8 ms·

I mostly disagree with you entirely. Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. It all

by bkor 11y ago

I mostly disagree with you entirely. Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. It allows to combine the titlebar with content from the application itself. You regard them entirely off as a "sin". Very strong language but you don't explain _at all_! For the file chooser, some never things that were never implemented were added recently: double vs single clicking, renaming and some other super old bug. Regarding mouse wheel support: What basis do you say that 1) it was removed 2) it was made out of spite? Too many people have way too much time talking down on the work of others. You go out of your way to imply that GNOME developers are intentionally evil. What the hell. PS: I agree it needs way more developers. But that's nothing new.

bemused 11y ago
worked with GTK2/3 and QT 5+ years and got the feeling that GTK has been turning into the GNOME toolkit as well. not very pleasant to work with if you want your application to support the look&feel of different linux-DEs and not suited for cross-platform applications at all GTK3 is perfect if you want to develop for the GNOME desktop. for anything else it would need way more developers that are not focused on GNOME
- nona 11y ago
  How is that surprising? The people that do the work get to set the course of the project; the Gnome devs are scratching their own itch. QT caters to more platforms, because QT _is_ Digia/The QT company's product. For Gnome devs Gnome is the product. So yeah, I agree with you: GTK3 is great if you do Gnome, QT otherwise. But some people in this thread (not you) seem to blame or resent Gnome developers for doing their jobs, which strikes me as odd, to say the least.
  - bemused 11y ago
    Well I really dont want to critize GNOME developers for working on free software, paid or not. But GTK is still perceived as a more universal toolkit than "just GNOME" and this might be a time-consuming surprise that hits application developers furthermore it is still advertised like this as well (from gtk.org): What is GTK+, and how can I use it? GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Where can I use it? Everywhere! GTK+ is cross-platform and boasts an easy to use API, speeding up your development time. from my point of view, this is not exactly true anymore ..
  - anon4 11y ago
    GTK2 was a universal toolkit. Only with GTK3 the developers stated they're absolutely focusing only on a toolkit for GNOME and everyone else can take a hike.
    - nona 11y ago
      > everyone else can take a hike. More like: if anybody else wants to make GTK work better with other platforms, they're welcome to do it. It may have been a universal toolkit, but if the people that made it so disappear, it's unlikely it will continue to be universal in the future; that's just the way it is.
timlyo 11y ago
>You go out of your way to imply that GNOME developers are intentionally evil. Not really evil, just focused on other areas.
okasaki 11y ago
>Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. That's a problem that's better solved by the window manager, not by the application.
- bkor 11y ago
  I've been benefiting from additional screen space for various years. There's no specification to do this within the window manager. Even if there is, you need to think of Wayland as well. Ideally it would be nice to enhance all window managers and somehow make this possible in a different way. You'd still have practical problems in that the theme of the window manager won't align with your toolkit though. But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    >But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone. Oh for the good old days when window management was so simple and straightforward, that all you had to do was memorize and follow every nuance and implication and extension of the ICCCM, before testing against every other application under all possible window managers in every platform environment with each possible hardware variation.
  - jstimpfle 11y ago
    > Ideally it would be nice to enhance all window managers and somehow make this possible in a different way. You'd still have practical problems in that the theme of the window manager won't align with your toolkit though. > But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone. You know what? Let's start by not making these silly thick titlebars, and not making these silly assumptions that everyone uses the library / framework of the day. Because these are actually idealistic and will never work out in practice. GTK hasn't learned from the Windows 95 style GUIs (don't know any names) which never had any space problems in the first place. But I think it has a lot to do with portability to netbooks / tablets / smartphones in that they drove this development (look at Windows 8).
creshal 11y ago
> Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. If Gnome 3 wanted to fix that, it should just replace its space-wasting default theme. And in reality it's a non-issue everywhere else. No other desktop environment even has this debate. > Very strong language but you don't explain _at all_! Very easy: Consistency. Look at how absolutely, utterly shit Windows looks nowadays. Word doesn't blend in with Explorer doesn't blend in with regedit doesn't blend it with (the still XP-themed) GPO editor doesn't blend in with the new settings app doesn't blend in with the control panel doesn't blend in with Edge … My window manager should dictate how windows looks. This works for all toolkits, from GTK2 over FLTK over Qt all the way to Mono's GDI. All, except GTK3. And yet, it does not have to be a problem! A few years ago, this would have been a no-brainer: When GTK was presented with behavioural differences between desktop environments, it was implemented as a run-time option, configured by the GTK theme to allow desktops to configure GTK to its needs (like "images on buttons", mandatory in Xfce, shunned in Gnome). Client-side decorations are a compile-time switch. What the hell. > Regarding mouse wheel support: What basis do you say that 1) it was removed 2) it was made out of spite? GTK's notebook widget. It was removed for no reason, and users were told to just reimplement it in all applications they needed it in. What the hell.
- ronjouch 11y ago
  > > Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. > If Gnome 3 wanted to fix that, it should just replace its space-wasting default theme. And in reality it's a non-issue everywhere else. No other desktop environment even has this debate. Yes, other desktop environments have this debate. In Mac OSX, open any recent app and you'll see titlebars with actions (e.g. play/pause in iTunes, addressbar in Safari, etc.), presumably to compact window chrome.
- bkor 11y ago
  Regarding client side decorations: Lots of Windows applications draw on it. I now the technical separation of window manager vs toolkit. It's nice that you can always close the window. But practically speaking, CSD gives me way more space vs some theoretical idea that "it should not be done". The consistency argument I don't see. GTK+3.x apps can disable their CSD when running on other desktops. Within GNOME 3 though, it is consistent. Initially the apps would default to showing CSD but AFAIK latest GTK+3.x ensure they don't. Anyway regarding consistency: It is way nicer! If it is way nicer, then why hold back for consistency? You'd never be able to make a change. And basically there are two toolkits anyway, Qt and GTK+. I've been around for ages, but FLTK/Java stuff, etc... eventually you'll go down to a: no change ever. You said it is a compile time option. AFAIK it is not at all. Though with Wayland the use of xsettings is more difficult. They are specific to X after all. Regarding mouse wheel support you didn't give an example? In case of anything else you disagree with, please speak up as changes happen (d-d-l). It is pretty difficult to go against a decision that happened a long time ago. E.g. I could give a "this is bad / better revert" but unless people complain when things happen it is pretty hard/difficult. Notebook I didn't notice nor knew for instance. I do see other changes that are made, but usually when that is done they seem to have investigated how often it is used (not just git.gnome.org). Usually they find 0 or 1 app and that app is on git.gnome.org.
kuschku 11y ago
> Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. It allows to combine the titlebar with content from the application itself. You regard them entirely off as a "sin". Very strong language but you don't explain _at all_! You can do that without client side decorations. KDE with Qt even plans to allow telling the Window manager to render specific widgets in the toolbar. The manager can ignore that, and render them as separate toolbar – or even render them in a bar at the top of the screen.
PeCaN 11y ago
Ever used a tiling window manager? Client-side decorations are quite annoying to deal with, since otherwise I don't have title bars. Also the Gtk developers are (probably) not evil, they just happen to also be the Gnome devs and have made some choices that are a little questionable to the rest of us.
- rsync 11y ago
  Wait ... wait ... I used ratpoison/ion3 from about 2000 through 2007 and then switched to OSX. So I never saw this ... You're saying that in modern Xwin/Xorg, the actual applications have title bars and so on ... such that if I were using RP/ion I would see the titlebars ? Is that what you're saying ?
  - zanny 11y ago
    That is what client side decorations are. The application draws in their own windows their own title bars / frames / min / max / close buttons and that will happen everywhere. Go open the Steam client on Linux, it is using CSD so it always has min / max / close in the top right.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      And when things lock up, you can't move or close anything because the buttons are unresponsive?
      - lomnakkus 11y ago
        That's a sort-of-misconception, I think. AFAIK the client has to "advertise" the general location of the standard buttons, so if it's generally well-behaved, but just randomly locks up (via bug, not malicious intent), then you should generally still be able to close it. (That's my understanding from the pro-CSD crowd, I'm personally pro-SSD, so I may have misunderstood unintentionally, but I think I'm being as charitable as possible in the above interpretation/description.)
      - anon4 11y ago
ybx 11y ago
You mostly disagree with him entirely?
jakobdabo 11y ago
I just hate the new file chooser. In GTK2 applications I can start typing the file name and the selector jumps to the file. E.g. I type "f", it jumps to the first file with name starting by "f", then I type "e" and it jumps to the first file with name starting with "fe", and so on. In GTK3 they implemented some kind of filter, so when I type "f" the selector doesn't move but the dialog will show only everything containing "f" in its name, even in subdirectories! In big directories with many subdirectories and files it slows down everything while it's doing its filtering.
- Tiksi 11y ago
  Yeah this is massively annoying. If you use arch there's https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gtk3-typeahead/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gtk3-typeahead/ which patches it back in.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    And this is a great example of why Gnome is such a PITA: to change anything like that, you have to go download and install some extension, which of course will break the next time Gnome updates.
krschultz 11y ago
You are obviously a Linux desktop user. From the article "The main reason behind the change was to better support Mac OS X, which is something of second-tier platform for GTK+" From the perspective of 'UI toolkit for cross platform development' Qt is superior over GTK+. If you want the best Linux desktop toolkit GTK is probably a better choice.
- bemused 11y ago
  "the best Linux desktop toolkit" depends primarily on the language you choose and the quality of its bindings to the toolkit but consider that Qt aims to blend nicely into a GTK-based desktop environment, while its sometimes not even possible the other way round - eg using the "native" widgets of the desktop environment like file dialogs etc "cross desktop environment" or whatever you might call this, is definitely not a top priority for the gtk-devs (see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735211 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735211 for example) its all fine if you develop for GNOME only, but you should be aware of GTKs current limitations when it comes to writing applications that look nice on all linux desktops and porting from one toolkit to another can be heaps of work, so choose wisely..

by bkor 11y ago

bemused 11y ago

worked with GTK2/3 and QT 5+ years and got the feeling that GTK has been turning into the GNOME toolkit as well. not very pleasant to work with if you want your application to support the look&feel of different linux-DEs and not suited for cross-platform applications at all GTK3 is perfect if you want to develop for the GNOME desktop. for anything else it would need way more developers that are not focused on GNOME

nona 11y ago
How is that surprising? The people that do the work get to set the course of the project; the Gnome devs are scratching their own itch. QT caters to more platforms, because QT _is_ Digia/The QT company's product. For Gnome devs Gnome is the product. So yeah, I agree with you: GTK3 is great if you do Gnome, QT otherwise. But some people in this thread (not you) seem to blame or resent Gnome developers for doing their jobs, which strikes me as odd, to say the least.
- bemused 11y ago
  Well I really dont want to critize GNOME developers for working on free software, paid or not. But GTK is still perceived as a more universal toolkit than "just GNOME" and this might be a time-consuming surprise that hits application developers furthermore it is still advertised like this as well (from gtk.org): What is GTK+, and how can I use it? GTK+, or the GIMP Toolkit, is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Where can I use it? Everywhere! GTK+ is cross-platform and boasts an easy to use API, speeding up your development time. from my point of view, this is not exactly true anymore ..
- anon4 11y ago
  GTK2 was a universal toolkit. Only with GTK3 the developers stated they're absolutely focusing only on a toolkit for GNOME and everyone else can take a hike.
  - nona 11y ago
    > everyone else can take a hike. More like: if anybody else wants to make GTK work better with other platforms, they're welcome to do it. It may have been a universal toolkit, but if the people that made it so disappear, it's unlikely it will continue to be universal in the future; that's just the way it is.

timlyo 11y ago

>You go out of your way to imply that GNOME developers are intentionally evil. Not really evil, just focused on other areas.

okasaki 11y ago

>Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. That's a problem that's better solved by the window manager, not by the application.

bkor 11y ago
I've been benefiting from additional screen space for various years. There's no specification to do this within the window manager. Even if there is, you need to think of Wayland as well. Ideally it would be nice to enhance all window managers and somehow make this possible in a different way. You'd still have practical problems in that the theme of the window manager won't align with your toolkit though. But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  >But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone. Oh for the good old days when window management was so simple and straightforward, that all you had to do was memorize and follow every nuance and implication and extension of the ICCCM, before testing against every other application under all possible window managers in every platform environment with each possible hardware variation.
- jstimpfle 11y ago
  > Ideally it would be nice to enhance all window managers and somehow make this possible in a different way. You'd still have practical problems in that the theme of the window manager won't align with your toolkit though. > But I prefer actual progress instead of the theoretical ideal solution that's way more work and involves co-operation with everyone. You know what? Let's start by not making these silly thick titlebars, and not making these silly assumptions that everyone uses the library / framework of the day. Because these are actually idealistic and will never work out in practice. GTK hasn't learned from the Windows 95 style GUIs (don't know any names) which never had any space problems in the first place. But I think it has a lot to do with portability to netbooks / tablets / smartphones in that they drove this development (look at Windows 8).

creshal 11y ago

> Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. If Gnome 3 wanted to fix that, it should just replace its space-wasting default theme. And in reality it's a non-issue everywhere else. No other desktop environment even has this debate. > Very strong language but you don't explain _at all_! Very easy: Consistency. Look at how absolutely, utterly shit Windows looks nowadays. Word doesn't blend in with Explorer doesn't blend in with regedit doesn't blend it with (the still XP-themed) GPO editor doesn't blend in with the new settings app doesn't blend in with the control panel doesn't blend in with Edge … My window manager should dictate how windows looks. This works for all toolkits, from GTK2 over FLTK over Qt all the way to Mono's GDI. All, except GTK3. And yet, it does not have to be a problem! A few years ago, this would have been a no-brainer: When GTK was presented with behavioural differences between desktop environments, it was implemented as a run-time option, configured by the GTK theme to allow desktops to configure GTK to its needs (like "images on buttons", mandatory in Xfce, shunned in Gnome). Client-side decorations are a compile-time switch. What the hell. > Regarding mouse wheel support: What basis do you say that 1) it was removed 2) it was made out of spite? GTK's notebook widget. It was removed for no reason, and users were told to just reimplement it in all applications they needed it in. What the hell.

ronjouch 11y ago
> > Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. > If Gnome 3 wanted to fix that, it should just replace its space-wasting default theme. And in reality it's a non-issue everywhere else. No other desktop environment even has this debate. Yes, other desktop environments have this debate. In Mac OSX, open any recent app and you'll see titlebars with actions (e.g. play/pause in iTunes, addressbar in Safari, etc.), presumably to compact window chrome.
bkor 11y ago
Regarding client side decorations: Lots of Windows applications draw on it. I now the technical separation of window manager vs toolkit. It's nice that you can always close the window. But practically speaking, CSD gives me way more space vs some theoretical idea that "it should not be done". The consistency argument I don't see. GTK+3.x apps can disable their CSD when running on other desktops. Within GNOME 3 though, it is consistent. Initially the apps would default to showing CSD but AFAIK latest GTK+3.x ensure they don't. Anyway regarding consistency: It is way nicer! If it is way nicer, then why hold back for consistency? You'd never be able to make a change. And basically there are two toolkits anyway, Qt and GTK+. I've been around for ages, but FLTK/Java stuff, etc... eventually you'll go down to a: no change ever. You said it is a compile time option. AFAIK it is not at all. Though with Wayland the use of xsettings is more difficult. They are specific to X after all. Regarding mouse wheel support you didn't give an example? In case of anything else you disagree with, please speak up as changes happen (d-d-l). It is pretty difficult to go against a decision that happened a long time ago. E.g. I could give a "this is bad / better revert" but unless people complain when things happen it is pretty hard/difficult. Notebook I didn't notice nor knew for instance. I do see other changes that are made, but usually when that is done they seem to have investigated how often it is used (not just git.gnome.org). Usually they find 0 or 1 app and that app is on git.gnome.org.

kuschku 11y ago

> Client side decorations give way more space to the actual content than to waste space for an almost empty titlebar. It allows to combine the titlebar with content from the application itself. You regard them entirely off as a "sin". Very strong language but you don't explain _at all_! You can do that without client side decorations. KDE with Qt even plans to allow telling the Window manager to render specific widgets in the toolbar. The manager can ignore that, and render them as separate toolbar – or even render them in a bar at the top of the screen.

PeCaN 11y ago

Ever used a tiling window manager? Client-side decorations are quite annoying to deal with, since otherwise I don't have title bars. Also the Gtk developers are (probably) not evil, they just happen to also be the Gnome devs and have made some choices that are a little questionable to the rest of us.

rsync 11y ago
Wait ... wait ... I used ratpoison/ion3 from about 2000 through 2007 and then switched to OSX. So I never saw this ... You're saying that in modern Xwin/Xorg, the actual applications have title bars and so on ... such that if I were using RP/ion I would see the titlebars ? Is that what you're saying ?
- zanny 11y ago
  That is what client side decorations are. The application draws in their own windows their own title bars / frames / min / max / close buttons and that will happen everywhere. Go open the Steam client on Linux, it is using CSD so it always has min / max / close in the top right.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    And when things lock up, you can't move or close anything because the buttons are unresponsive?
    - lomnakkus 11y ago
      That's a sort-of-misconception, I think. AFAIK the client has to "advertise" the general location of the standard buttons, so if it's generally well-behaved, but just randomly locks up (via bug, not malicious intent), then you should generally still be able to close it. (That's my understanding from the pro-CSD crowd, I'm personally pro-SSD, so I may have misunderstood unintentionally, but I think I'm being as charitable as possible in the above interpretation/description.)
    - anon4 11y ago

ybx 11y ago

You mostly disagree with him entirely?

jakobdabo 11y ago

I just hate the new file chooser. In GTK2 applications I can start typing the file name and the selector jumps to the file. E.g. I type "f", it jumps to the first file with name starting by "f", then I type "e" and it jumps to the first file with name starting with "fe", and so on. In GTK3 they implemented some kind of filter, so when I type "f" the selector doesn't move but the dialog will show only everything containing "f" in its name, even in subdirectories! In big directories with many subdirectories and files it slows down everything while it's doing its filtering.

Tiksi 11y ago
Yeah this is massively annoying. If you use arch there's https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gtk3-typeahead/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gtk3-typeahead/ which patches it back in.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  And this is a great example of why Gnome is such a PITA: to change anything like that, you have to go download and install some extension, which of course will break the next time Gnome updates.

krschultz 11y ago

You are obviously a Linux desktop user. From the article "The main reason behind the change was to better support Mac OS X, which is something of second-tier platform for GTK+" From the perspective of 'UI toolkit for cross platform development' Qt is superior over GTK+. If you want the best Linux desktop toolkit GTK is probably a better choice.

bemused 11y ago
"the best Linux desktop toolkit" depends primarily on the language you choose and the quality of its bindings to the toolkit but consider that Qt aims to blend nicely into a GTK-based desktop environment, while its sometimes not even possible the other way round - eg using the "native" widgets of the desktop environment like file dialogs etc "cross desktop environment" or whatever you might call this, is definitely not a top priority for the gtk-devs (see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735211 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735211 for example) its all fine if you develop for GNOME only, but you should be aware of GTKs current limitations when it comes to writing applications that look nice on all linux desktops and porting from one toolkit to another can be heaps of work, so choose wisely..