOME developers are the reason GTK+ exists in the first place,
>
> Sorry, despite mostly lurking, I have been around longer than you, and
> you are wrong: Gtk+ exists because of Gimp, not Gnome.
>
> And the policy turned sour about the same time the Gnome developers
> overflowed the original Gimp developers.

GTK exists as a separate toolkit because a large amount of people that
made GNOME (and who worked on Gimp as well, among other things).

GTK exists *today* because a large amount of GNOME developers, as well
as application developers, continue working on it.

You being "around longer" than I doesn't imply you know what you're
actually talking about. It's really not hard to know these things, by
the way; just look at the history of the code repository and the
archives of this very mailing list.

> > Writing free software is not software development camp. You don't get
> > a prize just for showing up. Either you put your money where your
> > mouth is, or you don't get to say "you know better".
>
> You are funny.

It's called "sarcasm", and it's not really meant to be funny.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
https://www.bassi.io
[@] ebassi [@gmail.com]