GNOME (et al.): rotting in threes
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 8th Nov 2012 20:54 UTC, submitted by Elv13
Gnome "Theme development is a tedious and difficult task, and for the GTK devs to be so careless in breaking their API at every turn disrespects the many hours people put into making themes for it. [...] I was given to believe that this breakage stems from a Microsoft-like climate of preventing users from customizing their systems, and deliberately breaking the work of others so that your 'brand' is the best. Anytime I hear the word 'brand' being used in Linux, I know something valuable is being poisoned." I find the tone of this one a bit too harsh and overly negative at times, but his point still stands.
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RE[5]: Why not use Qt?
by ssokolow on Fri 9th Nov 2012 00:17 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Why not use Qt?"
ssokolow
Member since:
2010-01-21

The official python API is PySide, not PyQt. That is the one actually developed by digia.


It's been a while. Last time I actively tried writing Qt applications in Python, PySide didn't exist and, last I considered trying again, PySide didn't have a Windows release.

I'll have to give it another try at some point... assuming it's compatible with something like Py2Exe.

Regarding vala, it seems like a really cool idea, but is very immature and has a fair distance to go before it reaches widely useable potential.
I actually wanted to play around with it, until I realised it was basically just for gnome. I've only had bad experiences with gnome, so...


What made you conclude it's just for GNOME?

I've had no problem playing around with GNOME-free GTK+ programming in Vala and, while it means you can't do object-oriented stuff, it does have an experimental mode which kills the Glib dependency so you can compile to more pure C.

Dolphin does less than konqueror and kommander, but it does have a much more clean and pleasing UI, whilst retaining features like pane splitting, kparts and integrated terminal.


That depends on your definition of clean and pleasing.

1. I find the variable icon sizing and blur-inducing animations for showing and hiding disk usage bars in the places pane to be irritating despite preferring KDE's support for application-specific place bookmarks.

2. I never use the icon size slider in the statusbar and much prefer how PCManFM puts a free space counter there.

3. I have no clue what you mean by Dolphin supporting KParts. It still seems to be firmly designed to only use the DolphinPart KPart because the author doesn't want people to realize that he's reinvented Konqueror.

(He's of the belief that a file manager should not also be a browser and, to protect that viewpoint, he refuses to implement "preview using KParts" because Dolphin already uses KIOSlaves and all it takes for a primitive browser is KIOSlaves and KHTMLPart)

but pcmanfm/thunar just don't look that good, and the reason we're using file managers instead of just a terminal is for the GUI, right?


I don't understand. How do you define "look that good"?

http://i.imgur.com/a0AW9.png (comparison)

To me, they look pretty much the same aside from KDE applications using some icons not present in the Elementary theme I've grown fond of.

I do agree that Thunar is undesirable... but that's because the Xfce devs are adamant that Thunar will never have tabs.

It could well be that I have no problems because I'm running a Phenom II 965 quad core, and intending to upgrade to haswell next year, but even on my athlon, the themeing of KDE was something that kept me there, as opposed to the lighter desktops, despite the minor performance regressions. I know you clearly favour performance, but I like my working environment to feel enjoyable, which for me means a consistent and modern appearance.


I think we might have different definitions of "modern". I find Oxygen to be unpleasant and consider quite a few aspects of "modern" theming to be counter-productive glitz.

My (currently Lubuntu-based) LXDE desktop may not follow current trends, but it feels pretty darn modern and consistent to me.

I can't help you with that directory panel, unless it is folder view, or the classic start menu, which are still bundled with default KDE as plasmoids.


No, it's sort of a hybrid of the two. It's like the classic start menu except, instead of a tree of categories and application launchers, the menu allows quick navigation of the filesystem.

(The LXDE one just shows folders for quickly opening a PCManFM instance while the KDE one shows everything for quick launching)

I have one for my home directory and one for my media library.

Edited 2012-11-09 00:19 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[6]: Why not use Qt?
by woegjiub on Fri 9th Nov 2012 02:30 in reply to "RE[5]: Why not use Qt?"
woegjiub Member since:
2008-11-25

You can use PySide with pretty much all of the exe freezing options out there now, and it has better support for Qt and all of its platforms than PyQt ATM.

My bad, I was referring to gObject as being essentially a gnome project, because their developers have such a level of control over it that they basically own it.


I leave it with bookmarks, but I must agree that those usage bars are annoying.
You can turn off the zoom slider and turn on a usage text item, this is KDE after all.
I mistook KIOSlaves for kparts. I was referring to handy things like easy disc conversion, good FTP support and their ilk.

I should have noted that I meant their appearance in kde and in unity. This includes the feel of the use, which seems very dated in most GTK2 apps, although it has been some time since I tried pcmanfm.

I agree that oxygen needs a refresh, but I have been using unity, which looks just as good in Qt with unity 2D as it does in compiz.
The general feel of Qt is sleeker though, as an example razor-qt vs lxde. In my opinion, razor-qt feels slicker despite being buggier.
That perception is hard to pin down, but I think it is due to the squared panels with gradients that pop as opposed to smooth and subdued panels.
It would be the same reason unity and kde have nicer looking window decorations than openbox.

I understand what you mean, and have definitely seen it before, but unfortunately, I am totally unable to name it off of the top of my head.

Also, as an aside, there is this for looking at Qt apps. It is only relatively young, but shows some promise.

http://www.qtdesktop.org/applist

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[7]: Why not use Qt?
by ssokolow on Fri 9th Nov 2012 03:00 in reply to "RE[6]: Why not use Qt?"
ssokolow Member since:
2010-01-21

You can use PySide with pretty much all of the exe freezing options out there now, and it has better support for Qt and all of its platforms than PyQt ATM.


Good to know. I'll have to give it a try and see if I can duplicate the kind of responsiveness Geeqie gets out of GdkPixBuf in Qt's equivalent classes.

(I have a project planned that needs a highly-responsive image tagging GUI and Geeqie is my gold standard for responsiveness while an image hasn't finished loading.)


My bad, I was referring to gObject as being essentially a gnome project, because their developers have such a level of control over it that they basically own it.


Fair enough. I've actually been meaning to track down a widget-agnostic event loop and signals system so I can move all the GTK+ dependencies in my creations into UI plugins for easy replacement with Qt.


You can turn off the zoom slider and turn on a usage text item, this is KDE after all.


I'll admit I didn't go looking as thoroughly as I should have.

Was that added since in KDE 4.4 and 4.5 or am I just too tired to be competent?


I mistook KIOSlaves for kparts. I was referring to handy things like easy disc conversion, good FTP support and their ilk.


Agreed. From KDE 3.5 to present, I've always kept Konqueror around as my FTP/SFTP/FISH/etc. client regardless of what I do with other things.

Lately, though, I haven't been using any kind of GUI client. I just use rsync. (Pull it here, edit, push... and I get a free extra backup out of it.)


I should have noted that I meant their appearance in kde and in unity. This includes the feel of the use, which seems very dated in most GTK2 apps, although it has been some time since I tried pcmanfm.


I'll admit PCManFM is a tiny bit dated in not yet supporting a breadcrumb trail address bar or showing the number of children in the size column for folders.

That aside, I'm not really sure what you mean. Maybe I just value performance too much to get comfortable enough to notice any progress that has been made.


I agree that oxygen needs a refresh, but I have been using unity, which looks just as good in Qt with unity 2D as it does in compiz.


You are aware, I hope, that Unity 2D is being end-of-lifed? Last I heard, Canonical was planning to replace it with regular Unity using software-rendered compositing in either 13.04 or 13.10.


The general feel of Qt is sleeker though, as an example razor-qt vs lxde. In my opinion, razor-qt feels slicker despite being buggier.


From the screenshots, I can see what you'd mean by looking slicker for the panels and popup notifications.

However, in some ways, my LXDE desktop is actually slicker. Most of what I see would become almost identical once I squashed those panels down to my desired height and turned off compositing and fake translucency to squeeze out more CPU cycles.

(I'm using panel graphics from a previous Lubuntu release that make LXDE's panels look a LOT like the dark Razor ones and I've customized my tray icons so they all look like monochrome carved depressions in the panel unless they're trying to get my attention)


It would be the same reason unity and kde have nicer looking window decorations than openbox.


I actually don't like those seamless window decorations. Lubuntu does offer some but I turn them off because I like the active region for the WM to be clearly distinct from the active region for the client.

(Not to mention how the default window borders don't offer enough contrast between active and inactive windows)


Also, as an aside, there is this for looking at Qt apps. It is only relatively young, but shows some promise.

http://www.qtdesktop.org/applist


I'll take a look at it but this isn't a case of "He doesn't know where to look". This is a case analogous to "He's running Vim because, with fifty-million other editors having a Vi-like mode, none of them cloned it well enough to satisfy."

Making a satisfactory knock-off of a program is very hard and, for most of my GTK+ apps, nobody has even come close to mimicking all the little features that, to other people, probably seem like pointless wastes of effort.

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