This is kind of... Well, good news, I suppose? It depends on where you allegiances lie, but it seems like Ubuntu is warming up to the idea of using Qt to develop applications. It's no secret that Qt is a far more advanced development framework than Gtk+, so it only makes sense for Ubuntu - a GNOME/Gtk+ distribution - is looking at it.
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Member since:2006-01-02
Have you tried QtCurve?
I find it hilarious that GTK+ fans come along and talk about how nice their themes are compared to Qt themes. It seems that all they've seen is Keramic and Plastik. There are other themes and unlike GTK+ they are configurable via the GUI and often in surprising and useful ways. QtCurve has a ridiculously comprehensive theme configurator. You can make QtCurve-based themes that look surprisingly dissimilar from one another. It also supports GTK+ and will share settings so that your apps look the same (more or less) despite using different toolkits. It can even do things like button order-switching and icon substitution if that's your thing.
Member since:2009-06-30
I'm hardly a Gtk fan. If you actually read my comment you would see that I actually prefer Qt to Gtk in most respects. It doesn't change the fact that Qt is simply ugly and looks messy (or encourages design of messy GUI).
I've tried all styles shipped by default with Qt and even went ahead to try some free third party ones. Looks like no one has a good taste there - all styles feel like a broken copies of some well known LaF's (Motif, Clearlooks, Gtk, Blue Curve, Windows) or look like made by children (Oxygen, Plastic, Keramic)
QtCurve (also windowsxp style on XP) is indeed one of the best among them, it works and is readable. But it is simply an old theme and its aesthetics match the state of art of 2003.
There are nice Qt themes but these all seem to be reserved for proprietary products of some third party products. Mentor, Cadence have both developed nice and clean themes. So it is possible, only we can't rely on good taste of Nokia employees (or KDE guys). This is where Ubuntu's contribution could help a lot.
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Member since:
2009-06-30
Qt will benefit from this collaboration too. Technically Qt is a great toolkit, robust, portable, fast, easy to deploy and so on. But there is a lot of work to be done on its esthetics and usability. Perhaps I'm spoiled by Gtk themes but it's hard to find a pretty yet readable Qt style ("cleanlooks" is not bad but still much worse than its Gtk counterpart).
Also, the UI design tends to be a bit clunky in an "MS Office 2003" way - all that moveable panels, splitters, toolbars waiting to be moved out of sight. Give any Qt application to my mother and she'll "break" it in 15 minutes.
(It's kind of funny that although as a user I prefer Gtk, I use Qt in my applications.)