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Perhaps it's time for someone to fork GTK+3. It's clear that the GNOME guys are beyond done with maintaining old GTK code (and I can't blame them) and the ecosy

Perhaps it's time for someone to fork GTK+3. It's clear that the GNOME guys are beyond done with maintaining old GTK code (and I can't blame them) and the ecosystem for old applications won't move forward trying to patch code in a project that's essentially on hold. It shouldn't be too difficult to fork the project and produce drop-in libraries for projects based on GTK+2/3 with patches applied. Through the desktop portal API, these changes would even apply completely transparently for windows like file pickers. There's such a big online crowd clearly voicing their opposition to the direction GNOME is taking GTK and other software, I don't get why these people don't just get together, set up a website and a forum somewhere, and split off to do the things GNOME doesn't want to do.

robinsonb5 3y ago
> There's such a big online crowd clearly voicing their opposition to the > direction GNOME is taking GTK and other software, I don't get why these people > don't just get together, set up a website and a forum somewhere, and split off > to do the things GNOME doesn't want to do. Maybe it's just because fighting against the tide is exhausting. Changing the world is young person's game - you need people with energy, enthusiasm, a vision of a better way and enough capacity for self-delusion to believe that it's actual possible. (My cynical streak may be showing here!) I suspect the "phone first" generation's never going to understand why modern UI fads such as hamburger menus and icons with no clear delineation engender such contempt from us mouse warriors! I'm old enough to remember the pain of moving from GTK+ 1.2 to GTK+ 2. That's when we lost tab-completion in the file picker. (Boy was that file picker ugly, but you could drive it using the keyboard much more easily than anything designed since, without the mouse being a second-class citizen.) There were a few obscure pieces of software which took years to be forward ported to Gtk+ 2 because the original authors weren't around any more. I wrote some software myself against Gtk+ 2 - printing-related - but since I no longer even have a printer at home, I have no interest in updating it for newer Gtk+ - and since it still used Gdk rather than Cairo (because back then Cairo would have made the colour management stuff I was doing impossible - I have no idea whether those limitations have since gone away) - it'd be painful to update anyway. If I had limitless time, energy, and didn't need to earn a living I'd fork Gtk+ myself just to rid myself of hamburger menus (see my earlier comment about not making the mouse a second-class citizen!) In the real world I'm jaded and burned-out enough with tech that I see too much else wrong with modern software, and desktop Linux in particular, to expend much of my life trying to hold back the tide of (what I see as) idiocy.

robinsonb5 3y ago

> There's such a big online crowd clearly voicing their opposition to the > direction GNOME is taking GTK and other software, I don't get why these people > don't just get together, set up a website and a forum somewhere, and split off > to do the things GNOME doesn't want to do. Maybe it's just because fighting against the tide is exhausting. Changing the world is young person's game - you need people with energy, enthusiasm, a vision of a better way and enough capacity for self-delusion to believe that it's actual possible. (My cynical streak may be showing here!) I suspect the "phone first" generation's never going to understand why modern UI fads such as hamburger menus and icons with no clear delineation engender such contempt from us mouse warriors! I'm old enough to remember the pain of moving from GTK+ 1.2 to GTK+ 2. That's when we lost tab-completion in the file picker. (Boy was that file picker ugly, but you could drive it using the keyboard much more easily than anything designed since, without the mouse being a second-class citizen.) There were a few obscure pieces of software which took years to be forward ported to Gtk+ 2 because the original authors weren't around any more. I wrote some software myself against Gtk+ 2 - printing-related - but since I no longer even have a printer at home, I have no interest in updating it for newer Gtk+ - and since it still used Gdk rather than Cairo (because back then Cairo would have made the colour management stuff I was doing impossible - I have no idea whether those limitations have since gone away) - it'd be painful to update anyway. If I had limitless time, energy, and didn't need to earn a living I'd fork Gtk+ myself just to rid myself of hamburger menus (see my earlier comment about not making the mouse a second-class citizen!) In the real world I'm jaded and burned-out enough with tech that I see too much else wrong with modern software, and desktop Linux in particular, to expend much of my life trying to hold back the tide of (what I see as) idiocy.