3 ms·

or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs

by hexo 4y ago

phkahler 4y ago
Gtk 2/3/4 programs. Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome. Systems can run multiple versions of GTK at the same time, and gnome will still use xwayland for older x-apps. There really is no problem with this move.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome Yes and no. The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. Other non-GNOME uses of GTK work through coincidence, and won't be supported or considered as they evolve the GNOME platform. We can already see this with the removal of several features from GTK4 (that were present in GTK3). GTK5 will just be more of the same, and will leave more non-GNOME people behind. Sure, apps won't have to move from GTK3 or GTK4 to GTK5, but some will. And will someone step up to fork and maintain GTK3 and/or GTK4 when the GTK developers are focused on GTK5 and don't care about the older versions anymore? Alternatively, maybe we'll see a new toolkit start to gain prominence. After all, GTK5 is many years away, and GTK5-only apps are even further out. There's plenty of time for something new to take the stage. Maybe a Rust-based toolkit will become popular enough to be considered on similarly-equal footing to GTK and Qt. (Certainly the non-Rust binding story would have to be really good for this to be viable, as I can't imagine all those C, C++, Python, etc. devs who use GTK to all become Rust developers.) That would be my hope, but we'll see. There's a lot of time for this to unfold.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    >The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. I don't know where you heard this, but it's not at all true. This is actually the complete opposite of what they did in GTK4. A lot of the features that were removed were actually GNOME specific features that were simply moved into libadwaita, the thinking was that anyone building a platform on GTK4 can create their own library and put the themes/widgets they want there. Elementary OS also did exactly this with libgranite. The rest of your comment stems from this false assumption, so I think you can retract it.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      I believe I read it in an article quite a few years ago. I'm near 100% certain that's what the article said, though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. I don't see a need to retract most of my comment; the second and third paragraphs still hold. I still see little need to migrate to GTK4 (and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed), and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. The libadwaita stuff is also super weird and IMO implemented poorly, and in a way that basically says "if you aren't using GNOME we don't care about you". Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme.
      - Crysstalis 4y ago
        >though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. Yes, they were, that is the opposite of what actually happened. The real rationale is explained in the libadwaita release announcement: https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwaita.html https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwa... >and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed Yes, they also deprecated/removed some features that were just broken or not so useful. That's not a GNOME issue. >the second and third paragraphs still hold This is just my prediction from looking at some of the existing Rust libraries: There will not be any viable toolkit for general use written in pure Rust. To do so would require a giant investment. If it ever happened, any interested party would want it to be cross-platform because Rust is primarily used as a cross-platform language. And because of that, at best it would become a poor approximation of Qt without any of the benefits. The closest I could ever see conceivably happening would be some WASM-based thing that you can then deploy inside Electron. And I say this as someone who rather dislikes C++ and (in theory) prefers Rust. >and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. I don't know why you wouldn't bother with it. The code will probably not ever completely disappear, but X11 itself has already been obsolete for a number of years. >Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme. I don't see how this is even a problem. The point of the GNOME app is to follow the GNOME HIG and design patterns. The point of libadwaita is to provide prefab implementations of the GNOME HIG. You can't make an app that follows two design styles at the same time. Like, think about this. Motif or KDE apps also don't look anything like GNOME apps and they look out of place. Windows apps also look completely out of place on GNOME if you run them in Wine, etc. On an open platform nobody can enforce a certain look for any applications. Eventually they will all look weird and out of place somewhere.

or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs

by hexo 4y ago

or will stick to working gtk2/3 programs

Gtk 2/3/4 programs. Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome. Systems can run multiple versions of GTK at the same time, and gnome will still use xwayland for older x-apps. There really is no problem with this move.

kelnos 4y ago
> Also I think some people are conflating GTK and gnome Yes and no. The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. Other non-GNOME uses of GTK work through coincidence, and won't be supported or considered as they evolve the GNOME platform. We can already see this with the removal of several features from GTK4 (that were present in GTK3). GTK5 will just be more of the same, and will leave more non-GNOME people behind. Sure, apps won't have to move from GTK3 or GTK4 to GTK5, but some will. And will someone step up to fork and maintain GTK3 and/or GTK4 when the GTK developers are focused on GTK5 and don't care about the older versions anymore? Alternatively, maybe we'll see a new toolkit start to gain prominence. After all, GTK5 is many years away, and GTK5-only apps are even further out. There's plenty of time for something new to take the stage. Maybe a Rust-based toolkit will become popular enough to be considered on similarly-equal footing to GTK and Qt. (Certainly the non-Rust binding story would have to be really good for this to be viable, as I can't imagine all those C, C++, Python, etc. devs who use GTK to all become Rust developers.) That would be my hope, but we'll see. There's a lot of time for this to unfold.
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  >The GTK developers have stated that GTK now exists for GNOME. I don't know where you heard this, but it's not at all true. This is actually the complete opposite of what they did in GTK4. A lot of the features that were removed were actually GNOME specific features that were simply moved into libadwaita, the thinking was that anyone building a platform on GTK4 can create their own library and put the themes/widgets they want there. Elementary OS also did exactly this with libgranite. The rest of your comment stems from this false assumption, so I think you can retract it.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    I believe I read it in an article quite a few years ago. I'm near 100% certain that's what the article said, though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. I don't see a need to retract most of my comment; the second and third paragraphs still hold. I still see little need to migrate to GTK4 (and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed), and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. The libadwaita stuff is also super weird and IMO implemented poorly, and in a way that basically says "if you aren't using GNOME we don't care about you". Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme.
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      >though it's possible the author of the article was wrong or was misquoting someone. Yes, they were, that is the opposite of what actually happened. The real rationale is explained in the libadwaita release announcement: https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwaita.html https://adrienplazas.com/blog/2021/03/31/introducing-libadwa... >and one of my recent projects simply cannot be built with GTK4 due to features that were removed Yes, they also deprecated/removed some features that were just broken or not so useful. That's not a GNOME issue. >the second and third paragraphs still hold This is just my prediction from looking at some of the existing Rust libraries: There will not be any viable toolkit for general use written in pure Rust. To do so would require a giant investment. If it ever happened, any interested party would want it to be cross-platform because Rust is primarily used as a cross-platform language. And because of that, at best it would become a poor approximation of Qt without any of the benefits. The closest I could ever see conceivably happening would be some WASM-based thing that you can then deploy inside Electron. And I say this as someone who rather dislikes C++ and (in theory) prefers Rust. >and if GTK5 does eventually drop X11 support, I certainly wouldn't bother with it... unless of course somehow X11 actually disappears. I don't know why you wouldn't bother with it. The code will probably not ever completely disappear, but X11 itself has already been obsolete for a number of years. >Want to run an app that uses libadwaita outside of GNOME? Sure, but expect it to look completely out of place since it won't use your desktop theme. I don't see how this is even a problem. The point of the GNOME app is to follow the GNOME HIG and design patterns. The point of libadwaita is to provide prefab implementations of the GNOME HIG. You can't make an app that follows two design styles at the same time. Like, think about this. Motif or KDE apps also don't look anything like GNOME apps and they look out of place. Windows apps also look completely out of place on GNOME if you run them in Wine, etc. On an open platform nobody can enforce a certain look for any applications. Eventually they will all look weird and out of place somewhere.