Developers Are Trying To Make Sure Qt Apps Fit In Well On Fedora Workstation

[anda_skoa]

Wasn't Qt already able to use native gtk widgets when drawing windows? (Like they do on OSX and windows)?

Yes, this is not about doing it differently.

Adaptive drawing is still done by a style plugin, the integration plugin in question makes the correct one the default and, as already stated earlier, can provide other integration items.

Cheers,
_

[anda_skoa]

How about unified file dialogs? No? Nothing useful happening then. Qt already does a pretty good job looking as GTK. Time better spent elsewhere imho..

The article doesn't say, but that is something such an integration plugin can do.
The one provided by KDE for integrating with a Plasma environment, for example, does that.

Cheers,
_

[Krejzi]

Wasn't Qt already able to use native gtk widgets when drawing windows? (Like they do on OSX and windows)?

Yes, but it was using GTK+2 themes. And that plugin has been removed in Qt 5.6, so this one is nice to have.

[Delgarde]

How about unified file dialogs? No? Nothing useful happening then.

I believe there's been some work in that area as part of the sandboxed-apps projects. Nothing deliverable yet, but still work in progress.

[birdie]

One day they will realize we need one common API for that.

Not GTK2/GTK3/Qt4/Qt5/wxWidgets/FLTK/Chrome UI/LibreOffice UI/etc. etc. but something which all others can build on, something which provides common API for rendering controls/dialogs/etc... Something like Win32.

Until then we'll be enjoying this mayhem of constant troubles with a unified feel and look.

[liam]

Libreoffice are using GTK3 to get closer to Gnome and Fedora. The few Qt apps of interest to Fedora users should move to the better design as well.

This is important work.

I wouldn't say "better design" is the issue but simply consistency.
Having menus that behave, slightly, differently from one another IS pain for users and not simply a superficial issue.

[omer666]

Fedora developers are just doing what we've been all looking for, for so long. I am completely toolkit agnostic, and I've been using as much GNOME 3 as I've been using KDE4.

When you have a look at most criticisms aimed towards Linux desktop, you see that the lack of unity. A unified desktop experience is an important factor in attracting users because software that all have a different look give an impression of complicatedness to users. When you see a window that looks like it's out of Windows 95, you tend to think "what the... is wrong?".

As to the " GTK3 vs QT" match, well I don't understand. Clearly, the toolkit used is a development matter. The GIMP, Firefox, LibreOffice, Darktable are or are getting ported to GTK3, and xmms have long been deprecated in favour of its (GTK3) fork.

[anda_skoa]

The Qt apps will get shoehorned to look like proper apps.

The platform theme plugin, as well as the style plugin, are actually official integration/extension points, so the Fedora people didn't have to do any shoehorning.

The looks might fit but there is no promise of stability, security and ease of use. Expect Murphy to deal bluntly with the all the extra cruft.

While plugins can negatively affect the applications they are plugged into, I would given those Fedora developers the benefit of the doubt.
They might even be Red Hat developers and are doing this so it becomes available to RHEL.

Cheers,
_

[mjog]

I like Gtk, but its not hard to think of a reason for why you would rather use Qt for some applications: Qt is better suited for cross platform applications.

That's exactly why you shouldn't use Qt, except for KDE apps. Likewise GTK for non-GNOME apps. Cross platform apps are terrible for the user and admin in almost every respect. They look and act different, hence require the user to re-learn how to use them, for basic tasks like expecting a sub-menu to stay open (or not) when releasing a mouse button, to accessing and using the application's help, and all the way through to more advanced tasks like modifying preferences. They don't necessarily integrate with standard platform idioms and practices, making the advanced user and admin have to work out how to deal with issues like how and where they store their configuration so it can be backed up or pre-populated with useful defaults. Pretty much every application based on XUL, Java and WxWidgets are pathological examples of the horrible usability of the lowest-common denominator approach of cross platform toolkits, but those based Qt and GTK, when used outside of their native DE's, really aren't much better.

The only people that benefit from cross platform apps are developers - since it means they can be lazy and write a single frontend for their app. Those developers that do use make cross platform apps hold their users and admins in a lot of contempt.

[anda_skoa]

Crossplatform doesn't imply using the same UI on all platforms, that is one possible option.
Most application have a lot of aspects that are things the application does, independent on how the user triggers the actions or on how the results are displayed.

A good crossplatform framework can allow developers to concentrate on platform specific user interaction as they don't have to re-develop the whole application for each of the supported platforms.

Actively developed frameworks tend to increase their support for these kind of things over time, while separately developed versions of the same application for different platforms often tend to diverge in what features they offer.

Obviously not counting the inherent advantages of running the code through different toolchains with their different capabilities for detecting problems, etc.

Cheers,
_