4 ms·

Gtk has always been primarily built by and for Linux users.

by jdub 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago
The GIMP Tolkit was always cross platform, the GNOME Tolkit not really.
- jdub 3y ago
  That is ahistorical, and the misnaming doesn't help make your point.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    As former random Gtkmm contributor, with articles on the The C/C++ User Journal, I am not the revisionist here.
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      What's a Tolkit? And why two of them? I thought GTK was the Toolkit, GIMP was the Image Manipulation Program, and Gnome was the desktop Network Object Model Environment. Am I a revisionist here? (I certainly have my reservations about them!)
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        GTK stand for The GIMP Toolkit, as it was originally used to write GIMP, which actually started as a MOTIF application. When GNOME adopted GTK as its foundation, there was a clear separation between GTK and the GNOME libraries, back in the 1.0 - 2.0 days. Eventually GNOME needs became GTK roadmap. The rest one can find on the history books.
        DonHopkins 3y ago
        Dude, I know. I've been implementing user interface toolkits since the early 80's, but I've still never heard of a "Tolkit", which you mentioned twice, so I asked you what it was -- are you making a silly pun like "Tollkit" for "Toolkit" or "Lamework" for "Framework" or "Bloatif" for "Motif" and I'm missing it? No hits on urban dictionary, even. And also you still haven't explained whether I'm a revisionist or not. Just like you, I love to write articles about user interface stuff all the time, too. Just in the past week: My enthusiastic but balanced response to somebody who EMPHATICALLY DEMANDED PIE MENUS ONLY for GIMP, and who loves pie fly, but pushed my button by defending the name GIMP by insisting that instead of the GIMP project simply and finally conceding its name is offensive, that our entire society adapt by globally re-signifying a widely known offensive hurtful word (so I suggested he first go try re-signifying the n-word first, and see how that went): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793 (While I would give more weight to the claim that the name GIMP is actually all about re-signifying an offensive term if it came from a qualified and empathic and wheelchair using interface designer like Haraldur Ingi Þorleifsson, I doubt that’s actually the real reason, just like it’s not white people’s job to re-signify the n-word by saying it all the time...) Meet the man who is making Iceland wheelchair accessible one ramp at a time: https://scoop.upworthy.com/meet-the-man-who-is-making-iceland-wheelchair-accessible https://scoop.upworthy.com/meet-the-man-who-is-making-icelan... Elon Musk apologises after mocking laid-off Twitter worker, questioning his disability: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/elon-musk-haraldur-thorleifsson-twitter-argument-disability/102069040 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/elon-musk-haraldur-th... The article about redesigning GIMP we were discussing credited Blender with being the first to show what mouse buttons do what at the bottom of the screen, which actually the Lisp Machine deserves credit for, as far as I know: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237231 I made a joke about how telling GIMP developers to make it more like Photoshop was like telling RMS to develop Open Software for Linux, instead of Free Software for GNU/Linux, and somebody took the bait so I flamed about the GIMP developer’s lack of listening skills: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274 Somebody used the phrase "Easy as pie” in a discussion about user interface design so I had to chime in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239113 Discussion about HTML Web Components, in which I confess my secret affair with XML, XSLT, obsolete proprietary Microsoft technologies, and Punkemon pie menus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253752 Deep interesting discussion about Blender 4.0 release notes, focusing on its historic development and its developer’s humility and openness to its users’ suggestions, in which I commented on its excellent Python integration. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263171 Comment on how Blender earned its loads of money and support by being responsive to its users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232404 Dark puns about user interface toolkits and a cheap shot at Motif, with an analogy between GIMP and Blender: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263088 A content warning to a parent who wanted to know which videos their 8-year-old should watch on YouTube to learn Blender: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288629 Posing with a cement garden gnome flipping the bird with Chris Toshok and Miguel de Icaza and his mom at GDC2010: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606531754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606531754&set=a.5173... https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606491754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606491754&set=a.5173... https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606436754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606436754&set=a.5173...
        smoldesu 3y ago
        > Eventually GNOME needs became GTK roadmap. Exactly? If you're still holding out for GTK to be a non-Linux toolkit in 2023 then you're either an incredibly misguided contributor and/or ignorant of the history behind the toolkit. The old GTK does not exist anymore, you either use GNOME's stack or you don't.
        chrismorgan 3y ago
        GNOME co-opted and sabotaged GTK for anyone that’s not GNOME. GTK used to be capable of being fairly OS-neutral, and was certainly quite neutral within Linux and so became the widget toolkit of choice for diverse desktop environments and worked well thus; but over time GNOME has taken it over completely, and the desires of other desktop environments are utterly ignored. The GNOME Foundation has become a very, very bad custodian for GTK. As you say, the old GTK is dead. GNOME murdered it. I mourn it.
        smoldesu 3y ago
        Yeah, I don't disagree with anything you've said. Still though, I use GTK because it works and think the pushback against it is silly. GTK was never destined to be the cross-platform native framework. If that was attainable, people would have forked GTK 2 (for what?) or GTK 3 (too quirky). Now we're here, and the only stakeholders on the project is the enormously opinionated GNOME team. They've made a whole lot of objective and subjective missteps in the past, but I don't think it's fair to characterize them as an evil party here. They did the work, they reap the rewards, and they take the flak for the myriad of different ways the project could/should have gone.
        DonHopkins 3y ago
        The problem with the GIMP team is not that they're enormously opinionated, but that they're WRONGLY opinionated. It's not that they're the evil party, it's just that they should stop feeling so sorry for themselves that so few people want to use their image editor because of its terrible user interface caused by the fact that they refuse to listen to their users, and it has a terribly offensive name that they refuse to change. At least they still have a fanatical following of MAGA incel edgelords and ESR sycophants who love it BECAUSE it has an offensive name, so they still have that hard core fanbase to appeal to. They're as self-sabotaging as RMS himself, and they don't deserve to play the victim or to have a pity party, especially when they try to throw it for themselves.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- saltcured 3y ago
  After seeing this whole thread a day late, I have to wonder: is the unspoken difference what "cross-platform" and "always" mean to different posters? To someone with my historical perspective, it grates a bit to see X Windows conflated with Linux as a platform. My memory of the early days is consistent with what the wikipedia page says about GIMP. It was cross-platform on the typical Unix workstations that were around the UC Berkeley campus labs and XCF. This was things like Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, Ultrix, and Irix. Students in this milieu were just as likely to have some BSD variant on their home PC as Linux. I think it was later during and after the "Beowulf" scientific computing period when Linux started to dominate as the Unix-like platform for open source development.

Gtk has always been primarily built by and for Linux users.

by jdub 3y ago

Gtk has always been primarily built by and for Linux users.

pjmlp 3y ago

The GIMP Tolkit was always cross platform, the GNOME Tolkit not really.

jdub 3y ago
That is ahistorical, and the misnaming doesn't help make your point.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  As former random Gtkmm contributor, with articles on the The C/C++ User Journal, I am not the revisionist here.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    What's a Tolkit? And why two of them? I thought GTK was the Toolkit, GIMP was the Image Manipulation Program, and Gnome was the desktop Network Object Model Environment. Am I a revisionist here? (I certainly have my reservations about them!)
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      GTK stand for The GIMP Toolkit, as it was originally used to write GIMP, which actually started as a MOTIF application. When GNOME adopted GTK as its foundation, there was a clear separation between GTK and the GNOME libraries, back in the 1.0 - 2.0 days. Eventually GNOME needs became GTK roadmap. The rest one can find on the history books.
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        Dude, I know. I've been implementing user interface toolkits since the early 80's, but I've still never heard of a "Tolkit", which you mentioned twice, so I asked you what it was -- are you making a silly pun like "Tollkit" for "Toolkit" or "Lamework" for "Framework" or "Bloatif" for "Motif" and I'm missing it? No hits on urban dictionary, even. And also you still haven't explained whether I'm a revisionist or not. Just like you, I love to write articles about user interface stuff all the time, too. Just in the past week: My enthusiastic but balanced response to somebody who EMPHATICALLY DEMANDED PIE MENUS ONLY for GIMP, and who loves pie fly, but pushed my button by defending the name GIMP by insisting that instead of the GIMP project simply and finally conceding its name is offensive, that our entire society adapt by globally re-signifying a widely known offensive hurtful word (so I suggested he first go try re-signifying the n-word first, and see how that went): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793 (While I would give more weight to the claim that the name GIMP is actually all about re-signifying an offensive term if it came from a qualified and empathic and wheelchair using interface designer like Haraldur Ingi Þorleifsson, I doubt that’s actually the real reason, just like it’s not white people’s job to re-signify the n-word by saying it all the time...) Meet the man who is making Iceland wheelchair accessible one ramp at a time: https://scoop.upworthy.com/meet-the-man-who-is-making-iceland-wheelchair-accessible https://scoop.upworthy.com/meet-the-man-who-is-making-icelan... Elon Musk apologises after mocking laid-off Twitter worker, questioning his disability: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/elon-musk-haraldur-thorleifsson-twitter-argument-disability/102069040 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/elon-musk-haraldur-th... The article about redesigning GIMP we were discussing credited Blender with being the first to show what mouse buttons do what at the bottom of the screen, which actually the Lisp Machine deserves credit for, as far as I know: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237231 I made a joke about how telling GIMP developers to make it more like Photoshop was like telling RMS to develop Open Software for Linux, instead of Free Software for GNU/Linux, and somebody took the bait so I flamed about the GIMP developer’s lack of listening skills: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274 Somebody used the phrase "Easy as pie” in a discussion about user interface design so I had to chime in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239113 Discussion about HTML Web Components, in which I confess my secret affair with XML, XSLT, obsolete proprietary Microsoft technologies, and Punkemon pie menus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253752 Deep interesting discussion about Blender 4.0 release notes, focusing on its historic development and its developer’s humility and openness to its users’ suggestions, in which I commented on its excellent Python integration. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263171 Comment on how Blender earned its loads of money and support by being responsive to its users. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232404 Dark puns about user interface toolkits and a cheap shot at Motif, with an analogy between GIMP and Blender: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263088 A content warning to a parent who wanted to know which videos their 8-year-old should watch on YouTube to learn Blender: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288629 Posing with a cement garden gnome flipping the bird with Chris Toshok and Miguel de Icaza and his mom at GDC2010: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606531754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606531754&set=a.5173... https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606491754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606491754&set=a.5173... https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606436754&set=a.51733291754 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606436754&set=a.5173...
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        > Eventually GNOME needs became GTK roadmap. Exactly? If you're still holding out for GTK to be a non-Linux toolkit in 2023 then you're either an incredibly misguided contributor and/or ignorant of the history behind the toolkit. The old GTK does not exist anymore, you either use GNOME's stack or you don't.
        chrismorgan 3y ago
        GNOME co-opted and sabotaged GTK for anyone that’s not GNOME. GTK used to be capable of being fairly OS-neutral, and was certainly quite neutral within Linux and so became the widget toolkit of choice for diverse desktop environments and worked well thus; but over time GNOME has taken it over completely, and the desires of other desktop environments are utterly ignored. The GNOME Foundation has become a very, very bad custodian for GTK. As you say, the old GTK is dead. GNOME murdered it. I mourn it.
        smoldesu 3y ago
        Yeah, I don't disagree with anything you've said. Still though, I use GTK because it works and think the pushback against it is silly. GTK was never destined to be the cross-platform native framework. If that was attainable, people would have forked GTK 2 (for what?) or GTK 3 (too quirky). Now we're here, and the only stakeholders on the project is the enormously opinionated GNOME team. They've made a whole lot of objective and subjective missteps in the past, but I don't think it's fair to characterize them as an evil party here. They did the work, they reap the rewards, and they take the flak for the myriad of different ways the project could/should have gone.
        DonHopkins 3y ago
        The problem with the GIMP team is not that they're enormously opinionated, but that they're WRONGLY opinionated. It's not that they're the evil party, it's just that they should stop feeling so sorry for themselves that so few people want to use their image editor because of its terrible user interface caused by the fact that they refuse to listen to their users, and it has a terribly offensive name that they refuse to change. At least they still have a fanatical following of MAGA incel edgelords and ESR sycophants who love it BECAUSE it has an offensive name, so they still have that hard core fanbase to appeal to. They're as self-sabotaging as RMS himself, and they don't deserve to play the victim or to have a pity party, especially when they try to throw it for themselves.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
saltcured 3y ago
After seeing this whole thread a day late, I have to wonder: is the unspoken difference what "cross-platform" and "always" mean to different posters? To someone with my historical perspective, it grates a bit to see X Windows conflated with Linux as a platform. My memory of the early days is consistent with what the wikipedia page says about GIMP. It was cross-platform on the typical Unix workstations that were around the UC Berkeley campus labs and XCF. This was things like Solaris, SunOS, HP-UX, Ultrix, and Irix. Students in this milieu were just as likely to have some BSD variant on their home PC as Linux. I think it was later during and after the "Beowulf" scientific computing period when Linux started to dominate as the Unix-like platform for open source development.