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- Stonekeeper, on 10/30/2007, -2/+27This is exactly what linux needs. I welcome anything that brings more technology to gtk. One day i hope there will be some core API that'll make kde and gnome programs look unified regardless of system.
- geminitojanus, on 11/01/2007, -0/+24I enjoy Müller's work, but there's an obvious approach he's missing that would GL-ify the whole desktop in one fell swoop. And it goes by the name of Cairo.
GTK+ is very oddly perched in a similar place that NeXT was perched in before they were gobbled up by Apple, how to add to the user experience using the core technologies they've developed and buried into their lower layers. Everything is going well for them; they've got a very nice vector UI layer in place (NeXT had DisplayPostscript, OS X has its modernized counterpart Quartz, and GTK+ has Cairo), and they started developing the inklings for the future: GL Acceleration. Because the graphics companies opened up their cards ever so slightly to allow users to run shader applications, we are now looking at a way of /greatly/ accelerating the speed of desktop rendering, and reaching parity with Mac OS X.
What's missing? Well, unlike Quartz, which uses CPU paths as a last resort, Cairo uses CPU paths /first/, and in many cases, receives little or no GPU acceleration at all (XRender support is in Cairo, some groundwork for XShm, but none of that graphical horsepower of those Pixel and Vertex shaders). Cairo's internals also weren't well designed for this kind of acceleration (again, it was designed with a strictly CPU-side vector approach).
So what we really need to take GTK+ apps into the future, is a way for Cairo to get better, and fast. Cairo needs to be able to jump into the GPU and use its pixel shaders to quickly generate offscreen pixbufs. Cairo needs to jump into vertex shaders and generate extremely fast (read 25x faster) bezier paths. Whatever can be salvaged from the Glitz code would be a great place to start, however, the code is suffering some rotting issues and never was all that great to begin with.
And who knows, maybe a year or two down the road we can start looking at a resolution independent GTK+. - TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/04/2007, -4/+13There are themes, you know...
Personally, I feel that it's QT that (as you so eloquently put it) "looks like ass", but that just shows that it's all subjective. - geminitojanus, on 11/04/2007, -0/+9Compiz is a Window Manager with a window compositor built in. It is incapable of hosting applications, it's not a graphics library, but several dozen plugins to Compiz use OpenGL for rich, hardware accelerated graphics.
What we're talking about is using that same OpenGL library and hardware acceleration for end-user applications. - mtekk, on 11/01/2007, -1/+7That's why I said a QT killer, GTK is not close to being a QT killer, IMHO, and thus there would be no reason for KDE to "downgrade" to anything that is not as good as QT. The Gnome folks care more about things being open/free, IIRC QT is still not open enough for them to consider using it. Either way, as you said allot of work would have to be done for either DE to convert to a different toolkit.
- aldenhg, on 11/01/2007, -2/+7That webcam thing is hot. I'm really glad that there are so many people out there working to make Linux even more awesome. I do, however, believe that more focus needs to be put toward making it easier for any random person to use if we want there to be a wide adoption.
- Acglaphotis, on 10/29/2007, -2/+7dude, go get some prozac.
- Purin, on 10/30/2007, -2/+7Even though I prefer KDE over GNOME, I think this is an awesome idea, and I think that it will give Linux a much needed general appearance boost. Some apps are just freakishly ugly :(.
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 11/01/2007, -1/+6Really? How much easier does it need to be? I already find it the easiest OS to use of the "big three" (excepting some driver issues - but I place the blame on the hardware manufacturers where it belongs.)
I've done some work with the GTK, and while its a very nice toolkit to use, I would welcome easier GL integration, as there are times when cpu-rendered graphics with Cairo and ImageSurface just don't cut it. - shadfc, on 10/30/2007, -1/+6I like eyecandy... but I also like my battery to last longer than 25 minutes.
- Acglaphotis, on 10/29/2007, -2/+6did you wake up troll today?
- antitab, on 10/30/2007, -1/+5The problems run far deeper than widget toolkits. It's been stated over and over that X11's architecture is sorely lacking for a modern graphics layer. It needs more than just GLX – X needs to become a third-generation display manager. If that means X12 or even Y (excusing the ill-fated attempt of the same name), then so be it. Windows and Mac OS have both now surpassed X. Rewriting or possibly even rethinking X11 will make all of this so much easier on developers, and also universal to all interface elements. We're talking Quartz and WPF, here, full on, rather than the rough hacks that have comprised the efforts to make X11 "seem" modern over the last (very) few years.
- bruce89, on 11/04/2007, -0/+4It's likely to be bad graphics drivers, not a "problem" with OpenGL.
- pointfivezero, on 10/30/2007, -0/+4Just FYI KDE apps put all preferences under the 'Settings' menu. This menu provides 'Toolbars' customization, specific options that may wish to be toggled quickly and the usual dialogs for shortcut, notification and configuration of the application.
cheers - GMorgan, on 11/11/2007, -0/+4Qt is too tied to C++ though, it's the only thing that holds it back (other than the fact it's GPL which enforces a license on you). GTK's only advantage is a huge, killer, feature. It can bind to C and hence every language on the planet.
- Andrew67, on 10/30/2007, -0/+4Actually, check out the QtCurve theme. Instead of going the Gtk-Qt route, its a native theme for gtk2, qt3 and qt4 making all apps look the same (down to the buttons!). Highly customizable too. http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=4 ... (surprised more people haven't heard of it)
- neko, on 10/30/2007, -0/+3Well, the X11 protocol is very stable, and I guess that's mostly due to all the extensions made for it, so I don't think it would need to change (much), but I agree that some core changes to the X -server- (Xorg) would be very nice indeed.
Consider this: if we can render our desktop to an off-screen pixmap (so we can shove it on the face of a cube and whirl it all over the place), why not try integrating that with the login manager (GDM, KDM) and the VNC protocol to create a really awesome persistent desktop system.
Say your flatmate really needs to access the web from your machine, because he wants to pay the rent (hey, it could happen!) - but you're already logged in. No problem, he hits the switch user button on your screensaver, your cube spins off into the distance to be replaced by the login screen. He logs in, his desktop gets allocated and spun into view.
Meanwhile, I'm at work and want to check my home desktop. I remember I had a firefox window open on something important/useful/pornographic which I want to check. I access VNC, with a single default display number, and get a freshly-allocated instance of the login manager. I can access my home desktop cube - it doesn't matter that it's not being displayed at the moment, it's still in an off-screen pixmap, and I can view it over VNC. And I don't have to allocate a brand-new desktop session with an Xvnc server.
Basically, instead of this situation spawning two Xorg processes (for the two local logins) and one Xvnc process (which I would have had to start by hand anyway), it's all handled by the one server, allowing desktops to be shuffled over the display or network as needed.
And yeah, if flatmate manages to crash X, I'm screwed, but really, what's new? - JonForTheWin, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3He'll do it too
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2From the GNOME HIG
"The Edit menu contains items relating to editing both the document (clipboard handling, search and replace, and inserting special objects) and the user's preferences. Preferences are edited here rather than on a Settings menu, because:
* most applications' preferences windows are accessed via a single menu tem, and single-item menus offer poor usability
* most applications already contain a suitable Edit menu."
This actually makes some sense w.r.t. GNOME applications, as they usually only have the one preferences dialogue. Some programmes will have a separate plug-ins dialogue or other entries, but not often enough to rely on it to fill out the 'settings'/'tools' menu (eg nautilus). - QuantumAvatar, on 11/04/2007, -1/+3I have a feeling the next 10 years of linux are going to kick ass. Im already jealous of my (no too soon to be) kids.
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Its more difficult than just a wrapper class for different tool-kits, though. The GNOME Human Interface Guidlines lay down some very specific traits of GNOME appplications to provide a constant look and feel. For example (IIRC), the Preferences menu entry is always under 'Edit'. Not 'Tools' or 'Options' or 'View', or anything else. This is why Firefox for linux has the preferences menu entry in a different spot than on windows. I don't know if KDE has an equivalent HIG, but IIRC, KDE apps usually put preferences under the 'Tools' menu.
There are non-GNOME Gtk apps that violate this, just as I suspect there are non-KDE QT apps that don't behave the same as KDE apps. I think the best thing that can happen is for devs who use the Gtk to follow GNOME HIG, and devs that use QT to follow the KDE equivalent. - bruce89, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Adobe Flash 9 uses GTK+, ALP will use it, and Nokia's Maemo uses it, not to mention OLPC and OpenMoko.
- andycr512, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2This would be great - shame the darned nVidia proprietary drivers don't allow you to suspend properly while rendering OpenGL... Perhaps by the time this is done Nouveau will be usable with 3D and the ATI drivers will be open source.
- yhan, on 10/30/2007, -0/+2Yea, I think it's pretty evident GTK is lacking when you look at what the future's gonna require.
We need resolution independence because the days of the "all devices with the same form factor" are over.
Now with Opengl (ES) support on most traditional and mobile platforms linux runs on, we need to start working on using all the horsepower. Not only it enables us to make things go faster, it also enables us to bring fluidity the user interfaces.
Having GTK designed specifically for keyboard and mouse input isn't good anymore.
Many people in the camp realize this, but boy are the efforts fragmented. Should I say, not only fragmented, but with no clear vision of what path to follow. Creation is messy but one needs to eventually shoot in one direction. - mtekk, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2that'd require KDE and Gnome to use the same GUI widget set, which I doubt would happen, unless a fully open-source QT killer comes out.
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1And I use epiphany because it's a proper GNOME/GTK app, but firefox is targeting gnome integration a little more than kde integration, it seems.
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2I don't think that anything could sway either DE to go to the effort of porting their code to another widget toolkit.
GTK is fully open-source (GPL or LGPL, don't recall), yet KDE has not moved (Of course not - they didn't care that QT wasn't free(libre) when it wasn't, why would they care now that things aren't so bad?)
QT is now more open, yet those that started GNOME haven't moved back to QT (why bother?) - bruce89, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Firefox is not a GNOME program, Epiphany is though.
- Macskeeball, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1The webcam thing reminds me of iChat.
- konkushn, on 10/30/2007, -2/+3If I hear someone use the word "rich" when talking about user interfaces one more time, I am gonna freak out.
- GMorgan, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1There's too much invested in X11 to move. Personally I'd love to see it die a slow death but it isn't going to happen. What is needed is for someone to write a new system that doesn't bundle all sorts of superfluous functionality into it and port the various toolkits to it.
There are all sorts of good reasons to do this but I cannot see it happening. Is there even a project to do it as a scientific curiosity? - terog, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1It is a great style and under active development. Unfortunately most distributions don't have QtCurve in their repositories. And if they do, they usually don't include both KDE-QtCurve *and* GTK-QtCurve.
- geminitojanus, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Glitz, the OpenGL compositor, has been in since sometime in 2005-2006 (not sure exactly when), but it does nothing but compositing (no path generation, etc). While that's an improvement, it's not the same vast improvement that you can get with a properly designed vector GL system.
- GMorgan, on 11/01/2007, -2/+3Qt is more open than GTK. Qt is GPL, GTK is LGPL. All this 'Qt isn't open' business is just a throwback to when Gnu believed that GPL was the only license. QPL has always been a FOSS license and now it is GPL and actually follows Stallmans own principles closer than GTK (Stallman has stated that libraries should be GPL, I don't agree with him but...).
- GMorgan, on 10/30/2007, -3/+4That is a more sensible approach. The Gnome thing is stupid, edit refers to the current document, not flipping preferences. Someone was on something strong when that was written.
- LucianSolaris, on 11/04/2007, -7/+7yea, i hope GTK gets cleaned up and quits looking like ass.
Isn't KDE4 going to have something like this anyway? - Stonekeeper, on 11/01/2007, -2/+1Get a clue: http://www.bustedtees.com/shirt/yourretarded
- RobotBuddha, on 10/30/2007, -2/+1I could be wrong, but hasn't cairo had that in there since the early days but the code just wound up buggy and unmaintained compared to the main rendering systems?
- keyo, on 11/01/2007, -3/+1-
- Stonekeeper, on 11/01/2007, -3/+1your retarded
- keyo, on 11/11/2007, -5/+3QT for the win. It's obviously better look at how many companies use it. Google, Adobe, Opera, Skype, Last.fm, Motorola etc. If gtk+ were better they' use that, its free.
- dicerandom, on 10/30/2007, -4/+2http://gtk-qt.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
- keyo, on 11/11/2007, -4/+1:( I have to agree with you. Frames per second DirectX beats the ***** outa OpenGL.
- keyo, on 11/01/2007, -5/+2@Stonekeeper You're ***** at spelling and grammar.
@Digg Fix the ***** comment system. - Kamujin, on 11/01/2007, -5/+1Your on crack. Seriously.
- ptFoe, on 10/30/2007, -9/+2I am surprised not many applications have been built on compiz.
Like an image browser or even a Firefox port to it. - lewhich, on 10/30/2007, -17/+1Google Earth runs extremely slow when using OpenGL (in comparison with DirectX)
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