Features On The Roadmap For GTK+

[ua=42]

I just wish they would gtk actually not look like shit on desktops that aren't gtk based. (Windows, KDE, etc) Hopefully that is what they mean by better cross platform compatability.

[scionicspectre]

I just wish they would gtk actually not look like shit on desktops that aren't gtk based. (Windows, KDE, etc) Hopefully that is what they mean by better cross platform compatability.

It's not, although they are working on the Windows theme. Work on GTK in KDE is mostly done by the KDE developers creating themes for GTK and making use of toolkit features like ARGB to get rounded menus and the such. Oxygen-GTK is, in many cases, a special theme engine for GTK 2 and to some extent GTK 3. So, although the font rendering is a bit different and the widget layout looks dissimilar between toolkits, a lot of work has been put into making this a non-issue. The typical user shouldn't notice the discrepancy- of course, this work needs to be redone for future KDE themes. If it weren't for QGtkStyle and the Oxygen developers, the visuals would be irredeemable in both desktops.

So far as portability, the hope is that by supporting Wayland well it will be easier to use GTK on other form factors either by running Wayland natively or perhaps running Wayland within another environment, sort of like a portable framebuffer. But really, GTK devs will need to take the easiest route to success with the platforms they are most concerned with. There simply aren't enough resources to become the miracle toolkit like Qt is.

Also, I don't think everyone needs to move to Qt- GObject introspection makes GTK a highly usable choice for developers of various languages without giving ugly/impartial support. Qt has some bindings for Python, among other things, but C++ is the only way to access all of Qt's features at the moment. Qt itself is nice for users, but not necessarily for every developer. That said, it would be worth it to learn Qt if you want to make high performance mobile apps someday.

[TheBlackCat]

What it can aspire to is to be the native toolkit for Linux.

They don't want to be the native toolkit for Linux, they want to be the native toolkit for the Gnome desktop. Anything else is an afterthought, even other gtk+ Linux desktop environments like XFCE.

[TheBlackCat]

And what if I don't usually care about platforms other than desktop Linux?

That is still a problem. Unless you only care about the Gnome desktop, you aren't the sort of person gtk+ is targeting anymore.

[justmy2cents]

Qt has pretty much always had better cross platform support. This hasn't changed recently. Why would this suddenly kill GTK if it hasn't before?

while being right, you're missing one point. Gtk had worse cp than Qt forever, true. but, but gap in quality of cp between gtk-3 and gtk-2 is even larger than it ever was in Qt<=>Gtk. gtk-3 it self being as unstable as it is was double edged sword which prevents making any bindings for other languages. there is simply no point in doing that if you don't know if next .x version will still run with it or not. but, if i write app in vala, then Gtk is all fine and dandy. then again, writing cp app in vala... i could as well use hammer on my knees in hope i'll sprint faster

but, being that i was one of those vocal people who criticized this... at least they seem like are finally getting the clue and seeing the plans to finally address the issues, FINALLY!!! even though it is a little to late since developers are flocking to Qt. and more, it seems like sane plan with vision.

still, has to be said... they are making one grand mistake in them. one of the plans for gtk-4 is scene graph, which is really bad decision. don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with scene graph, but... currently, gtk has never come up with even basic sensible scene graph as part of the plan and if they plan to stall gtk-4 while toying with experimentation to finally get it right in both API and implementation wise... good luck, 4 is suddenly so far away and all this meant nothing. i know that if it was up to me i'd make scene graph in separate lib as part of official gtk and make it as non blocking part of version 4. this way people doing bindings could simply ignore it and add it to their bindings later when it is stable. but, at the same time gtk could keep API/ABI stability for 4 while 4 would still retain unstable parts.

as much as i respect gtk, developers should really get their head straight and decide what matters more. retaining those last non-gnome developers or catering gnome. and before it is said... yes, i know most developers are gnome people, but go on gtk site to read its mission. yep, clear mission. go on gnome site and read theirs... it translates into "we wanna do awesome, but we have no clue how to do it, so we'll just randomly experiment and hope our hammer hits the nails". and when bad vision controls the right one, something is really wrong here

gnome going all political and fashion controlled was the worst thing that could ever happen to gtk

[justmy2cents]

I thought that they weren't working towards xplatform support in particular but would accept patches? This seems a waste of resources, but I don't pay their salaries so I guess rh is happy with this.

i would guess you didn't learn nothing from current state of gaming on linux. look and compare it against 2 years ago when it more or less didn't even exist. now... how is that? just look at RHEL7 desktop, they don't use usual gnome-shell crap setup, they use classic. now, why is that?

simple, lone ranger strategy gets you this far and that is it. it doesn't matter if you have most awesome txt editor there is and integrated maps into desktop. in order for linux to be accepted in wider range, it has to be able to cater to 2 environments beside usual geek of the week. gaming and corporate.

gaming wise, linux gained corporate acceptance and by that... linux got developers making their engines and tools working on linux. since it got engines, it got developers who don't give a flying fsck if you or me run linux or not. and since it got developers, there are games. and more games leads to more users, which leads to more developers...

corporate wise? couldn't be more terrible than it is. gtk is currently gnome b1tch and most main distros ship with gnome and gnome+gtk (as it is now) is really absolute worst choice if you want to run your corporate desktop. main reason being lack of whole final picture and lacks of realizing that you can't stuck "average joe who can't use computer" desktop variant into scenarios needed elsewhere. one just needs to look at few facts...
- gnome disks: instead of fixing removes raid support since it caused some troubles by suggesting people should move to better solutions: btrfs (experimental) or zfs (dear god, it is almost untested fuse module)
- appmenu which barely works... nope, that is there to stay. appmenu for example more than often provides menu when it shouldn't and doesn't when it should, it is ugly as fsck, not to mention it separates menu functionality into 2 completely non obvious places and if you use 2 monitors... dear god. and people are whining about same facts for years now
- one could say, you can fix up gnome with extensions. yes, you can... but, imagine the thrill of extra tweaking hundreds or thousands of desktops as IT guy just to make it workable. well, at least there is switch to classic, although that one is also far from perfect

i could go on and on, but i tried to be as realistic and non trollish as possible. if it did sound as troll, blame it on my english as i'm not native english speaker. it really wasn't intended, so if it is, my apology. but, back to corporate. corporate desktop CANNOT work with awesome txt editor and maps, it needs custom apps in 99%. now, if desktop makes it as hard as possible for developers to integrate with their cp apps, how can you blame if they don't make linux versions. if you write cp app, you don't want to write 3 versions for each os, you want one that works everywhere. and if developers (who don't give a flying fsck if you or me use linux, since they support all os) don't support linux, how could corporate desktop. bring the developers and they'll bring users. users will bring requests and that'll bring new developers