4 ms·

I’m also fairly bitter about the handling of 1.0 on Windows. I reported various problems at the first beta in moderate detail, my report was more or less ignore

I’m also fairly bitter about the handling of 1.0 on Windows. I reported various problems at the first beta in moderate detail, my report was more or less ignored and they went ahead with various significant regressions in performance and UI, largely because no developer was interested enough in Windows, and I and others evidently failed to convince them of just how bad it was on Windows; GTK+ 3 in general has shown a general disdain for doing Windows well, whereas GTK+ 2 had been worked over until it wasn’t too bad. Yes, Inkscape is done by volunteers, but I reckon that some of these issues should have been considered blockers to at least recommending 1.0 for Windows, if not its release. So I also stuck with 0.92 while on Windows. But I very much like what I’m seeing in the draft release notes for 1.2: as well as some really nice-looking functionality improvements, they mention various performance improvements in approximately the areas that had the worst regressions in 1.0 (such as zooming and panning), and UI adjustments to reduce space consumed. I haven’t tried 1.2 alpha 1 out just yet, but I probably will in the next few days and I’m really looking forward to it. (Incidentally, I’ve been back on Linux for the last ten months, and using the latest releases, since it works better under Linux, though Adwaita is still horrifically wasteful of space given Inkscape’s habit of stacking many buttons side-by-side, so I installed Minwaita which reduces that problem a lot.)

sprash 5y ago
GTK is a GNOME library and GNOME has shown in the past that they not only don't care about third party software but are actually extremely harmful to the community to the point that you might as well call it sabotage. The transition from GTK2 to GTK3 was extremely painful, had no benefits for anyone except GNOME and had many regressions across the board. The right course of action for Inkscape would be to switch back to GTK2 and be as independent from GNOME as possible. For everybody else it would be advised to make sure that your software runs well everywhere but GNOME. Simply check if getenv("XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP") is equal to "GNOME" and exit(EXIT_FAILURE) if true.
- prox 5y ago
  I hate this ivory tower way of developing. It holds back progress, learning by exchange, and so on.
- commoner 5y ago
  Display scaling is only supported by GTK 3 and later, so downgrading to GTK 2 would result in a blurry interface for a lot of users (and not just GNOME users). 1080p or higher resolution laptops and 4K monitors are quite common nowadays. I can't agree with excluding all GNOME users from using an application, since it's not the fault of GNOME users in general that it's difficult to transition between major GTK versions.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    Eh, GTK as a whole is… well, not healthy for cross-platform development. It used to be a good deal better (though it was never really excellent), but from GNOME 3 they’ve pretty much decided to flat-out ignore other platforms and their conventions, and shift GTK from being GNOME-focused but fairly platform agnostic with pretty good look-and-feel theming to being just GNOME GNOME GNOME and wildly out of place in look and feel everywhere else. Of course, other options in a similar space like Qt aren’t entirely better in that they don’t behave fully like GNOME on GNOME platforms. The best cross-platform native-feel apps, like Firefox, tend to use GTK on Linux (or possibly KDE/Qt in KDE?) and other things on other platforms. As a Linux user I inevitably use quite a bit of GTK software (though barely any GNOME stuff, if you savvy the distinction I’m drawing), but I dislike almost all of the directions it’s headed in since GNOME 3. Decent scaling is one of the few redeeming features. sprash is describing a very—ahh—ideologically pure position, but I do deeply sympathise with a desire for a return to the GTK+ 2 ways. My ideal would probably be to scrap GTK+ 3 and 4 and create 5 derived mostly from GTK+ 2’s philosophies, just including the good technical parts of 3 and 4, but determinedly not a full style unto itself. Also I’m fed up with client-side decorations matter and want better support for server-side decorations, as was done traditionally and as is still generally preferable on Windows and in most Linux window managers, or even platform-matching client-side decorations, which would be good for macOS and Windows and frankly GNOME. GNOME has basically sabotaged GTK as a cross-platform library—even as a Linux-wide thing (apart from KDE). They’ve taken it over to serve their own purposes and vision. Their vision does improve and unify some parts of GNOME desktops, but as a user of something other than GNOME (Sway), I don’t like most of what they’ve done to GTK.
    - 5y ago
zelphirkalt 5y ago
It might even be, that the developers do not own a Windows machine. Did you ask them, whether they have one to test on and reproduce the slowdown? Or perhaps offer to buy them one? It is a pity that things slow down for you on Windows, but I don't really see, how it is their responsibility to cater to a proprietary system, that is actively hostile to its users. Preferrably it wouls not slow down for you, ofc, but they may well deem it out of scope of their project to fix issues for asystem, that they do not have the code for to look at where it is going wrong, or simply do not have the time and resources to deal with that. Add to that, that any day MS could destroy the fruit of that work again. I can understand, that they don't want to invest resources into that.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  I appealed to them in concrete terms at one point not long before the release of 1.0: either fix things for Windows, or keep on recommending the 0.92 series for Windows. There’s no denying that for the 1.0 release Windows was a second-class citizen. There’s no reason why they couldn’t then say: “look, 1.0 is available, and if you want the new features you can use it, but it’s considerably slower than 0.92 and the Windows theme is very badly broken so you’ll be stuck using the Adwaita theme which is extremely wasteful of space, so all up we suggest sticking with 0.92 for now; BTW talk to us if you’re interested in helping to improve things or sponsoring such work”.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Do you think all users would agree with you? I used Inkscape on Win10 recently, and also on Kubuntu (21.04 a and 21.10, I think) and the experience was comparable. I do not like the icon themes now, they're very low contrast and difficult to decipher for me so use the old, colourful icons I'm familiar with. Apart from that and one problem with a dialog not appearing until I selected the option a second time (the XML dialog), all worked well. I think it's difficult, a x.0 might not be snappy, might even have serious issues, but there's not enough manpower resource to address everything at once, it's going to be incremental. Holding things back would negatively impact the momentum of the project IMO, but yes may benefit an individual.

sprash 5y ago

GTK is a GNOME library and GNOME has shown in the past that they not only don't care about third party software but are actually extremely harmful to the community to the point that you might as well call it sabotage. The transition from GTK2 to GTK3 was extremely painful, had no benefits for anyone except GNOME and had many regressions across the board. The right course of action for Inkscape would be to switch back to GTK2 and be as independent from GNOME as possible. For everybody else it would be advised to make sure that your software runs well everywhere but GNOME. Simply check if getenv("XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP") is equal to "GNOME" and exit(EXIT_FAILURE) if true.

prox 5y ago
I hate this ivory tower way of developing. It holds back progress, learning by exchange, and so on.
commoner 5y ago
Display scaling is only supported by GTK 3 and later, so downgrading to GTK 2 would result in a blurry interface for a lot of users (and not just GNOME users). 1080p or higher resolution laptops and 4K monitors are quite common nowadays. I can't agree with excluding all GNOME users from using an application, since it's not the fault of GNOME users in general that it's difficult to transition between major GTK versions.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Eh, GTK as a whole is… well, not healthy for cross-platform development. It used to be a good deal better (though it was never really excellent), but from GNOME 3 they’ve pretty much decided to flat-out ignore other platforms and their conventions, and shift GTK from being GNOME-focused but fairly platform agnostic with pretty good look-and-feel theming to being just GNOME GNOME GNOME and wildly out of place in look and feel everywhere else. Of course, other options in a similar space like Qt aren’t entirely better in that they don’t behave fully like GNOME on GNOME platforms. The best cross-platform native-feel apps, like Firefox, tend to use GTK on Linux (or possibly KDE/Qt in KDE?) and other things on other platforms. As a Linux user I inevitably use quite a bit of GTK software (though barely any GNOME stuff, if you savvy the distinction I’m drawing), but I dislike almost all of the directions it’s headed in since GNOME 3. Decent scaling is one of the few redeeming features. sprash is describing a very—ahh—ideologically pure position, but I do deeply sympathise with a desire for a return to the GTK+ 2 ways. My ideal would probably be to scrap GTK+ 3 and 4 and create 5 derived mostly from GTK+ 2’s philosophies, just including the good technical parts of 3 and 4, but determinedly not a full style unto itself. Also I’m fed up with client-side decorations matter and want better support for server-side decorations, as was done traditionally and as is still generally preferable on Windows and in most Linux window managers, or even platform-matching client-side decorations, which would be good for macOS and Windows and frankly GNOME. GNOME has basically sabotaged GTK as a cross-platform library—even as a Linux-wide thing (apart from KDE). They’ve taken it over to serve their own purposes and vision. Their vision does improve and unify some parts of GNOME desktops, but as a user of something other than GNOME (Sway), I don’t like most of what they’ve done to GTK.
  - 5y ago

zelphirkalt 5y ago

It might even be, that the developers do not own a Windows machine. Did you ask them, whether they have one to test on and reproduce the slowdown? Or perhaps offer to buy them one? It is a pity that things slow down for you on Windows, but I don't really see, how it is their responsibility to cater to a proprietary system, that is actively hostile to its users. Preferrably it wouls not slow down for you, ofc, but they may well deem it out of scope of their project to fix issues for asystem, that they do not have the code for to look at where it is going wrong, or simply do not have the time and resources to deal with that. Add to that, that any day MS could destroy the fruit of that work again. I can understand, that they don't want to invest resources into that.

chrismorgan 5y ago
I appealed to them in concrete terms at one point not long before the release of 1.0: either fix things for Windows, or keep on recommending the 0.92 series for Windows. There’s no denying that for the 1.0 release Windows was a second-class citizen. There’s no reason why they couldn’t then say: “look, 1.0 is available, and if you want the new features you can use it, but it’s considerably slower than 0.92 and the Windows theme is very badly broken so you’ll be stuck using the Adwaita theme which is extremely wasteful of space, so all up we suggest sticking with 0.92 for now; BTW talk to us if you’re interested in helping to improve things or sponsoring such work”.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  Do you think all users would agree with you? I used Inkscape on Win10 recently, and also on Kubuntu (21.04 a and 21.10, I think) and the experience was comparable. I do not like the icon themes now, they're very low contrast and difficult to decipher for me so use the old, colourful icons I'm familiar with. Apart from that and one problem with a dialog not appearing until I selected the option a second time (the XML dialog), all worked well. I think it's difficult, a x.0 might not be snappy, might even have serious issues, but there's not enough manpower resource to address everything at once, it's going to be incremental. Holding things back would negatively impact the momentum of the project IMO, but yes may benefit an individual.