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Re: [TCLUG:3372] We're stuck with X



On Fri, Jan 15, 1999 at 10:42:58PM -0600, Christopher Palmer wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jan 1999, Shawn T . Amundson wrote:
> 
> > > It can probably be tuned for performance and display quality, but
> > > integrating the toolkit and UI elements into the server would involve a
> > > major re-thinking of the design and a major re-write of all existing X
> > > software.
> > 
> > Integrating those components would also be a mistake.
> 
> Do you know of another way of enforcing consistency throughout the UI?
> Asking everyone nicely to please use GTK?

Providing enough modivation to use GTK+ for the application they are
writing.  There are only 2 real competitors right now for toolkits,
and that's GTK+ and Qt.  Even if we have these two toolkits on the 
desktop at the same time, that's not horrible.

The important part of consistancy isn't at the toolkit level.  It's at
a higher level still like GNOME or KDE where an application must 
comply to standards they have thought out.  If you want to see UI 
inconsistancy, it's easy to find that on Windows too, and that's just
about as forced into it as you can get.

The nice part of GTK+ is that if another display system (such as
YAX) becomes popular, we should be able to port GTK+ to that display
system.  If a desire to have an official standard widget set was
a goal, then I'd only hope that GTK+ was considered simply because
it is flexible enough and tested.

And if GTK+ and Qt are forever in co-existance: then we use themes
and make a system where they play nice together.  GTK+ already has
themes (and will have much better abilities in 2.0), and TT has said
(FUD warning) Qt will have themes in the future.  Then you might not
even be able to tell the difference if you pop up a Qt app on a GNOME
desktop or a GTK+ app on KDE.  

> 
> > All existing X software will be rewritten or replaced by superiour
> > GTK+ equivalents by people writing for the GNOME project.
> 
> That's a strong and not-inarguable statement.

Ah, but it is more realistic than porting even all Qt and GTK+ stuff
to a new toolkit to run on a non-X system.  Not to mention all the
Motif/Athena/Tk, etc.

> 
> > And since GTK+ is already somewhat recognized as becoming the Linux
> > standard toolkit, your UI inconsistancy arguments are indeed aging.
> 
> Only if your above assertion holds; 'all' is a strong word. Granted, the
> move in Mozilla from Motif to GK is promising.

I find the number of GTK+ apps scrolling by every day on freshmeat
much more promising than Mozilla's decision.

> 
> > If the toolkit was integrated into X, we would be stuck with Motif,
> > or Athena or something equally horrible.
> 
> Or GTK or something equally nice.

--
Shawn T. Amundson               
amundson@gimp.org               http://www.gimp.org/~amundson

"The assumption that the universe looks the same in every
 direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking