[HIG] Parity between Gtk+ and the GNOME HIG

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

As has been mentioned on lists and in bug reports, there are dissimilarities
between Gtk+ and the GNOME HIG.  These can be eliminated by changing either
or both Gtk+ and the HIG.

I'm going to ignore the outright errors in the HIG, like making alerts
override redirect. Those must be corrected in the HIG.

HIG changes are the easiest. I see only two problems with that:
 1) some changes to match Gtk+ will require other changes to the HIG for
    its own consistency.
 2) sometimes the HIG is right.

Some Gtk+ changes only require changing a default value.
Some require widget changes, such as adding typeed-themeable labels.

Making alerts work correctly requires corrections to the HIG, new API
in Gtk+ (GtkAlert), deprecation of Gtk+ API (GtkMessageDialog), and 
an additional _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE so that alerts have accessible titles,
but not displayed titles.


What is to be done about this?  Looking at the changelog, Gtk+ developers
seem to be busy with back-end or functional fixes and multi-head changes.
I see little or no activity on the HIG. I've tried the route of filing
or changing bug reports for Gtk+/HIG parity, but I'm getting nowhere with
that; maybe I just suck at it.

I pity the application developers.


Knotted Up,
Greg Merchan