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GTK+ 2.8.0 releasedGTK+ 2.8.0 releasedPosted Aug 14, 2005 17:47 UTC (Sun) by zooko (subscriber, #2589)In reply to: GTK+ 2.8.0 released by zooko Parent article: GTK+ 2.8.0 released
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.
(Log in to post comments)
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??
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)
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
The idea of using control as the modifier at all bothers me. The Mac
Control-W and control-U doing the "wrong" thing causes me to constantly
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 (subscriber, #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.
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