KDE = Joy [LWN.net]

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 14, 2005 3:55 UTC (Wed) by njhurst (guest, #6022)
In reply to: KDE = Joy by mgb
Parent article: GNOME v. KDE, December 2005 edition

People often comment that QT is more productive than Gtk, yet the only big QT apps I use are scribus and qcad (and both rarely). On the other hand, we have the gimp, inkscape, abiword, gnumeric and gnucash; none of which have comparable QT versions. Maybe it is just the company I keep, but most of the top notch programmers I know prefer Gtk. Why is that do you think?

(Log in to post comments)

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 14, 2005 15:05 UTC (Wed) by cloose (subscriber, #5066) [Link]

On the other hand, we have the gimp, inkscape, abiword, gnumeric and gnucash; none of which have comparable QT versions.

IMHO it the success of the corresponding KDE apps (krita, kword, kspread, kmymoney) that lowers the interest in writing Qt equivalents for those apps.

Maybe it is just the company I keep, but most of the top notch programmers I know prefer Gtk. Why is that do you think?

Maybe you're only looking for/attracting C programmers? I'm a C++/Java/Delphi programmer and I would never ever use a OO in C API.

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 7:11 UTC (Thu) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

I had a look at koffice recently and though I was impressed by the progress, none of them are close to their gtk equivalents. kspread, for example, couldn't open a few computational excel spreadsheets I've collected over the years, yet gnumeric had no trouble. Karbon's renderer seems to generate wrong results regularly and couldn't open even some simple svg diagrams. The connector routing in kivio is crap compared to that of inkscape. Krita feels like gimp 1.4, though my wife prefers the oil paint effect in krita :)

Actually, it may be unfair, but the feeling I get from the koffice suite is that they are mainly playing catch up to their gtk counterparts and have just lifted chunks of code wholus-bolus (nothing wrong with this, but it makes me wonder what their aim is).

If you are a C++ programmer you should take a look at gtkmm. It is a lot more C++ than QT. Murray Cumming has done a much better job of understanding the C++ paradigm (ouch, did I just use that word..) than the Troll developers. And the people I'm talking about tend to program in more esoteric languages (they would say 'real languages') such as Haskell, ocaml and Mercury.

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 8:25 UTC (Thu) by cloose (subscriber, #5066) [Link]

After looking at the following you will sure understand that I have a different opinion about gtkmm <-> Qt and KOffice. :)

http://cia.navi.cx/stats/author/cloose

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 8:41 UTC (Thu) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

Sorry, I don't understand that comment - could you expand a little bit? As far as I can see you've just shown me a CVS log for some project I've never heard of...

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 10:14 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

It's the (extremely nifty) KDE CVS interface program, with changes to kdebase scattered throughout as well.

So yes, I'd say it's not surprising he likes Qt and friends. :)

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 11:07 UTC (Thu) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

Ah, so he's heavily biased, and I should discount his opinion... ;) Full disclosure: I work on inkscape, a gtkmm app :)

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 16, 2005 3:27 UTC (Fri) by thedevil (guest, #32913) [Link]

njhurst wrote:
If you are a C++ programmer you should take a look at gtkmm. It is a lot more C++ than QT. Murray Cumming has done a much better job of understanding the C++ paradigm (ouch, did I just use that word..) than the Troll developers. And the people I'm talking about tend to program in more esoteric languages (they would say 'real languages') such as Haskell, ocaml and Mercury.

Your sense is not clear here. (Who are the "people I'm talking about", Qt people or Gtk?) Can you please explain?

From my post way above you'll see that I quite disagree with you, but
until you clarify I won't repeat that again :-)

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 16, 2005 4:36 UTC (Fri) by njhurst (guest, #6022) [Link]

I said 'good programmer', cloose seemed to think I meant C++ instead of C or something, I said Haskell etc.

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 17, 2005 4:18 UTC (Sat) by thedevil (guest, #32913) [Link]

Ok, now I see, you referred to a post up the thread. Here's where the
disadvantage of a web forum over a newsgroup or mailing list shows ...

I think the preference of Real Language people for gtk is very simple -
there are, by historical accident (or is there another tangible reason?)
bindings for Gtk in those languages, while there aren't any for Qt.

One aspect of Qt is annoying - its dependence on database libraries.
I don't know if that played any role in making Gtk bindings preferred.

KDE = Joy

Posted Dec 15, 2005 23:49 UTC (Thu) by pynm0001 (subscriber, #18379) [Link]

There are indeed a lot of good GTK apps.

But please let me know when GnuCash has finally left the stone age of GTK
1.4, then I might be able to stomach using it. ;)

Regards,
- Michael Pyne