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LibreOffice 7.0's Qt5 Support To Offer HiDPI Scaling

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  • LibreOffice 7.0's Qt5 Support To Offer HiDPI Scaling

    Phoronix: LibreOffice 7.0's Qt5 Support To Offer HiDPI Scaling

    The LibreOffice open-source office suite's Qt5 tool-kit integration so far has lacked HiDPI scaling support for dealing with modern high pixel density displays. But adding to the excitement for the LibreOffice 7.0 release later this year is now the Qt5 HiDPI scaling capability...

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  • #2
    Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
    As stated in the commit log: Basically a hack that comes with glitches.

    Why didn’t they just work with the Native GTK instead of causing even greater fragmentation?
    This is libreoffice we are talking about.



    There have been on going different debates in it UI design way back to staroffice before open office.

    I guess you are clueless Libreoffice UI system is fragmented state.



    Very good read. There are 8 different support toolkits behind libreoffice hiding under the VCL layer.

    There are fun things all basic dialogs in libreoffice are done in gtk ui format files that are then converted to the 8 different backends+. Yes GTK ui files using to make Windows and OS X native dialog windows without any GTK required. Yes those ui format files are also used to make qt dialogs.

    Please take this under consideration at the worst point in libreoffice toolkit fragmentation history is back when it was in openoffice there was 20+ different toolkits and each dialog between them had to be manually updated individually. Compared to the worse part of the history VCL layer fragmentation the current libreoffice is very tidy.

    The usage of the gtk ui files to generate universal dialog windows no matter what one of the 8 toolkits being used is a very interesting feature instead of having to attempt to install the same toolkit on all platforms.

    Well performing cross platform support in a user interface can horrible cause what Libreoffice VCL layer is having both qt and gtk really don't hurt that much behind the VCL layer when you see that libreoffice is generating stuff for 8 different toolkits and having glitch show up between the gtk and qt implementation on Linux(this can be done cheaply on QA server) normally shows glitches to the Windows, OS X and other native backends as well.

    Libreoffice and Apache Openoffice are basically in completely different rings of hell to what most developers expect and what is sanity there is not sanity else where at times. But the insanity of there systems do show some very interesting possible paths forwards.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by oiaohm View Post
      I guess you are clueless Libreoffice UI system is fragmented state.



      Very good read. There are 8 different support toolkits behind libreoffice hiding under the VCL layer.
      Providing alternatives does not equal to fragmentation. The different GUIs are not competing against one another in the sense that each crew would be working on whatever features they find interesting and that there would not be a GUI that acts as a reference to all others.

      Originally posted by oiaohm View Post
      There are fun things all basic dialogs in libreoffice are done in gtk ui format files that are then converted to the 8 different backends+. Yes GTK ui files using to make Windows and OS X native dialog windows without any GTK required. Yes those ui format files are also used to make qt dialogs.
      Well this is only the sensible thing to do: to have a "standard" on which to build on. It doesn't really matter where the XML definitions were borrowed from: e.g. Qt's own UI templates are converted into C++ code in compilation phase and not parsed on runtime. Writing a similar converter for GTK XML definitions is probably a one-man task and low-maintenance.

      Originally posted by oiaohm View Post
      The usage of the gtk ui files to generate universal dialog windows no matter what one of the 8 toolkits being used is a very interesting feature instead of having to attempt to install the same toolkit on all platforms.
      I suppose the driving factor is visual integration with various desktop environments even on Linux alone; KDE vs. Gnome.

      For example Qt has been well-supported on all three primary platforms for over a decade now, so it could've been an easy choice to just base on Qt, drop the VCL layer, and forget everything else. Then again the industry seems to still be in favour of GTK as a reference platform due to its more open licensing with regards to both the past and present.

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      • #4
        As soon as I saw Qt5 in the headline, I knew 144Hz would turn it into Qt vs. GTK and troll with CLA CLA CLA CLA...

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        • #5
          Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
          As stated in the commit log: Basically a hack that comes with glitches.

          Why didn’t they just work with the Native GTK instead of causing even greater fragmentation?
          "Native GTK" yeah, sure.

          Qt apps feel native on most desktops. Be it GNOME, KDE, Windows, macOS or whatever, it will look native.

          In the meanwhile GTK apps look alien on Plasma if you are not using the Breeze theme (and even after using the Breeze theme still looks alien).
          Last edited by tildearrow; 10 March 2020, 05:35 AM.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
            curfew It would not be an easy choice to go Qt besides it looking weird and non-native on most distributions.

            It would set back Wayland adaptation at least 3 years and it would inject CLA right back into a project that fought for a decade to get rid of a CLA predator (Oracle).
            STOP ALREADY! Those posts of you get so annoying...

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            • #7
              Originally posted by tildearrow View Post

              "Native GTK" yeah, sure.

              Qt apps feel native on every desktop. Be it GNOME, KDE or whatever, it will look native.

              In the meanwhile GTK apps look alien on Plasma if you are not using the Breeze theme (and even after using the Breeze theme still looks alien).
              Eh, Qt apps do not feel native on GNOME.

              But, no one really cares, because why would you expect them to?
              Last edited by Britoid; 10 March 2020, 05:48 AM.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Britoid View Post
                But, no one really cares, because why would you expect them to?
                I care. The user should expect applications to look the same and shouldn't have to care about what widget toolkit is used to build it.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by 144Hz View Post
                  tildearrow GTK looking alien on Plasma is actionable and fixable. Fragmentation of LibreOffice would be a much bigger problem.
                  WPS Office uses Qt and it do look native enough in all major DE/OS that I could think of, we can't just forget about macOS and Windows users here as cross platform is one of the biggest reason why LibreOffice is getting enough funding, and they would have gotten a lot more funding from macOS/Windows users if it feels even more native, a lot of companies and governments would switch to LibreOffice if it feels good the first time they try it, and funding for their own need would come afterwards. I would switch to WPS Office the second it is open sourced.
                  So to me Qt is the way to go.

                  And when you talk about CLA let's not forget KDE Free Qt Foundation has an agreement that the second Qt changes their license, they have the rights to re-license the whole Qt without CLA under a BSD-style license. So in a way the CLA is kinda useless as they can't do anything with it.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by uid313 View Post

                    I care. The user should expect applications to look the same and shouldn't have to care about what widget toolkit is used to build it.
                    That's impossible to achieve. Different toolkits have different font rendering, different ways of handling HiDPI, different interface guidelines, keybindings so on.

                    On macOS and Windows, Qt even ends up rendering through the native toolkit where possible to try and "fit in" and it still isn't great. But an Android app is never going to look native on iOS, and vice versa, no matter how much theming you apply.
                    Last edited by Britoid; 10 March 2020, 06:33 AM.

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