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Before I started to use Qt in my python projects, I was using GTK. At the time, there was no absolute reason for doing so - it was merely the first thing I trie

Before I started to use Qt in my python projects, I was using GTK. At the time, there was no absolute reason for doing so - it was merely the first thing I tried. For various reasons (memory is vague, it was a while back), I soon began to get frustrated with GTK. Then I started reading various articles on the subject of 3rd-party Gnome theme designers getting extremely frustrated because for every point release of Gnome/Gtk, their themes broke in lots of annoying ways. I read about those frustrations, about incredulity that a point release introduced non-backwards compatible changes, about anger at Gnome developer's responses to those frustrations. A very good article to read is http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotting-in-threes/ http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rottin... Gnome itself.. I stopped using Gnome desktop not long after that - the big push for me was the transition from being a great desktop environment in Gnome 2, to some horrible abomination in Gnome 3. Now, some people like Gnome 3's way of doing things, I don't. For similar reasons I refuse to have anything to do with Ubuntu's Unity. The Gnome developer response to issues leaves something to be desired... "We know best, shut up!" is the best way I can describe my impression of them. There's something almost, dare I say it, Communist Party in my opinion, of how they do things. It puts me off. I've been using KDE since then - it presents me with a desktop that's useful to me. It also led me to try out the Qt library. What a breath of fresh air! Well documented! No unexpected changes in operation or backwards-incompatibility in minor revisions! Great responses from Qt/KDE developers! Anyway that's my own personal experience - I wouldn't dare suggest that is why others choose Qt & KDE in favour of Gnome/Gtk.

neurobro 12y ago
I can't speak to the developer experience for Qt vs. GTK, but one day the scrollbars in the GTK-based programs I use started going into ultra slow motion if I held down the mouse button for 1/4 second. While looking for a place to report the bug, I discovered this is an intentional "zoom" feature. Almost nobody knew about this amazing(?) feature, so with virtually no discussion, it was made to activate automatically to be more "discoverable". Personally, my life would be better if I hadn't discovered this UX regres-(cough)-feature. This sort of thing also reflects poorly on the software using the library. (Initially I thought Synaptic was broken.) I'm surprised that a mature library can change overnight in such a far-reaching way on some dude's whim.
johnchristopher 12y ago
> There's something almost, dare I say it, Communist Party in my opinion, of how they do things. It puts me off. Well, don't say it then. Putting GTK's first world problems on the same level as North Korea's atrocious regime is a poor way to qualify the Gnome developers. That said, I share your opinions on the situation and love QT which feels much slicker to the end user and easier to code. And some of the Gnome dev attitude sucks, that's a given.
- scarygliders 12y ago
  > Well, don't say it then. Putting GTK's first world problems on the same level as North Korea's atrocious regime is a poor way to qualify the Gnome developers. I said it because it was the best way with the least amount of verbiage I could use to describe how their top-down, dictatorship-like, inability or unwillingness to listen, it's our way or nothing, you're insane if you think this is a good idea, feels to me. I wasn't for one second trying to trivialise North Korea's problems - in fact I was thinking more about the Soviet-era - and I find it odd that you connected the two, and found the time to pick out that one sentence and make an issue out of it :)
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    > I wasn't for one second trying to trivialise North Korea's problems - in fact I was thinking more about the Soviet-era - and I find it odd that you connected the two, and found the time to pick out that one sentence and make an issue out of it :) Ha, that's interesting because I actually first picked up USSR but since the soviet era is over I chose to go with NK for dramatic effect. Recently the elections gave us a full liberal right political landscape in my home country and everyone is bashing the previous leftist and green parties with derogatory terms such as stalinism, gulag, dictators, etc. so the lexical field has been making me go on my high horses for the last few weeks because frankly it's not comparable. I'd rather label thing as they are when comparisons are too far fetched.
    - scarygliders 12y ago
      > Ha, that's interesting because I actually first picked up USSR but since the soviet era is over I chose to go with NK for dramatic effect. You mean... you went for hyperbole? ;) teehee!
the_why_of_y 12y ago
Theming was completely redone in the last years in GTK+3, that's why a lot of themes broke... it is now all done with CSS, and the 2 previous GTK+ specific theming mechanisms are deprecated. Which means that you can now at least point the developers to the W3C specs if you want to argue that something is a bug, and not something that only worked "by chance".

neurobro 12y ago

I can't speak to the developer experience for Qt vs. GTK, but one day the scrollbars in the GTK-based programs I use started going into ultra slow motion if I held down the mouse button for 1/4 second. While looking for a place to report the bug, I discovered this is an intentional "zoom" feature. Almost nobody knew about this amazing(?) feature, so with virtually no discussion, it was made to activate automatically to be more "discoverable". Personally, my life would be better if I hadn't discovered this UX regres-(cough)-feature. This sort of thing also reflects poorly on the software using the library. (Initially I thought Synaptic was broken.) I'm surprised that a mature library can change overnight in such a far-reaching way on some dude's whim.

johnchristopher 12y ago

> There's something almost, dare I say it, Communist Party in my opinion, of how they do things. It puts me off. Well, don't say it then. Putting GTK's first world problems on the same level as North Korea's atrocious regime is a poor way to qualify the Gnome developers. That said, I share your opinions on the situation and love QT which feels much slicker to the end user and easier to code. And some of the Gnome dev attitude sucks, that's a given.

scarygliders 12y ago
> Well, don't say it then. Putting GTK's first world problems on the same level as North Korea's atrocious regime is a poor way to qualify the Gnome developers. I said it because it was the best way with the least amount of verbiage I could use to describe how their top-down, dictatorship-like, inability or unwillingness to listen, it's our way or nothing, you're insane if you think this is a good idea, feels to me. I wasn't for one second trying to trivialise North Korea's problems - in fact I was thinking more about the Soviet-era - and I find it odd that you connected the two, and found the time to pick out that one sentence and make an issue out of it :)
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  > I wasn't for one second trying to trivialise North Korea's problems - in fact I was thinking more about the Soviet-era - and I find it odd that you connected the two, and found the time to pick out that one sentence and make an issue out of it :) Ha, that's interesting because I actually first picked up USSR but since the soviet era is over I chose to go with NK for dramatic effect. Recently the elections gave us a full liberal right political landscape in my home country and everyone is bashing the previous leftist and green parties with derogatory terms such as stalinism, gulag, dictators, etc. so the lexical field has been making me go on my high horses for the last few weeks because frankly it's not comparable. I'd rather label thing as they are when comparisons are too far fetched.
  - scarygliders 12y ago
    > Ha, that's interesting because I actually first picked up USSR but since the soviet era is over I chose to go with NK for dramatic effect. You mean... you went for hyperbole? ;) teehee!

the_why_of_y 12y ago

Theming was completely redone in the last years in GTK+3, that's why a lot of themes broke... it is now all done with CSS, and the 2 previous GTK+ specific theming mechanisms are deprecated. Which means that you can now at least point the developers to the W3C specs if you want to argue that something is a bug, and not something that only worked "by chance".