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GTK+ 2.8.0 released
| From: | Matthias Clasen <mclasen-AT-redhat.com> | |
| To: | gnome-announce-list-AT-gnome.org, gtk-devel-list-AT-gnome.org, gtk-app-devel-list-AT-gnome.org, gtk-list-AT-gnome.org | |
| Subject: | GTK+ 2.8.0 released | |
| Date: | Sat, 13 Aug 2005 16:14:18 -0400 |
GTK+ 2.8.0 is now available for download at: ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.8/ gtk+-2.8.0.tar.bz2 md5sum: e169d35239bf9d23bdd84c473e3c4917 gtk+-2.8.0.tar.gz md5sum: a3182963a74a78df78c4a8df4bb608b3 along with new versions of the 3 base libraries, GLib, Pango and ATK. Release notes are available at: http://www.gtk.org/gtk-2.8.0-notes.html What is GTK+ ============ GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites. GTK+ has been designed from the ground up to support a range of languages, not only C/C++. Using GTK+ from languages such as Perl and Python (especially in combination with the Glade GUI builder) provides an effective method of rapid application development. GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However, the licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties. GTK+ is the only 100% free-of-cost open source industrial-strength GUI toolkit available today. Since its origins as the toolkit for the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), GTK+ has been used in a wide range of software. Notably, GTK+ is the foundation of the GNOME desktop; GTK+ 2.8 will be incorporated into version 2.12 of the GNOME desktop. What's new in GTK+ 2.8 ====================== GTK+ 2.8 adds significant new functionality while maintaining source and binary compatibility with GTK+ 2.6. Highlights of new features and improvements in GTK+ 2.8 are: Cairo support GTK+ now uses and depends on the cairo vector graphics library (http://www.cairographics.org), bringing such new graphics capabilities as antialiased shapes, alpha blending, and gradients. Most of the rendering of GTK+ widgets is now done with cairo. Composite extension support GDK now supports windows with an alpha channel when the ability is present in the underlying windowing system. Currently this feature is supported only on recent versions of X when a compositing manager is running. Changes in GtkEntry, GtkLabel and GtkTextView GtkTextView now has support for invisible text and for setting a paragraph background color. Dragging text displays the dragged text instead of a generic icon. The text cursor blinks only if the text is editable. GtkEntryCompletion popups can be wider than the entry. Changes in the tree view widget The keyboard shortcuts for header reordering and resizing have been changed to (Shift-)Alt-arrows. It is possible to query tree views for the visible portion of the model. Changes in the icon view widget Customized positioning and drawing of icons can now be done using the GtkCellLayout interface and cell renderers. Cell can be edited and drag-and-drop is supported. It is possible to query icon views for the visible portion of the model. Changes in the file chooser widget In save mode, the file chooser can optionally display an overwrite confirmation dialog. Bookmarks can be renamed. The sorting of the file list has been made more intuitive. Backup files are treated like hidden files, and the file chooser pays attention to .hidden files. The rerooting behaviour of the pathbar has been improved. Files can now be dropped on the file chooser. Changes in the menu widgets Menu bars support vertical layout. Menus can optionally avoid grabbing the keyboard. Changes in gdk-pixbuf Pixbufs can be saved in BMP format. Simple animations can be constructed from individual pixbufs. Win32-specific changes Images can now be transferred via the clipboard. The GtkPlug/GtkSocket widgets have been ported to Win32. Other changes * The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". * The ICCCM urgency hint is supported now. * GtkCalendar now uses nl_langinfo() to determine the first day of the week. * Named cursors and cursor themes are supported. * GDK generates grab-broken events when a grab is lost, and tracks implicit grabs Where to get more information about GTK+ 2.8 ============================================ Information about GTK+ including links to documentation can be found at: http://www.gtk.org/ An installation guide for GTK+ 2.8 is found at: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/gtk-building.html Common questions: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/gtk-question-i... http://www.gtk.org/faq/ The GTK+ 2.8 Team: Jonathan Blandford, Hans Breuer, Kristian Rietveld, Matthias Clasen, Tim Janik, Tor Lillqvist, Federico Mena Quintero, Søren Sandmann, Manish Singh, and Owen Taylor Special thanks to: Carl Worth and fellow cairo developers Ivan Wong, for his work on the Win32 backend Thanks to all the contributors to GTK+ 2.8 including: Akira Tagoh, Albert Chin, Alexander Hunziker, Alexander Larsson, Alex Graveley, Ali Akcaagac, Anders Carlsson, Andreas Volz, Arjan van de Ven, Arkady L. Shane, Barbie LeVille, Behnam Esfahbod, Benjamin Berg, Benjamin Otte, Ben Maurer, Benoit Carpentier, Bernd Demian, Bill Haneman, Billy Biggs, Brian Bober, Callum McKenzie, Calum Benson, Carlos Garnacho Parro, Carsten Haitzler, Chris Lee, Christian Neumair, Christian Persch, Christian Rose, Claudio Saavedra, Crispin Flowerday, Damien Carbery, Damon Chaplin, Daniel Atallah, Dan Winship, Dave Neary, David A. Knight, David Costanzo, David Odin, David Saxton, David Zeuthen, Dennis Cranston, Diego Gonzalez, Dom Lachowicz, Doug Morgan, Doug Quale, Elijah Newren, Euan MacGregor, Fabrice Bauzac, Fabricio Barros Cabral, Felipe Heidrich, Felix Riemann, Frank Naumann, Frederic Crozat, Funda Wang, Gary Kramlich, George Kraft IV, Georg Schwarz, Ghorban M. Tavakoly, Gustavo Carneiro, Hans Oesterholt, Hans-Wolfgang Loidl, Havoc Pennington, Hazael Maldonado Torres, Hubert Sokolowski, Ian Wienand, Ismael Juma, Ivan Wong, Jaap A. Haitsma, Jacob Kroon, Jakub Jellinek, Jakub Steiner, J. Ali Harlow, James Bramford, James Henstridge, Jan Arne Petersen, Jean Marie Favreau, Jeff Franks, Jens Finke, Jeroen Zwartepoorte, Jianfei Wang, Jim Evins, Joerg Sonnenberger, Johan Dahlin, John Ehresman, John Ellis, John Finlay, Jon-Kare Hellan, Jorn Baayen, Karel Kulhavy, Kathy Fernandes, Kazuki Iwamoto, Keith Packard, Ken Siersma, Kevin Duffus, Kevin Stange, Kirk Bridger, Kjartan Maraas, Kristof Vansant, Leonard Michlmayr, Lorenzo Gil Sanchez, Luis Villa, Maciej Katafiasz, Marc Meissner, Markku Vire, Mark McLoughlin, Masao Mutoh, Mathias Hasselmann, Matt T. Proud, Michael Meeks, Michael Natterer, Michal Suchanek, Mikael Hallendal, Mikael Magnusson, Mike Miller, Mike Morrison, Milosz Derezynski, Morten Welinder, Murray Cumming, Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy, Nickolay V. Shmyrev, Nikos Kouremenos, Niko Tyni, Olaf Vitters, Olivier Sessink, Padraig Brady, Paisa Seeluangsawat, Paolo Borelli, Park Ji-In, Patrick Fimml, Paul Cornett, Peter Bloomfield, Peter van den Bosch, Peter Wainwright, Peter Zelezny, Phil Blundell, Philipp Langdale, Pierre Ossman, Priit Laes, Reinout van Schouwen, Remus Draica, Richard Hult, Robert Ögren, Robert Staudinger, Rodney Dawes, Rodrigo Moya, Roger Light, Roman Kagan, Ross Burton, Ryan Lortie, Samuel Hym, Sean Middleditch, Sebastien Bacher, Seven Walter, Simon Cooke, Stefan Kost, Stepan Kasal, Stephen Kennedy, Steve Chaplin, Sven Neumann, Takuro Ashie, Theerud Lawtrakul, Thomas Leonard, Thomas Vander Stichele, Thomas Wood, Thomas Zajic, Tim Evans, Tim-Philipp Müller, Tomislav Jonjic, Tommi Komulainen, Tom von Schwerdtner, Torsten Schoenfeld, Tristan Van Berkom, Tuomas Kuosmanen, Victor Osadci, Vincent Ladeuil, Vincent Noel, Vincent Untz, William Jon McCann, Worik Stanton, Yury Puzis Thanks to all translators: Zuza Software Foundation (Afrikaans) Ge'ez Frontier Foundation (Amharic) James Johnson (Old English) Ayman Hourieh (Arabic) Amir Hedayaty (Iranian Azerbaijani) Mətin Əmirov (Azerbaijani) Ales Nyakhaychyk (Belarusian) Vladimir Petkov (Bulgarian) Progga (Bangla) Thierry Vignaud (br) Kenan Hadžiavdić (Bosnian) Jordi Mallach (Catalan) Miloslav Trmac (Czech) Rhys Jones (Cymraeg) Martin Willemoes Hansen (Danish) Hendrik Brandt (German) Kostas Papadimas (Greek) Adam Weinberger (Canadian English) David Lodge (British English) Francisco Javier F. Serrador (Spanish) Ivar Smolin (Estonian) Iñaki Larrañaga Murgoitio (Basque) Roozbeh Pournader (Persian) Ilkka Tuohela (Finnish) Christophe Merlet (French) Ankit Patel (Gujarati) Yair Hershkovitz (Hebrew) Rajesh Ranjan (Hindi) Gabor Kelemen (Hungarian) Mohammad DAMT (Indonesia) Richard Allen (Icelandic) Alessio Dessì (Italian) Takeshi AIHANA (Japanese) Changwoo Ryu (Korean) Mathieu van Woerkom (Limburgish) Žygimantas Beručka (Lithuanian) Artis Trops (Latvian) Wesley Parish (Māori) Арангел Ангов (Macedonian) FSF-India (Malayalam) Sanlig Badral (Mongolian) Jitendra Shah (Marathi) Hasbullah Bin Pit (Bahasa Melayu) Terance Edward Sola (Norwegian Bokmal) Jyotshna Shrestha (Nepali) Tino Meinen (Dutch) Terance Edward Sola (Norwegian Bokmal) Zuza Software Foundation (Northern Sotho) Amanpreet Singh Alam (Punjabi) Gnome PL Team (Polish) Afonso Celso Medina (Brazilian Portuguese) Duarte Loreto (Portuguese) Mişu Moldovan (Română) Steve Murphy (Kinyarwanda) Marcel Telka (Slovak) Andraž Tori (Slovenian) Laurent Dhima (Albanian) Bojan Suzic (Serbian) Danilo Šegan (Serbian) Данило Шеган (Serbian) Christian Rose (Swedish) Dinesh Nadarajah (Tamil) Prajasakti Localisation Team (Telugu) Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (Thai) Gurban Mühemmet Tewekgeli (Turkmen) Baris Cicek (Turkish) Maxim Dziumanenko (Ukrainian) Mashrab Kuvatov (Uzbek) pclouds (Vietnamese) Pablo Saratxaga (Walloon) Canonical Ltd (Xhosa) Raphael Finkel (Yiddish) Funda Wang (Simplified Chinese) Chao-Hsiung Liao (Traditional Chinese) 13 August 2005 _______________________________________________ gnome-announce-list mailing list gnome-announce-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-announce-list
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Incorrect Content-Type for article
Posted Aug 14, 2005 16:11 UTC (Sun) by jdahlin (subscriber, #14990) [Link]
The content type of this article is set to iso-8859-1, but it includes characters in UTF-8.
The email itself looked fine in Thunderbird, it had the Content-Type: charset=UTF-8 header set correctly.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 16:23 UTC (Sun) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
Have they yet fixed the broken standard Unix keybindings which have been broken since 2.0?
^U Should delete to the start of line
^W Should delete word to the left(NOT close window, this is not Windows, thank you)
And no, don't tell me to change the configuration to use emacs keybindings, I don't want emacs keybindings, I only want the standard Unix keybindings which have been supported by all Unix application for decades.
Thanks.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 16:36 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
The Mac way to do cut and paste is to select with the mouse, hit option-C to copy, then go to the target. If there is something already there then select it with the mouse. Hit option-V to paste (which will overwrite the extant thing if any).
The Unix way to do cut and paste is to select with the mouse, then go to the target. If there is something already there then hit control-U to delete it. Middle-click to paste.
The Gnome way to do cut and paste is to select with the mouse (optionally you can hit control-C if it makes you feel better), then go to the target. If there is something already there, hit control-U, observe that it does some stupid Windowish behavior instead of deleting the text, cancel whatever stupid Windowish thing it launched, then hold down "backspace" for a second or two and watch while the cursor slowly deletes the target. Middle-click to paste.
Therefore the Mac and Unix ways are pretty much equivalently fast and powerful, and the Gnome way is the slowest and least pleasant.
I use Windows, Mac, and Unix every day. I try to avoid Gnome as much as possible.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 16:58 UTC (Sun) by dwheeler (subscriber, #1216) [Link]
No. In GNOME: Control-C to copy, control-X to cut, control-V to paste. Same as Windows. For the 95% of the world that already knows the Windows way, this is the "most user-friendly" behavior. It's also very similar to the Mac's approach. For the 0.05% who want something different, adjust the keybindings. You can also select, and use the middle-button to paste it elsewhere.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 17:07 UTC (Sun) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
Ummm... Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V have pretty much worked just fine for me in Gnome (and KDE for that matter...)
and also, it's Command-C and Command-V on the Mac, not Option. Doing what you described will get you a lowercase c with cedilla replacing the source and a square root sign at the destination (in most fonts).
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 17:47 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
1. Okay, I posted flame-bait. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Thanks to two people for posting non-flamey responsees.
2. dwheeler: The point is, when I'm using Unix, and I have some text in the cut buffer, and I find that the target where I want to put the text is already occupied by other text, then if the target is a normal Unix app I can hit C-u to clear it and then middle-click to paste it. If the target is a Gnome app, then what do I do? From my experiences, my best option is to click to put the focus into the target and then sit there with the "backspace" key held down for a couple of seconds. Am I missing something?
3. allesfresser: The point is that I don't see how to see how to conveniently over-write something with the text in my cut buffer. In Windows I do this with C-v. In Mac I do this with Command-v. In Unix I do this with C-u followed by middle click. In Gnome, as far as I can tell, I have to do this by clicking in the target to get focus and then holding down the backspace key for a couple of seconds. Perhaps part of my problem is that the app which originally contributed the text in the cut buffer was not a Gnome app.
4. It irritates me when Gnome advocates explain that Gnome does things the way it does in order to be more familiar to the 95% of users who are used to Windows.
4.a. I don't care. I'm talking about how Gnome works or doesn't work for me. Perhaps 95% of the world expects C-u to open up a Microsoft Internet Explorer window or something -- I don't care what they want, because 0% of them are users of my workstation. I am 100% of the users of my workstation, and it should serve me, not some mythical user population.
4.b. The people who do care about this, the 95%, the ostensible target audience for Gnome, are never going to try Gnome and if they did try it they wouldn't like it.
4.c. Therefore, Gnome has managed to alienate the 1% of the world who actually uses it in a vain attempt to appeal to the 95% of the world who are never going to try it and wouldn't like it if they did.
Wow, I just posted more flamebait.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 17:56 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
ARGH. I just entered a whole comment in here (and this one wasn't flamebait) and then without thinking I hit C-w to erase the last word, and Mozilla Firefox closed the window and destroyed all my text! Cosmos, I hate this stuff.
Okay, I'm going to go compose my comment in xemacs and then cut and paste it into Firefox.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 21:07 UTC (Sun) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]
Do use tabs, and install the "Undo Close Tab" extension. Using that, you can undo the closing of tabs (duh ^^), and form contents etc. will all be restored.
Saved my rump on more than one occasion.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 21:35 UTC (Sun) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]
Well, don't do that next time. All the keyboard shortcuts of Firefox and Gnome (and KDE, etc) are well documented. If you use the wrong ones and lose your work you have no one to blame but yourself.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:29 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
Well documented is no excuse for wrong.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 14, 2005 17:58 UTC (Sun) by emk (subscriber, #1128) [Link]
Gnome correctly supports the standard X Window clipboard, which you access with Control-C, Control-X, and Control-V. This works exactly like the Windows and Mac clipboards.
You're getting into trouble because you're using the Unix selection buffer instead of the clipboard. The selection buffer is a legacy X Window feature typically used for working with xterms. :-) It's very handy, but you'll be much happier if just use the clipboard for modern GUI applications.
Yes, a small number of applications--mostly Emacs and old versions of Netscape--confuse the clipboard and the selection buffer. Either complain to the authors or upgrade. And if you want Control-U to work in GTK, then you probably need to go ask politely on gtk-devel and explain your reasoning.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 14, 2005 18:04 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
re: "ask politely on gtk-devel".
I'm pretty sure that that would not work. The Gnome people are engaged in a great project that they are very pleased about -- making free software for people who know only Windows. They are explicitly not interested in compromising this project in order to make their software better for people outside of that target audience, such as myself.
The only problem here is that I can't find a working web browser that doesn't use GTK. Were it not for this unfortunate detail, the Gnome folks and I could happily go our separate ways.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 0:20 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
The next version of Dillo will not use GTK.They tried to switch from GTK1 to GTK2 and gave up in despair.
I'd be really happy if someone ported Firefox to use Tk; amazing that I would ever say this, but after working with both GTK and Qt I got so sick of it that I'm back developing with Tk... from Python, of course.
Also the wmii developers are planning to write a minimalist X toolkit in C so we can have sane apps to run with a sane window manager, help is appreciated.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 2:54 UTC (Mon) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]
Whoa, dude. We are *definitely* not targeting the Windows market. We're primarily targeting the 99.999% of users who are more interested in what they can do with their computer than the intricacies computer itself (ie. not like us). There are plenty of things that GNOME does that are very much *unlike* Windows (look at our dialogue boxes for possibly the most controversial - we have adopted a similar verb-and-muscle driven design much like Mac OS Classic and OS X).
Please don't turn a bad or buggy behaviour into a reason to accuse us of appealing only to Windows users. You've raised some good points regarding default behaviour, and some that are purely preferential. What we'd like to do is make stuff like this Just Work out of the box, no nonsense.
With GNOME 2.12, and the inbuilt clipboard manager, I think we've managed to solve a huge chunk of the ugly behaviour in one fell swoop - no configuration or mucking around required! :-)
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 3:49 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
I don't care who you are targeting with Gnome, because we will both agree that it's not me. I have no problem with that, I don't use Gnome, and I'm happy.But if GTK is a "cross-platform" toolkit, as others have claimed, then when it runs on a Unix platform, it better behave according to the Unix rules and conventions.
And I say this both as a Unix user that uses applications that happen to use GTK, and as a developer that considers GTK an option for writing cross platform applications.
The GTK developers seem to think that Unix == Gnome, and honestly, Al Viro said it best:
judging by the GNOME codebase the people who designed GNOME are culturally incompatible with UNIX.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 4:01 UTC (Mon) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]
Well, let's get beyond the bile and look at what all of this means: Why do you perceive GTK+/GNOME developers to be anti-UNIX, or somehow incapable of writing software that conforms to your definition of UNIX-like? I'd be keen to find out what else defines UNIX-like to you (beyond the usual "small tools that work together" mantra).
(And for the record, aiming our sights at the 99.999% of users who are not like us makes the software better for us as we go - see the dramatic rise in geek use of Mac OS X for evidence enough of this.)
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:37 UTC (Mon) by tgb (guest, #745) [Link]
The problem as I see it is that "legacy" X apps support a certain way of working (ctrl+a, ctrl+e, middle-click-paste etc.). As GTK+ is a cross-platform toolkit, it should support the same keybindings that people on their current platform are used to. X-style cut/paste/keybindings should work under X, in the same way as Ctrl+C should copy text under Windows, in the same way as Command+C does the same under Mac OS.
Any truly-cross-platform toolkit, IMHO, should change to fit in with the way people already work in that specific environment. It should be the toolkit, not the person, changing to fit an environment.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 18:15 UTC (Mon) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888) [Link]
The GTK developers seem to think that Unix == Gnome, and honestly, Al Viro said it best:judging by the GNOME codebase the people who designed GNOME are culturally incompatible with UNIX.
That's hardly surprising. Remember, Gnu's Not Unix, and it shows.
Now, I happen to like some of the extra flags and options that the GNU tools (talking command line here) provide over standard Unix, on the other hand they do tend to take it to ridiculous extremes. And I really don't like that they expect me to use an EMACS-like info-browser to find out what some of those flags and options do, rather than putting that information in the man page where it belongs.
But what can you expect? RMS grew up on a DECSystem, not a Unix box. Nothing wrong with that, it's just different.
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:00 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
Whoa, dude. We are *definitely* not targeting the Windows market.
Then why did you (in the plural/generic sense, not the personal one) change all the keybindings in the shift from V1.x to V2.x, from a set that pretty much followed normal *nix conventions to a set that follows Windows conventions instead? This, combined with the utter disregard that's been given to people that ask for *at least the option* to go back to the old bindings consistently, certainly seems to give that impression.
And yes, we know about "emacs" key bindings, but as you'll see even just on a quick read through the comments here, there are a lot of problems with that, and people have gotten some very disdainful responses in trying to get those addressed. Besides which, even if this worked properly, it would still be a bit odd to have to change settings on a *nix system to get GTK to behave like a *nix system, don't you think?
Both are useful
Posted Aug 14, 2005 19:08 UTC (Sun) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]
> You're getting into trouble because you're using the Unix selection buffer instead of the clipboard. The selection buffer is a legacy X Window feature typically used for working with xterms. :-) It's very handy, but you'll be much happier if just use the clipboard for modern GUI applications.
The current state where there is both a volatile X selection and a more persistent clipboard is really what is best. People who don't know about the X selection live fine only with the clipboard, all others enjoy both of the worlds, where a save to the clipboard typically overwrites an X selection too, but an X selection doesn't overwrite the clipboard.
So please don't call this a "legacy X window feature". It doesn't became legacy just because there is no such thing in Windows(tm). Futhermore, people will get very grumpy in case the feature gets removed. What is more, I recall some Windows programs now actually feature a special "instant selection to the clipboard" mode. Seems some Windows people got addicted to this too :)
Use clipboard, not cut buffer
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:24 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
It's very handy, but you'll be much happier if just use the clipboard for modern GUI applications.
I doubt very much that he would be, and I certainly wouldn't be. The selection buffer is massively more efficient in a great many cases. When I'm doing work that involves a lot of pasting, the selection buffer plus 'sloppy focus' can make the same task take half the time. That's several hours a day saved, in many cases.
When I noticed Gnome interfering with that, and trying to force me to use my *nix machine like a windows machine, was when I quit using Gnome, quite simply.
Despite the flame-ish tone to some of the above posters comments, I can understand why he's feeling flame-ish, and he makes some very good points. If this is intended to be a cross-platform library, then it should follow the conventions of each platform, rather than trying to impose the Windows Way on users of other platforms. The persistent tendency of the Gnome project to do exactly the opposite has been a huge tactical error in my opinion. And I say this as someone that was a big fan and defender of Gnome in the early days. But it seems like every release has been less and less usable to me. The constant non-verbal message seemed to be "forget about using your machine they way you want to, learn to use it the way we want you to, or go away." So I went away. I think a lot of other people have too. And I don't see any likelihood of a huge exodus of windows users to *nix systems anytime soon to make up for that. Plus, even if there was, I'd like to think that a GNU Desktop system would offer them a better way of doing things, not just the same buggy and poorly-designed interface they're already used to.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 18:01 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]
Okay, I just experimented and I understand the confusion:
The contents of my cut buffer were produced by my highlighting text in an xterm or an xemacs. Then, when I switch windows to a Gnome app (in fact, Mozilla Firefox), and want to paste those contents into a field, and that field is already occupied by some text, I have no fast and convenient way to overwrite that text. There are four kinds of desktops where this operation is fast and convenient: Mac, Windows, a unix desktop with no non-Gnome apps, or a unix desktop with no Gnome apps. Unfortunately I don't have any of these four as my preferred desktop, I have the fifth option of a unix desktop with many non-Gnome apps (such as xterm and xemacs), and one Gnome app (Mozilla Firefox), and they do not play well together as far as this operation goes.
I would really like to move to that fourth option -- a desktop with no Gnome apps -- but unfortunately I can't find any functional web browser other than Mozilla Firefox.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 18:49 UTC (Sun) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]
Mozilla Firefox is not a GNOME app...
firefox is a gnome app
Posted Aug 14, 2005 22:14 UTC (Sun) by andy (guest, #21272) [Link]
Firefox behaves very much like it is a 100% gnome app here. Maybe just my distribution?!
Try the following experiment.
1) Start a non-gnome, non-kde X session (fvwm2, fluxbox/rox, ...).
2) Open firefox
3) Open the downloads window (control-Y if you like)
4) Click to open the downloads folder (this is set to "Desktop" for most people)
Do you see the same as me??
Same as doing Preferences/Downloads/Desktop-ShowFolder:
Not only does firefox start up nautilus (eventually), the root window is also taken over by your gnome desktop.
Why does it do this? Where is the config option to stop it?!!
Does it open nautilus even under kde?
firefox is a gnome app
Posted Aug 15, 2005 6:27 UTC (Mon) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
It does not open nautilus under my KDE (slackware 10.2 beta + Freerock Gnome) but this is perhaps a very nonstandard Gnome setup. When running Firefox under KDE, none of the normal Gnome-ish processes appear, just the KDE ones. I firmly believe that Firefox is only a GTK application, not a Gnome application. I listed out the libraries that firefox-1.0.6 (as distributed by Slackware) depends on:
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000)
libmozjs.so => not found
libxpcom.so => not found
libplds4.so => not found
libplc4.so => not found
libnspr4.so => not found
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7ed6000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/libdl.so.2 (0xb7ed2000)
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7bff000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b83000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b6a000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7b55000)
libpangoxft-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoxft-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b4d000)
libpangox-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangox-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b42000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb7b09000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ad6000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb7ad2000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7a52000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb7987000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0xb7964000)
libsmime3.so => not found
libssl3.so => not found
libnss3.so => not found
libsoftokn3.so => not found
libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xb7912000)
libXp.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXp.so.6 (0xb790a000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb78fc000)
libxpcom_compat.so => not found
libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0xb7843000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb783a000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0xb771e000)
libXft.so.2 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXft.so.2 (0xb770c000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb76e5000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb7676000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f0b000)
libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb7672000)
libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb766a000)
libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0xb7667000)
libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0xb7662000)
libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb7659000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7650000)
libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0xb762a000)
libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb7622000)
libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb760a000)
libexpat.so.0 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.0 (0xb75e9000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb75d7000)
It appears to me that the only Gnome-related thing that this Firefox depends on is pango, and I am not at all sure that even pango is necessarily a "Gnome" library per se.
So, in conclusion, I don't think Firefox is a "Gnome application."
If anyone who knows Gnome better has a correction for my perceptions, of course that would be most welcome since I am not in any sense a Gnome acolyte. :-)
firefox is a gnome app
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:08 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]
Pango has nothing to do with GNOME; it's the GTK project's library for text layout.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:10 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
It is a GTK app, however. Even many programmers can't seem to clearly differentiate the two, don't expect us lowly users to understand the difference. Bugs in one seem to affect both.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 18:20 UTC (Sun) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Well, I also hate this behaviour but I don't think there is much which canbe done about it. GNOME is the way it is, and changing things like this
now would confuse a lot of users. GNOME and KDE use Windows interface
decisions with a sprinkling of X11, Motif and command line features.
Sometimes they don't work very well together.
The thing that bugs me the most is the way selections work. If I click in
a text box I abolutely don't want to highlight the whole field
automatically. If I wanted to do that I could use shift-home or
shift-hold-left-key or even control-a. In Mozilla and Windows I am always
accidently replacing things instead of inserting or appending them because
things end up getting selected I don't expect to. To actually get Windows
to insert is a fight. I think you have to click four times, at the right
speed. Then there is the "helpful" word-boundary guessing which ends up
as something to fight more often than it helps. In xterm, you can give it
instructions on what characters should be included in double-click
selections. I wish that setting worked in every application.
The idea of using control as the modifier at all bothers me. The Mac
Apple/propeller key and Motif's Alt modifiers seem more natural. Control
seems like something for use in terminals and editing text. The absolute
worst is that the KDE and GNOME terminal applications don't let you kill
running programs because control-C just copies the hightlighted text. So
even when using GNOME/KDE I use xterms. They are more lightweight and
respond more quickly. And I have fewer problems with mismatching actual
and apparent terminal sizes.
Control-W and control-U doing the "wrong" thing causes me to constantly
close windows and open unwanted ones by accident as well. But I know it
isn't really a bug, it's because I have the Unix command-line keystrokes
burned into my brain and most other people have Windows keystrokes burned
into theirs. :(
Oh well, what can one do?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 19:13 UTC (Sun) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link]
> Control-W and control-U doing the "wrong" thing causes me to constantly> close windows and open unwanted ones by accident as well.
Ditto.
That and the fact that Nautilus loves to grab focus when changing virtual desktops, and loves to interpret [SPACE] as the "go" key... Switch desktops, start typing into the app that's displayed, have a dozen filebrowser windows open because Nautilus, not the app, got focus - ARGH!
> Oh well, what can one do?
Turn it the fsck off? I haven't gotten pissed off enough at it to go spelunking yet - are the keybindings at that level of depth even configurable globally? If not, then *that* is what the GNOME developers should be pestered to do - expose full keybinding configurability rather than changing the defaults.
If somebody wants to humiliate me and supply a link to where the "how to kill the ^W keybinding in GNOME" document is posted in painful plain sight, feel free! :)
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 19:22 UTC (Sun) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link]
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Emacs_Keybindings_(Firefox)heh. I always do this to myself.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:05 UTC (Sun) by jtc (guest, #6246) [Link]
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"
A simple solution, which prevents a lot of psychological pain - e.g., "Oh, no, I didn't want that window to disappear! I only wanted to delete the last word in my long article - Damn!" (not to mention gaining back productivity).
Thanks for posting that - now I can use ^H, ^U, and ^W to do what they're "supposed" to do - not to mention ^A and ^E! It's now fun and efficient to enter text with my browser again, like I'm doing right now!
I hope us UNIX geeks don't become too small a minority or we may be forced to conform to Windows-think at some point - 1984 style.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 21:49 UTC (Sun) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]
I also dislike the non-X-ish behaviour of Gnome and KDE. But I think KDE is much better off, I don't have the selection problem there and in a few apps like Konqueror the ^U actually works. I have never had trouble with ^C in the terminal emulator, Konsole, which is actually leaner than an xterm.
It is my understanding that the KDE people are more hackerish and tend to put more features in their apps (like a command shell in their file manager), at the expense of Mac-style ease-of-use which a default Gnome desktop (almost) offers. (OTOH, changing behvaiour in Gnome and Firefox required changing semi-documented values in hex.)
What disturbed me most about both Gnome and KDE is that they strayed from the perfectly good concept of X resources. Suddenly the settings live in the toolkit (client side) instead of the server (my terminal). It took a bit getting used to.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 11:43 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Er, both konsole *and* gnome-terminal have rebindable shortcuts, so C-* can be made to do what it should very easily. (In any case, very few keybindings in konsole at least are on the C- keys).
And konsole at least (and probably gnome-terminal) is actually smaller than xterm (and even smaller than rxvt) once you open more than one or two tabs.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 7:44 UTC (Tue) by micampe (guest, #4384) [Link]
The absolute worst is that the KDE and GNOME terminal applications don't let you kill running programs because control-C just copies the hightlighted text.You have to use Control-Shift-C and Control-Shift-V to Copy/Paste text in the Gnome terminal. Control-C will just send SIGINT. Don't know about KDE's.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 16:07 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Well, I must be remembering some other terminal application, or am just completely confused. Apologies to everyone becuase it appears GNOME gets this right and that I was spreading misinformation.
works in konsole, too
Posted Aug 17, 2005 8:57 UTC (Wed) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link]
konsole, too sends a SIGINT on Ctrl-cHas always worked and it would be hard to do anything if it didn't. I'd surely use a different terminal emulator.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 19:04 UTC (Sun) by TRS-80 (subscriber, #1804) [Link]
http://davyd.ucc.asn.au/projects/GNUReadline.tar.gzuntar to your .themes, open up gconf-editor and set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_key_theme to GNUReadline.
HTH, HAND
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 17:14 UTC (Sun) by mikachu (guest, #5333) [Link]
If it's so important that you have only those two keybindings and no more, make your own keybind rc file, it's not that hard if you look at the emacs one and just copy parts.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:53 UTC (Sun) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
I already tried, when I failed miserably to get the expected ^U behavior(delete from cursor to start of line, not the whole line, not from cursor to end of line), I asked for help in the #gtk channel of irc.gimp.org, a very nice person there tried to help me, until we hit a comment in the GTK source saying something like "XXX I'm not sure what this function is supposed to do", so we gave up too, that prompted me to quote Al Viro:"Infinitely extendable API" and all such. Roughly translated as "we can't live without API bloat". Frankly, judging by the GNOME codebase the people who designed GNOME are culturally incompatible with UNIX.
Which got me banned from the irc.gimp.org network for about a year. Now that is what I call user friendly.
Despite that, I filled a bug report that includes the gtkrc file that most approximated the standard Unix behavior. The bug was "Resolved" as "notabug".
The lack of respect for Unix that the GTK developers show is amazing, not to mention that they don't care for X standards either, Ion, wmii and other window managers have all sorts of problems due to GTK braindamage. See for example the Ion FAQ.
If GTK and Gnome developers care so lite for Unix and X, why don't they switch to another operating system?
Yes, I have a gtkrc file now that gives a somewhat similar behavior to what one would expect of Unix, but I have to install it on every computer and account I use, and most GTK applications still close the window on ^W if not inside a text field, certainly not what any Unix user would expect.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 22:16 UTC (Sun) by segphault (guest, #27468) [Link]
thus spake Zarathustra:"And no, don't tell me to change the configuration to use emacs keybindings, I don't want emacs keybindings"
I do want emacs bindings, but for some reason, on my system, setting emacs key bindings in gconf editor doesn't seem to affect any program other than firefox. In gaim, for instance, I still regularly close windows by accident with ^w. Anybody know why? Shouldn't all GTK text input widgets be affected by the change?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:53 UTC (Sun) by segphault (guest, #27468) [Link]
I just figured out the answer to my own question. Gaim does this because it's got a ^w accelerator on the 'close' menu item. I use can_change_accels to switch to ^esc, and now ^w deletes a word rather than closing the window. Shortcut to close a window should be a universal, window manager thing rather than something hard-coded in the program.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:06 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Read pretty much this whole thread and it's shockingly childish. Look, if you don't like Gnome, don't use it. If you like Unix key bindings, use Unix (whatever that means to you).
On a more positive note about Gnome, my wife is what one would consider a "regular user". She uses her Fedora Core (4 at present) workstation to do EBay and related stuff. She cuts and pastes text between apps just fine (Epiphany, Gnumeric etc.). She also gets photos out of her digital camera just fine and does simple post-processing of those photos using same basic Gnome app (I think that's called gThumb or something). She also uses drag and drop to get images off the web and onto the machine (and uses, to me annoying, spatial mode of Nautilus to do that). She didn't have much Windows exposure and what she had was long time ago, so she doesn't even know what Windows is supposed to be like. And yet, she finds Gnome just fine and does her work. She never complained to me that she's being slowed down by something stupid on her system.
What she did complain to me about is the fact that the money we spent on my daughter's Windows based games is wasted now, with no more Windows PCs at home (my daughter liked the look of eMac - what can you do :-). Well, maybe some of them would work in Wine - I don't know - I'm simply to busy to even try. In essence, she's got a good point there, but it surely isn't the fault of Gnome, Linux or Fedora Core.
Gnome (just like everything else in life) isn't perfect, but it has gotten better over the years. In my personal view, much better. After all, if Nokia were able to get a piece of consumer electronics out the door based on Gnome, it probably isn't all that "unusable".
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:12 UTC (Sun) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
Did you look at the title of this article? Yes, it reads "GTK+ 2.8.0 released", not "Gnome 8.4 released".
I do not use Gnome, and I will never use Gnome. But there are _many_ basic apps that depend on GTK and inherit it's braindamages(starting with Firefox).
So Gnome can do whatever it likes, but GTK, if it wants to pretend to be a Unix toolkit, it should play by the Unix rules.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:22 UTC (Sun) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Yes, I did read it. And I checked GTK web site. On the home page, word Unix appears 0 times. Word Gnome appears 4 times. So, GTK has much more to do with Gnome than it has with Unix, it would seem to appear. And, as I understand it, Gnome is built on GTK - at least that's what they say on the GTK home page.
So, Gnome, being one of the GTK based "applications" (using mostly its defaults) appears to be just fine for regular users. At least that's my experience. As I said, nothing is perfect, but I think your complaint is that GTK isn't like something else. I guess that's because GTK isn't that something else, but GTK.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 14, 2005 23:45 UTC (Sun) by segphault (guest, #27468) [Link]
zarathustra said: "So Gnome can do whatever it likes, but GTK, if it wants to pretend to be a Unix toolkit, it should play by the Unix rules."
bojan said: "And I checked GTK web site. On the home page, word Unix appears 0 times. Word Gnome appears 4 times."
Darn right. It's also worth noting that it's a cross-platform toolkit, which has to be able to perform well and be comparably intuitive on both GNU/Linux and Windows systems. It's not a unix toolkit, and there is absolutely no reason why it should play exclusively by unix rules. While I think that optimal configurability is important, and I think that GTK should be able to integrate well with whatever platform it runs on, I would never characterize it as a 'unix toolkit'. It's an open source, cross-platform development toolk it, and it's portability is definitely an important feature.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 0:07 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
Lets see, I'm running a Unix system, I expect applications to behave by the Unix rules, not by the VMS rules.
It's that so hard to understand?
I could not care less what GTK does when runs on Windows, because obviously I don't use Windows, but when running on Unix GTK apps should behave like any other Unix application.
Should Unix users be pariahs that are not even respected at their own home?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 0:31 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> It's that so hard to understand?
In fact, yes, it is. Who defines "Unix rules"? Why exactly should they be followed (apart to please you) in GTK? Do all applications on "Unix" (whatever that means) follow these rules? I was under the impression that Unix apps did pretty much whatever they wanted most of the time. That's why they created such an incoherent mess.
Yes, sure, with the introduction of GTK there is "yet another" set of rules to follow. Well, at least there is Gnome that is trying to introduce a "complete" desktop that follows the same rules all the time. It is not finished, sure, so we have to suffer through inconsitencies when other apps are fired up. And I'm pretty sure that GTK exists and is being developed primarily to fit into Gnome, not Unix. That's why the "Unix rules" are not a very high priority on the GTK "feature" list.
Again, if you want "Unix rules", stick to Unix applications. Don't run GTK, Gnome or whatever other applications that annoy you. Or better, patch your own GTK with "Unix rules" and enjoy.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 7:08 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Actually, GTK was written for GIMP, before GNOME existed.
But I get the picture. There is no room for new (or old in this case) ideas
in GNOME. I'm not welcome, and that's just fine.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:06 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Actually, GTK was written for GIMP, before GNOME existed.
As if that matters now. THE most important thing written in GTK is Gnome. Therefore, whatever happens with Gnome affects GTK.
> But I get the picture. There is no room for new (or old in this case) ideas in GNOME. I'm not welcome, and that's just fine.
Hey, if that's what you think the defaults are all about, that's OK. There is no requirement to use GTK or Gnome and as far as I know nobody is forced to used it because it is a "monopoly" like one other platform we know. So, feel free to be not welcome, welcome, not use it or use it.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:49 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
And GNOME is supposed to be the GNU Network Object Model Environment.
Explicitly called into being as part of the GNU/OS.
And explicitly hell-bent, to judge from your post (and I'll say now it's not at all clear you can speak for the project here, but the project has made decisions in the past very consistent with what you're saying, so it fits) on alienating anyone that happens to like the keystrokes, conventions, and working models of the GNU/OS as it existed before GNOME. We aren't wanted or needed in your world, obviously.
Doesn't make much sense to me. Perhaps if that is really the official policy of the project, it should change its name?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:14 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]
GNU's Not UNIX. :P
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 19:57 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Let me assure you, I cannot speak for the project at all as I haven't written a single line of Gnome code. So, all the comments are my own personal views and not those of the Gnome Foundation.
I think you are reading too much into this. I used Gnome since 1.x and when things started changing (i.e. being simplified), I protested that I miss this or that. The truth is that I don't. I was just used to doing things that way and they are just fine they way they are now.
I was just telling Ross that he's completely free to feel the way he does. It is officially OK. I personally got over it, some people can't because they probably really need those things, which is OK too. But, direction of GTK is dictated by GTK developers, many of which are Gnome folks these days. Nothing "hell-bent" about that, just reality.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 17:47 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
Sadly all the modern Mozilla/Firefox type browsers use GTK exclusively. Ifnot for that I wouldn't really care because the only other GTK apps I
regularly use are XMMS and GIMP. I don't do much text entry in either so
they don't bother me. I don't like using KDE apps because they start all
kinds of background daemons and do strange things to the terminal they
started from. I'm open to trying other browsers though.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 0:30 UTC (Tue) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]
Yep, and XMMS shows how a good Unix gui should work! I particularly love the subtle interplay between the gtk1 preferences dialog and file window, and the subtle precisely detailed main interface that is configurable and can even pixel double for those times when you can't steer your mouse down to the single pixel buttons.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 1:57 UTC (Tue) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]
XMMS works for me. I use it becuase is very configurable and has most ofthe commonly used controls visible in a small footprint. I'm not sure if
it is a great example of a Unix-like program, but at least it's no emacs or
Netscape.
I do have one complaint, which is that it likes to move windows around by
itself, placing transients at the extents of the root window (not the
visible part of the root window), and that window movement should be
performed modulo the size of the screen (which interacts strangely with
transients outside of the upper left portion of the desktop.
Other programs like xv which have nothing to do with GTK have similar
problems, and other GTK apps don't seem to do this so I think it's an
application problem and not a library bug.
It would be nice to be able to resize the program too (to view longer track
names or take allow adjustment of the footprint in a more continuous form
than mini, normal, double-sized).
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:04 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
And on the front page of www.gnome.org;
What is GNOME?
GNOME is a Unix and Linux desktop suite and development platform.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 20:03 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Got me! Now they'll finally have to implement "Unix rules". Whatever that's supposed to mean...
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 1:06 UTC (Mon) by pengo (guest, #7787) [Link]
Read pretty much this whole thread and it's shockingly childish. Look, if you don't like Gnome, don't use it.
That sounds like a "parentish" response. Certainly not a mature one.
The original poster in this thread (Zarathustra) was complaining about Gtk's disregard for his preferred key bindings, which originate with some old Unix apps.
The "Free" part in "Free Software" is about the freedom to control your own computer. As Gtk is part of the GNU, you'd expect them to think about those other aspects of freedom other than freedom of the source code to run around naked.
A short term solution would be to dig about and change keybindings (which sounds difficult and probably wouldn't help much or for long), an even poorer solution would be to stop using the software all together.
A proper solution would involve creating a "preferred key-binding service" for GTK (and Qt?) which applications could query and negotiate proper key bindings with, or use their own defaults where no alternative is given. For example, a media player would ask the service "is there a preferred keybinding for fullscreen mode?" the keybinding service might respond "yes, please use F11 and never use Alt-Enter". The application would then use F11, and perhaps also its own default of ctrl-F.
In Zarathustra's case, close window would be set to "never use ctrl-w" (or have ctrl-w set as "reserved only for delete line"), so at least if an application didn't support delete-line properly at least it wouldn't close the window.
And in general it would mean redo, new tab, next/prev tab, and increase-font-size all had standard (abstracted/configurable) bindings too, and "multimedia" or "internet" keys might work properly on all keyboards, or be easy to configure if they didn't. Other features that may or may not be relevant to this discussion, would include: notification to applications when keybindings change, so apps wouldn't have be restarted when you change your config (or allow the keybinding serivce to take control of all incoming key inputs). Advanced features of the service might include moving around a bunch of keys together (e.g. for games) so if an application usually used "A, S, D & W" for left, down, right & up then it could see the "A" key was reserved and move the whole lot one to the right (S,D,F,E). but i digress.
Apart from that, standard text editing widgets should be used across the board, which should be configurable inside and outside of applications using them.
Frameworks should exist to make it easy for developers to create compliant applications that can fall back to good defaults when keybinding-services aren't available.
Configuration files need to be portable across not only applications but across machines, so if you spend the time to set up things how you like them, you should be able to keep your config on an ftp site (or whatever) and use it when you sit down at any other computer. Have I gone too far into a fantasy world yet? Imagine ctrl-U working how you expect it to on any machine running Linux! wow. that's far out stuff.
Zarathustra's request to use the keys he's learnt (and possibly grown up with) is hardly unreasonable. Generalised software-based solutions could reasonably be engineered, and allowing such a thing is the type of freedom that should not be shouted down, but emphasized more by the 'free software' community.
I know actual software development takes a lot more work than just coming up with ideas, so I applaud the GTK team on another fine release :)
Peter Galaxy.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 2:04 UTC (Mon) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Zarathustra's request to use the keys he's learnt (and possibly grown up with) is hardly unreasonable.
From his posts it is obvious that he is a smart and experienced user. And yet, he claims he's having problems mastering a convention. I just don't buy that. I also use different apps on my desktop and they have different key bindings and yet I somehow manage to go through the day without wrecking my brain.
What you talk about in your post is, of course possible, but it is highly complicated and probably unnecessary. GTK folks made up their mind as to what the default behaviour should be and they moved on. It is very hard to please everyone and have an endless number of choices available. That's why free software comes with the source - so that users that really, really, _really_ want their apps to follow "Unix rules", can do so.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 2:32 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
GTK folks made up their mind as to what the default behaviour should be and they moved on. It is very hard to please everyone and have an endless number of choices available.No. The GTK/GNOME people are too lazy and arrogant to care about giving people choices. They also show complete disdain, if not contempt, for UNIX tradition. Miguel De Icaza goes around saying that "UNIX sucks" at pretty much all of his talks.
I've had a bug open against Evolution for 4+ years now complaining about not being able to use an external editor to compose mail. The responses varied from "Nobody needs that" to "it's too much work" to "if you really want it, write it yourself!" Nobody bought the argument that code reuse (via invoking an external editor) is a long-standing UNIX tradition that has served us well for decades.
(Needless to say, I don't use Evolution. I use Thunderbird with the external editor extension. At least the Thunderbird authors found a way to give people "endless choices" with their system of plugins and extensions.)
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 2:57 UTC (Mon) by beoba (guest, #16942) [Link]
They also show complete disdain, if not contempt, for UNIX tradition.Tradition for tradition's sake doesn't tend to work.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 3:30 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
Breaking tradition because you can't be bothered to learn and understand it works so much better!
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 5:42 UTC (Mon) by shahms (subscriber, #8877) [Link]
Your perception of what defines "Unix behavior" is skewed. You say you don't want to use the Emacs keybindings and then proceedd to say that the GNOME Emacs key bindings are the "standard Unix rules" and that GNOME should follow them. First of all, there is no such thing as "standard Unix keybindings" for these things. Beyond C-c, C-d and 3 to 4 others related to signals and process control *at a terminal*, Unix applications have used entirely different key combinations for these actions. I personally prefer using 'dd' as the keybinding to delete all text on a line, less stress on my pinky. And if you want to tell me that's not the "Unix standard", I'll tell you to take you Emacs using pansy ass back where you came from because vi is and always has been the standard Unix text editor. And I'd be just as wrong as you have been throughout this entire thread.
Standard text editor
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:27 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
vi is and always has been the standard Unix text editor.
Umm no, you must be confused, that would be Ed.
Standard text editor
Posted Aug 16, 2005 1:52 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link]
That last sentence was very hard to read, eh?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 3:57 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Tradition for tradition's sake doesn't tend to work.Breaking traditions because you think you know better is almost always a bad idea, too.
"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it -- badly"
Henry Spencer
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 5:11 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
You guys are very funny people.
Gnome and friends pick a default that will provide a usefull and expected functionality to the majority of the people.
A default, by the way, which _your_free_to_change_ any time you feel like it. (you didn't know that? What? are you to lazy to learn anything new?)
"Breaking Tradition" my ass. There is NO traditional Unix keybindings, its a fantasy that only exists in your mind.
Should I go around bitching that Evolution doesn't make it's end users hit j to cursor down and use yy to copy a line and p to paste it? Those are Vi's keys and vi is going to be the oldest and most traditional Unix application that ever existed and people still use today in a regular basis.
And that part about evolution not supporting external editors?
You know why they don't care?
Because nobody that is sane gives a crap, thats why. And the only people that do tend to be the type of people that just complain to give people a hard time and are generally to lazy to do anything about it themselves. (you know you could probably code it yourself)
You know why?
Because *gasp* Evolution already supports whatever freaking editor you could come up with!
How you say ?!
just open up whatever editor you want. Type out whatever message you want using it in any way you feel like.
Now copy your message....
open up evolution, start a new message...
now paste your message!
Viola! Now evolution supports whatever editor you feel like.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 7:26 UTC (Mon) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]
It is people like you who turn this into a flame war. Please refrain from posting completely if you have nothing to add but rudeness. This is LWN after all and has been pretty spared from it. I am sure he already knew about the copy-paste-functionality.
In fact, the posters in this thread pointed out some real problems with Gtk, that there are bugs (or accidental features, according to bugzilla) with the Emacs/X-style keybindings. It's there, it should work, but it doesn't. We have also learned about the bigger design problem that applications can bind accelerator keys which are the same as Gtk bound keys. It would be nice if that wasn't possible, Gtk should have precedence and the app should get an error code and not be able to bind it.
Nobody has yet commented on the horrible ineffencies of the toolkits (Gtk and Qt). Look at the paper behind NX, he's got some measurements. I can't see how X will compete with other graphical environments performance wise unless the toolkits gets cleaned up.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 8:14 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
sorry. I didn't mean to sound like a troll. But some of what people are complaining about is pretty petty.
And, realy, there are no traditional unix bindings...
But the problem is is that no matter how many people complain about GTK-bound keys not overriding application default keys you will get people complaining that application default key accels should automaticly over write GTK-set ones.
Anyways, I do acknowledge that there are problems with Gnome's theming features and there needs to be considurable polishing going on.
That's something that is a valid complaint for sure.
If you want to change some of the keybinds to suite yourself you have a few options right now.
Open up gconf-edit goto:
/apps/desktop/gnome/interface entry and change can_change_accels to '1' (you may have to uncheck it and recheck it)
Now on many gnome apps like Epiphany you can change keybindings dynamicly to suite yourself.
All you have to do is open up the menu and hover the key over the function you want to change... like "Edit --> Paste" and hit the accelerator you want to replace it with.
Not all applications support this.. I don't think it's very hard to support and I think that many GTK developers are simply unaware of this very nifty little feature. I think it would be a good idea that if the app you like doesn't support it put it in as a feature request.
The other stuff you can do that has a much more far reaching effect is to enable your own key theme.. It's easiest to use the Emacs key theme for reference.
The emacs key theme is located in /usr/share/themes/Emacs
And the file that holds the keys for the theme would be:
/usr/share/themes/Emacs/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc
So you can modify that and make your own custom key bindings and stick them in your own home directory like:
.themes/Mine/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc
or stick them in /usr/share/themes for system-wide access.
Next thing you do is open or create a ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file and make sure you have this line in it:
gtk-key-theme-name = "yours"
Then log out and log back in. In addition to that it may be handy to go into a gconf-editor and change gtk_key_themes in /apps/desktop/gnome/interface to whatever you named your theme in.
This, I think, then can have a wider range of effect.. even on non-to-gnome-friendly GTK-using apps like firefox.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 9:40 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
I did that over a year ago, I fail to see why should I do all that dance for every account/box I have.
I'm running Unix applications on a Unix system, it's so much to ask for a Unix behavior by default?
And no, I already have said I don't use Gnome, and no, most gtk applications are _not_ ported to non-unix systems. And using the proper default keybindings in Unix does _not_ make them less portable either.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:26 UTC (Mon) by gravious (subscriber, #7662) [Link]
I'm running Unix applications on a Unix system, it's so much to ask for a Unix behavior by default?For one with such a wise moniker, you seem intent on ignoring a number of posters. It has been pointed out to you, more than once, that there is no standard Unix behaviour. If you have been using Unix for any length of time, you would know this. Indeed, you probably do know it. What you want is _Emacs_ behaviour in all your apps. A small percentage of _all_ computers users know Emacs bindings, therefore for the moment, I fail to see why you shouldn't do that dance for every account/box you have.
Having said that, if you tell GTK+ that your key preferences are such and such and then a GTK+ app ignores your choice then it should be flayed to within an inch of its life. Also, if you expect ctrl+u to to erase from the current cursor position rather than the whole line, well, fair enough, raise a bug. There appear to be workable solutions judging by what people have said, you are doing yourself no favours by causing such a stink
Very kind regards,
i Gravious
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:09 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]
well, fair enough, raise a bug.
Like he did almost a year ago?
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:32 UTC (Mon) by Zarathustra (guest, #26443) [Link]
> What you want is _Emacs_ behaviour in all your apps.
Funny, I have not used Emacs in my life, I don't even know any emacs shortcuts, because ^U and ^W, like ^H, are _not_ from Emacs, they are from Unix, and about any Unix application that supports input has implemented them for many decades.
Unix bindings
Posted Aug 16, 2005 3:47 UTC (Tue) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]
A quick survey:
Xaw uses ^A, ^B, ^F, ^D, ^V, M-v, ^E, ^N, ^P as Emacs bindings, ^H as delete, and has no use for ^W or ^U at all. Interestingly enough, ^S and ^R activate text search and replace, which has proven quite handy in some Xaw applications like xpostit.
Tk uses the same bindings, except that it doesn't seem to respond to M-v, ^S, or ^R.
Motif uses...none of these AFAICT--not even ^H--they all seem to insert non-printing characters.
Readline (which is *NOT* an X toolkit) uses the above bindings, except ^S and ^R are incremental searches, plus ^W (delete previous word) and ^U (delete to beginning of line).
epic (a TTY-based IRC client) responds to ^A, ^D, ^E, ^F, ^N, and ^P as in Emacs, but ^B and ^W insert special characters. ^U is delete-entire-line, not delete-to-beginning-of-line. How nice that it supports forward-character but not the symmetrical backward-character!
The Linux kernel TTY driver is usually configured to accept ^H or Del as delete, ^W as delete-previous-word (where "word" means something slightly different from Readline), ^U is delete-entire-line, and ^D is EOF. None of the other bindings mentioned so far (^A, etc) do anything other than insert themselves.
Emacs of course *defines* the meanings of ^A, ^B, ^D, ^E, ^F, ^N, ^P, ^V, etc. Emacs also has keys bound to ^W and ^U, but they mean very different things than they do in Bash, a number of other X applications, and Unix TTYs. These bindings are quite possibly older than Unix.
Several popular applications that originated on or were ported to Unix (e.g. Netscape) do support Readline-like key bindings, despite the fact that they were based on toolkits previously mentioned here (e.g. Motif).
GTK-1 applications supported mostly Bash-like key bindings, but without the search functions. In addition, GTK-1 file open/save dialogs supported filename autocompletion with Tab, which is *really* nice. Modern GTK-2 file open/save dialogs support similar completion, but needing more keystrokes. For several months in GNOME's history, the Tab key just selected the next field.
The application I am using now (Galeon) supports almost none of these bindings, even when typing text into a text widget. I'm not sure why the Galeon developers think I might want ^B to open the bookmarks editor window in the middle of this sentence, but it does.
Personally, I really miss the GTK-1 application bindings, but I'm offended by the GTK *transition* more than the actual binding set at any instant in time. GTK-1 had IMHO the best combination of useful editing primitives with default key bindings, which made GTK-1 applications very attractive to me at the time.
I used to use a lot of GNOME applications, back when GNOME 1.4 was current. For reasons I still don't understand, the GTK and/or GNOME people decided to make sweeping, backward-incompatible changes that removed features from user-visible parts of GTK/GNOME programs, and they called this forward progress. It was almost as bad as being forced to use Windows in terms of features that just disappeared one dist-upgrade. Some of those features have returned, but not all, and many are often buried behind something that looks and feels like the Windows registry editor.
Today, I no longer trust GNOME to provide usable tools as I once did. I used to simply choose from one of the several GNOME 1.4-based alternatives (usually directly from the GNOME menu), and didn't really look for other software if my immediate needs were adequately satisfied. Now it's the other way around--I look everywhere *except* GNOME and/or GTK for various applications, and I apply a small but non-zero negative bias to GNOME or GTK-based candidates where competing implementations exist.
My trust in the GNOME organization was completely destroyed by that organization's behavior in the past. For all I know, next week they'll decide that GTK/GNOME 2.x was a bad idea too, and they'll discard it like they did 1.x. It seems to me that I shouldn't waste my time with their potentially-soon-to-be-unsupported software. I don't know how long it will last, and it seems I cannot rely on the rest of the open-source community to take over if the central GNOME organization fails again.
What really baffles me is that the GNOME maintainers and their apologists don't seem to *get* this. It's not about key bindings, it's about alienating your existing users to benefit users you don't have yet. It reminds me of that fable about the dog, a bone, and the dog's reflection in the river...
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 12:27 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Regarding external editor support:
Because nobody that is sane gives a crap, thats why.
You're wrong. External editor support is one of the most popular bugs in Evolution bugzilla. But the GNOME people have decided they know better and don't need to listen to people who were using computers since before the GNOME developers were born, and might have an idea or two that they've learned over the years.
If GNOME were a commercial product, it would sink without a trace, because a commercial entity that showed such disdain for its "customers" would never last (unless it somehow became a monopoly like MSFT.)
Now copy your message.... open up evolution, start a new message... now paste your message!
That's a totally unacceptable solution, and you know it. Only a complacent, arrogant, know-it-all GNOME hacker would even suggest it. :-)
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:02 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]
Hardly. GNOME is among one of the most popular commercialized Open Source/Free Software projects around. Just ask Ximian. Your comparison is fairly pointless, though, because even commercial software projects are in no way dependent on the whim of their users - they are dependent on the whim of their *customers*. Free Software doesn't have customers, not unless you paid some company for a support contract. Did you pay a company for GTK/GNOME support?
The "users" you refer to that are upset with GTK and/or GNOME are infinitely small in number compared to the numbers of the users that GNOME targets and who are quite happy with it. It sucks being in a minority, but that's where you are. It especially sucks being in a minority when you're not in a democracy, but Free Software isn't a democracy; it's a meritocracy, perhaps a dictatorship, possibly an "action-cracy" (what's the correct word for that?) - you don't get what you want because you ask for it, you get what you want by doing it. Maybe somebody will care about your opinion and put forth the effort for you, maybe they won't, but they sure as hell aren't required to do so.
If you don't like something in the FOSS world, then you've got the source, go ahead and fix it. Write an Evolution plugin that invokes an external editor, or hack up GTK to allow you to invoke an external editor on any text entry. Do whatever you want. Why do you think the GTK/GNOME developers are required to satisfy you with features they don't want? You're not that special, your opinion is not superior to their own, your individual work habits are not more important than theirs or mine. They scratched their itch, they wrote software targetting a specific user base, they have zero incentive to target users like you, and nothing in the world makes that wrong, no matter how unfortunately irritating it may be for you.
<on-topic-rant>There is nothing, NOTHING, more irritating about being a FOSS developer than selfish and whiny users who demand that YOU spend the time and effort to fix THEIR problems for FREE all while insulting you and all the work you did and gave to the world for nothing in return. Developers that have given you free/Free software are in no way beholden to you. If you don't like something you got for free, and you can't accept that the developer may not agree with your priorities, that's your own damn problem, get over it.</on-topic-rant>
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 15, 2005 15:24 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Did you pay a company for GTK/GNOME support?
No, because I don't use GNOME. I use some programs that use GTK, it is true.
If you don't like something in the FOSS world, then you've got the source, go ahead and fix it.
Why should I? I'll just switch to a FOSS product (Thunderbird, in this case) that works the way I like, and whose developers are not so touchy.
There is nothing, NOTHING, more irritating about being a FOSS developer than selfish and whiny users who demand that YOU spend the time and effort to fix THEIR problems for FREE all while insulting you and all the work you did and gave to the world for nothing in return.
If you have a DSL connection under Linux, you are almost certainly using free software I wrote to connect to your DSL provider. I am a FOSS developer, but that doesn't give me the right to ignore customer requests (I consider users of my free stuff customers too.)
What bothers me about GNOME is that they are turning against 25+ years of experience. If the UNIX geeks hadn't doggedly persisted to keep Microsoft from owning computing, GNOME would not exist. It could not exist without the UNIX/Linux traditions.
I don't use KDE either, but at least the KDE developers manage to make their system user-friendly for newbies without alienating long-time UNIX users. (kmail and knode both have excellent support for external editors.)
The pun compels me...
Posted Aug 16, 2005 20:52 UTC (Tue) by zakaelri (guest, #17928) [Link]
If you have a DSL connection under Linux, you are almost certainly using free software I wrote to connect to your DSL providerI run apache off of my DSL... and from here it looks like you've just been served.
Zam!
Just trying to lighten the mood. You all seem to be getting a bit to worked up about all of this ;)
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 7:51 UTC (Tue) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]
The "users" you refer to that are upset with GTK and/or GNOME are infinitely small in number compared toWell, that's all we really need to read right there. It doesn't matter how the sentence ends, we now know We're Not Welcome Here Any More. This is the same line a proprietary software vendor gives when they terminate a popular closed-source product. As soon as those words are uttered, it's time for the users to move to another product.
The funny thing is, I was once in the same room as Miguel when he was proselytizing that improving the desktop (particularly in the area of automated, or at least centralized, configuration) should improve it for dead-end users and sophisticated users alike, e.g. if your grandmother can just click two buttons to make her new WiFi card work, then you can too--and you would want to, because it would be quicker than downloading a patch from sourceforge CVS, adding your card's PCI ID to the driver, and rebuilding your kernel, even if you could do it. This enables even sophisticated hackers to be somewhat more efficient consumers of software, so they can be efficient producers of some other software (except maybe WiFi card drivers). It would be nice to get an exact quote of what Miguel said, if someone has it, from his OLS talk. That talk was what inspired me to download and install GNOME for the first time, and at the time, the applications were feature-rich and well designed, and there were a number of labor-saving conveniences even for a Unix hacker.
Now it seems that the story has changed: GNOME is for dead-end users only, and applications are rediscovering what features they absolutely need one at a time. I spend a lot of time trying to coerce the few remaining GNOME applications I can actually use to behave properly. My threshold for configuration pain in GNOME is falling rapidly, and with few exceptions I now generally substitute 'dpkg --purge' for 'gconf-editor'. I thought the whole point of GNOME in the first place was to avoid having to edit strange configuration files in every application you used--now it seems I have to edit strange configuration files distributed across all of the applications I use and I have to use a specialized non-text editor to do it. Commented X resources files and vi are roughly equivalent to the current state of GNOME, except that vi is useful for other purposes as well.
If you don't like something in the FOSS world, then you've got the source, go ahead and fix it.Ordinarily this would be the appropriate course of action; however, in the GNOME case, this should not be necessary in the first place, and there are two reasons not to fix GNOME:
- Unix users aren't forced onto GNOME desktops because what they were using before is obsolete. Over the decades a lot of useful software has been written, much of it before GNOME ever existed. If you tell a Unix hacker they have to fix your complex but shiny new tools before they can use them productively, they'll usually just drop your shiny new tools in the bin and go back to their time-proven simpler old ones, or even build their own tools to solve their specific problems. Complex, shiny new tools and their makers come and go, but Unix hackers are patient--as a group, they've been waiting for good, useful "desktop" software for more than 30 years, and they can wait decades more, until someone either gets it right or proves that the task really is impossible after all. A few might consider KDE in the meantime.
- See the first quote. There's no point in improving GNOME's ability to perform any specific task for any specific user, because GNOME is only interested in improving its ability to perform common tasks for a statistical average user, and considers everything else to be user interface clutter. To get a patch into GNOME you seem to need the patch itself, a compatible license or copyright assignment for the patch, documentation describing the patch, unit tests demonstrating the effectiveness and non-bugginess of the patch, an approval from a usability expert, and a petition with signatures from 10,000 randomly selected people (*) attesting that the patch implements a feature they can't do without (but all 10,000 of these people are assumed to be familiar with gconf-editor). A hacker's limited sanity is more efficiently spent elsewhere, preferably on a project which actually merges clean working code contributions from real live users of the project's code in a timely fashion.
<on-topic-rant>There is nothing, NOTHING, more irritating about being a FOSS developer than selfish and whiny users who demand that YOU spend the time and effort to fix THEIR problems for FREE all while insulting you and all the work you did and gave to the world for nothing in return.Crap is still crap, even when it's free crap, and usually nobody wants another person's crap unless that person's name is Piero Manzoni.
I gather that the GNOME project:
- created the problem in the first place. At one time GNOME and GTK had the features these people want. Now it doesn't. Who accepted the patch into GNOME CVS that broke the previously satisfactory code?
- refuses to fix the problem themselves, despite widespread demand for a fix, the relatively high isolation and low complexity of the fix, and the number of developers who seem to have so much of their time available to spend publicly refusing to do the fix.
- apparently ignores working patches contributed from developers outside of the project that will fix the problem.
The good news is that if you behave this way in the FOSS world, eventually everyone who really cares about your project will be driven away, and they'll advise all their selfish and whiny friends to stay away too, so the problem is ultimately self-correcting.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 13:54 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Hrm..
I don't know about you, but I am a long time Linux user also.
I thought that gnome 1.x sucked. I thought early kde sucked too. I avoided it like the plague.
I used enlightenment, then afterstep, then blackbox, then fluxbox...
It wasn't until 2.4 was when I actually got interested in Gnome and GTK in general and wasn't until 2.6 that I was sold on it. Now I am happy.
Early Gnome 2.x versions and especially 1.x versions were next to worthless for me. They caused me more grief then they helped.
As you pointed out there were never any such thing as traditional Unix bindings.. What the posters were pointing out just happenned to be the key bindings that they grew used to for whatever reason while the rest of the world used something else (including in Unix)..
Hell, I am a afraid to know what Sun thought was standard in CDE!
All this hate..
This is like when they made the switch from Explorer-like interface to the 'Spatial' interface for nautilus. Lots of people were freaking out... It doesn't make sense, Gnome still supports the file explorer interface!! you just have to change the configuration slightly, even after 2-3 official releases later, and with improvements too.
It's not like Gnome doesn't make allowances in configurations. They have the 'emacs' style key buttons, they still have given the program authors and end users to customize it to their heart's content.
I think it's more of instead 'gnome authors are corporate now and don't give a shit', I think it's a lot more far and a lot more accurate to say: 'they are human and don't have everything perfect for everybody'.
Newer versions Gnome specificly and GTK in general is a MASSIVE improvement over older releases.
Now I think it's perfectly acceptable to criticize, but to suggest that they are just corporate whores is just bullshit and not fair at all.
I am a happy user and gratefull for this high quality free software. I have nothing against corporations in general, as long as they are good business citizens, and I have no objections to free software authors making a living for their work.
Best thing we can do right now to resolve this is either try to get them to refine the themeing engines in general and for keycombos specificly by submitting bug reports and educating them were they need improvement or if your actually usefull: submitting code and patches to improve functionality.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 14:29 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]
Best thing we can do right now to resolve this is either try to get them to refine the themeing engines in general and for keycombos specificly by submitting bug reports and educating them were they need improvement or if your actually usefull: submitting code and patches to improve functionality.
Explain that to the Gnome-vim author. He did submit patches and the Gnome guys ignored him because external editor support doesn't fit into their world vision.
GTK+ 2.8.0 released
Posted Aug 16, 2005 5:35 UTC (Tue) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]
Now copy your message.... open up evolution, start a new message... now paste your message!Anyone know of an X application that will print the contents of the X selection on stdout, and copy stdin to the X selection? This would allow me to work around a huge number of highly broken applications (at least, the ones that can accept multi-megabyte "paste" requests).