About the state of GTK3

hoagie · 2012-11-13 16:59:56

According to [1] GTK3 is still in an experimental state. Seems to me porting anything to it won't be a wise decision so far. What do you think?

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=687752, https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-lis … 00041.html

[edit]

Gnome Developer Benjamin Otte writes "Which is why at this point in time I'd advocate against Mozilla, Libreoffice, XFCE or LXDE to switch to GTK 3. They value their independence from GNOME too much."

(https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-lis … 00044.html)

Last edited by hoagie (2012-11-16 10:27:28)

secipolla · 2012-11-13 22:45:51

I'm not a programmer, but as a user, TBH, I wouldn't mind if Xfce was ported to fltk. It would even be super-fast ;-)
(don't know how much time I would stand its appearance, though)

Last edited by secipolla (2012-11-13 22:46:43)

dsman195276 · 2012-11-14 17:24:44

I could only forsee more work and headaches for the XFCE dev's if they were to start using GTK3.

Matt

wes300 · 2012-11-30 18:04:55

GTK2 >>>>> GTK3
this is the natural road, but XFCE doesn't have
the anxiety of rushing, their focus is stability, and GTK2 is stable, : SoluOS, Fuduntu, is examples of linux distros with gnome2 ok Gnome is gnome and XFCE is XFCE but both use GTK, we go think in one question:

10 February 2011 > GTK 3.0 release.
24 September 2012 > GTK 3.6 release.
in less than a year is possible be stable?

my sincere opinion: Xfce jumping GTK2 for GTK4

Jristz · 2012-12-03 21:09:36

wes300 wrote:

my sincere opinion: Xfce jumping GTK2 for GTK4

Not sure bout it

Watching the road that Gnome dev fallow and the deprecating of fall-backmode in gnome 3.7.1+ I think that GTK maybein a no far future only can work in llvmpipe'd or opengl accel videos, and this can hurt bad xfce in therm of performance (talking about CPU comsumption an llvmpipe)

probably the best idea is appendo t GTK2 until FLTK or WxWidget or E17-toolkit (efltk?) gain enough streng and traction to by a good sucessor for GTK2

wes300 · 2012-12-03 23:26:24

Jristz wrote:

probably the best idea is appendo t GTK2 until FLTK or WxWidget or E17-toolkit (efltk?) gain enough streng and traction to by a good sucessor for GTK2

.

I would like to see a alternative for GTK-2, FLTK in theory is best choice (my personal opinion) but E17 toolkit is a alternative Enlightenment or E17 has a public, but is a crude project, Xfce is polished. Would not be a good idea this unity (XFCE17)?

Nick · 2012-12-04 12:03:40

On its own there is not much wrong with gtk3, apart from having a slow and immature rendering engine on the version Xfce 4.12 could depend on (3.2). Slowly this is improving and to keep track of this, the goals is to have some core applications compile against gtk3 optionally (xfce4-appfinder and libxfce4ui for now).
Slowly all of core will be ported to support gtk3 and gtk2, once we're satisfied with the result, gtk2 will be removed and gtk3 will be a hard requirement.

Supporting 2 toolkits is impossible and porting to another toolkit is more or less the same amount of work as writing a new desktop. This may sound a bit overkill, but once the port it complete and the same user experience is back, tons of small workarounds are needed.

Jristz · 2012-12-04 17:32:15

but now the gtk-xfce-engine themes not support the gtk3.4 neither the 3.6 and don't speak about the upcomming 3.8
But not sure how work the theming in this one but I thin that are a LOT of themes, rpobably reduce the number of themes to 1 exclusive to xfce, 1 mimic the old gnome2 (in gtk3), other mimic the kde(2 or 3 or 4) and if no one of there are dark one dark theme (or white if the opossed case) are enought and the ores supported by the community.

I submit a feature request, or has ben planed?

Magnus · 2012-12-04 22:46:57

Watching the road that Gnome dev fallow and the deprecating of fall-backmode in gnome 3.7.1+ I think that GTK maybein a no far future only can work in llvmpipe'd or opengl accel videos, and this can hurt bad xfce in therm of performance (talking about CPU comsumption an llvmpipe)

The removal of fallback mode in GNOME won't affect GTK+ at all. The reason GNOME requires Opengl or Llvmpipe is due to GNOME Shell being a plugin on top of Mutter (which is based on Clutter, and hence requires Opengl to work).

Nick · 2012-12-05 07:39:29

Themes in gtk-xfce-engine are broken because gtk3 changed a lot between 3.0 -> 3.4 and even with 3.6 there are backwards incompatible changes iirc. I know for users themes are a problem with gtk2 & 3 applications combined, but that will be the case for a while even if Xfce has been ported to gtk3.

My personal view on this: while GIMP is still using gtk2, we're cool wink .

Magnus · 2012-12-06 17:27:00

Any estimate on when will the xfce themes get updated for 3.4 and later? I think you'll need to dedicate someone to maintain these themes exclusively if the GNOME devs keep changing the themes every six months...

secipolla · 2012-12-06 18:06:27

Magnus wrote:

Any estimate on when will the xfce themes get updated for 3.4 and later?

There isn't even such a thing, I think, as themes have broken from 3.4 to 3.6 too.

Nick · 2012-12-07 07:11:39

Maybe you don't agree with me, but if each gtk3 release breaks for users (themes and interface changes), the software is not suitable for production use. It's therefore a shame some great applications independent from gnome already hard-depend on gtk3.

secipolla · 2012-12-07 14:26:14

Well, from a user POV, yes themes break with every main release. A few quality themes besides the official one keep up with it.

But other features of GTK3 seem to work fine (I have no idea about their state 'under the hood' except that GTK3 apps give LOTS of warnings and critical errors).

But I don't know about great apps having switched to GTK3. The only one I know of that isn't from GNOME is Transmission.

What happened was that by Ubuntu switching to GTK3 it put pressure on folks that developed for its users. But don't get me started with Ubuntu/Canonical and their lies/omissions for far from noble motives (and its community that follows suit; even good people got caught on that bad environment). But we're on a time when things are starting to settle and people seem to be getting a more balanced picture.

This can only be confirmed by the GNOME people but if GTK3 stabilises in the future then Xfce can stick to GTK2 and change when that happens.

Jristz · 2012-12-07 16:56:27

And in a ipotetically situatio if GTK3 neves stablish the themes and the gtk3 engine remain unsuitable for work
and then gnome begin to work in gtk4 or worst clutter become the new gtk4...what happen with XFCE???

@sepiola (or whathever your in is): Actually the Majority of LXDE and LibreOffice can by build againt GTK3 but you need speciffically thu it on the configure flags bacause by default use gtk2, and as far I know GIMP want switch to GTK3 for GIMP 3.0.0 if all going right

Last edited by Jristz (2012-12-07 17:06:24)

secipolla · 2012-12-07 21:50:02

Theme-wise I'm not having issues right now. I don't use many GTK3 apps but the ones I use work well with the MediterraneanNight theme I use in Xfce and the modified Greybird theme I use in IceWM.
GTK3 version here is 3.6.2

Both the themes I cited are high quality themes. I don't have gtk-xfce-engine installed here so I can't give feedback on those themes.

https://github.com/shimmerproject support well their themes. One thing that's great about the Greybird theme, for instance, is that I can change its colours. That sounds trivial but last time I checked one could only do the same with Adwaita by re-compiling it.
I can't stand a theme with white background (maybe because I use a CRT monitor) so being able to easily change that is a must (unless the theme has it set 'properly' already like MediterraneanNight).
But I think maintaining a good theme with GTK3's constant changes must not be so easy. Greybird itself is much better now that I updated to their git version (was using 0.9.1 before, I think).

Korrode · 2013-03-16 09:43:04

Interesting read here: http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/opinion/a-li … acy-theory

Festers support for moving away from GTK+.

bwat47 · 2013-03-16 22:11:02

wes300 wrote:

GTK2 >>>>> GTK3
this is the natural road, but XFCE doesn't have
the anxiety of rushing, their focus is stability, and GTK2 is stable, : SoluOS, Fuduntu, is examples of linux distros with gnome2 ok Gnome is gnome and XFCE is XFCE but both use GTK, we go think in one question:
10 February 2011 > GTK 3.0 release.
24 September 2012 > GTK 3.6 release.
in less than a year is possible be stable?

my sincere opinion: Xfce jumping GTK2 for GTK4

SolusOS is actually working on porting to GTK3. They've forked gnome 3 fallback and are working on a GTK3 DE based on it called "consort".

I still support XFCE moving to GTK3 eventually. yes GTK3 has its problems, as OP's links have shown, but aside from themeing issues, I think GTK3 is an overall improvement over GTK2. GTK2 is only "stable" because its not really updated anymore. I thnk staying on GTK2 would be a very poor long-time plan, since its basically going to be "deprecated".

Last edited by bwat47 (2013-03-16 22:18:22)

Jristz · 2013-03-24 03:37:23

Nick wrote:

Maybe you don't agree with me, but if each gtk3 release breaks for users (themes and interface changes), the software is not suitable for production use. It's therefore a shame some great applications independent from gnome already hard-depend on gtk3.

libreoffice is indeppendent from gnome and now in version 4 can by build againt gtk3 (in fact aparently Arch build it gagaint gtk3 now) and Gimp resently open a new branch to migrate to gtk3 too (and now in the roadmap say that Gimp 3.0 going to switch to gtk3)

those 2 count as big project independents from gnome that going to (or already) switch to gtk3 ???

but Now I read that gnome want switch to Wayland and as far I read Wayland is unable to run in non dri2 cappable hardware, any enlightnment about this???

the_file · 2013-03-25 01:43:56

I hope that GTK will stop breaking things and revert back to a normal development cycle, one were people are not constantly complaining about it breaking things. Maybe they should try to compete with Qt by making the widgets look better and have better effects.

Last edited by the_file (2013-03-25 01:50:01)

Jristz · 2013-03-28 00:39:32

the_file wrote:

I hope that GTK will stop breaking things and revert back to a normal development cycle, one were people are not constantly complaining about it breaking things. Maybe they should try to compete with Qt by making the widgets look better and have better effects.

GTK-3 v3.8 releases

* Theming and API break again
but now gnome anounce that Theming and API going to break in every release intentionally

At this point I not underestand why no-one try to fork GTK-3

This not look good for GTK based environments, maybe move to ther toolkit less breakable??

the_file · 2013-03-28 05:32:20

Jristz wrote:

the_file wrote:
I hope that GTK will stop breaking things and revert back to a normal development cycle, one were people are not constantly complaining about it breaking things. Maybe they should try to compete with Qt by making the widgets look better and have better effects.
GTK-3 v3.8 releases
* Theming and API break again
but now gnome anounce that Theming and API going to break in every release intentionally
At this point I not underestand why no-one try to fork GTK-3
This not look good for GTK based environments, maybe move to ther toolkit less breakable??

Perhaps the devs got the message regarding screwing up peoples hard worked on themes, meaning perhaps this time the theme damage was minimal compared to the last "version" of gtk.

You got any details on this?.

Jristz · 2013-03-30 03:40:55

the_file wrote:

Jristz wrote:
the_file wrote:
I hope that GTK will stop breaking things and revert back to a normal development cycle, one were people are not constantly complaining about it breaking things. Maybe they should try to compete with Qt by making the widgets look better and have better effects.
GTK-3 v3.8 releases
* Theming and API break again
but now gnome anounce that Theming and API going to break in every release intentionally
At this point I not underestand why no-one try to fork GTK-3
This not look good for GTK based environments, maybe move to ther toolkit less breakable??
Perhaps the devs got the message regarding screwing up peoples hard worked on themes, meaning perhaps this time the theme damage was minimal compared to the last "version" of gtk.
You got any details on this?.

The longest and more detailed discusion on gnome based on thinks like Themes and extensions is this:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-s … 00110.html
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-s … 00112.html
if you read it you can give aidea of why theming are breaking in every release at this point

and probably unrelated but is funy this: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/3685 now search what say: charles (developer of Transmission); and what respond mccann (GNOME main developer) when charles mention Xfce

Probably those 2 are enough for underestand the initial form of think of actual Gnome dev, this obvious not nescesary reflect what they think now but is a think to take in concideration

hoagie · 2013-04-03 15:59:09

Heres an interesting read regarding toolkits from one of the lxde developers: http://blog.lxde.org/?p=990

... and some older stuff about theme etc.-breaking: http://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/ … in-threes/

darius · 2013-04-05 15:47:37

gtk3 is very slow and buggy its not quite the great toolkit to run applicatons yet and I dont see that mad rush to hurry to gtk3
most older apps will need to import gtk2 for some time to come and some may never be gtk3 so it will be up to the gtk3 to import the libaries to be able to run them so its like the x86 and x64 senario
ITS THE SAME BLOODY thing [ compatiably ] and we are going to face problems for a while !!! the gtk3 devs and programers that code or create an application need to make sure that gtk2 is supported when they write a gtk3 application

unless you get a magic wand and convert all x86 applications to x64 over night we cant move to x64 as the replacement for x86 its takes time and x86 is just like gtk2 it will be around for some years to come IM GUESSING forever smile well ok eventally lets give it 10 years or so smile then we can move to 128/gtk[0-9]* etc etc and we can start this all over again horray # this shit never stops !

NOTE : x86/x64/x128 has nothing to do with THIS gtk post but im using it as a Simile

Last edited by darius (2013-04-05 15:55:52)

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#1 2012-11-13 16:59:56

About the state of GTK3

#2 2012-11-13 22:45:51

Re: About the state of GTK3

#3 2012-11-14 17:24:44

Re: About the state of GTK3

#4 2012-11-30 18:04:55

Re: About the state of GTK3

#5 2012-12-03 21:09:36

Re: About the state of GTK3

#6 2012-12-03 23:26:24

Re: About the state of GTK3

#7 2012-12-04 12:03:40

Re: About the state of GTK3

#8 2012-12-04 17:32:15

Re: About the state of GTK3

#9 2012-12-04 22:46:57

Re: About the state of GTK3

#10 2012-12-05 07:39:29

Re: About the state of GTK3

#11 2012-12-06 17:27:00

Re: About the state of GTK3

#12 2012-12-06 18:06:27

Re: About the state of GTK3

#13 2012-12-07 07:11:39

Re: About the state of GTK3

#14 2012-12-07 14:26:14

Re: About the state of GTK3

#15 2012-12-07 16:56:27

Re: About the state of GTK3

#16 2012-12-07 21:50:02

Re: About the state of GTK3

#17 2013-03-16 09:43:04

Re: About the state of GTK3

#18 2013-03-16 22:11:02

Re: About the state of GTK3

#19 2013-03-24 03:37:23

Re: About the state of GTK3

#20 2013-03-25 01:43:56

Re: About the state of GTK3

#21 2013-03-28 00:39:32

Re: About the state of GTK3

#22 2013-03-28 05:32:20

Re: About the state of GTK3

#23 2013-03-30 03:40:55

Re: About the state of GTK3

#24 2013-04-03 15:59:09

Re: About the state of GTK3

#25 2013-04-05 15:47:37

Re: About the state of GTK3

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