Compatibility problems with latest GTK+ applications

[John Layt]

On 8 May 2014 13:56, Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org> wrote:
> On Thursday, May 08, 2014 14:39:49 Matthias Klumpp wrote:
>> However, to support the cross-desktop efforts, the GNOME people should
>> maybe make a few compromises (e.g. make GTK+ behave differently on
>> other DEs), especially since GTK+ is not just for GNOME but also used
>> by other projects.
>
> This is actually at the root of all these problems. The GTK developers have at
> some point decided to couple the toolkit with the GNOME desktop, so GTK is --
> in their view -- the toolkit for GNOME. It seems, the developers lost interest
> in keeping their cross-platform and cross-desktop promise. This is visible in
> other areas as well, such as theming: Theming APIs have been unstable and
> changed will-nilly for some time now, and the revolt of theme creators has
> calmed down by now (I suppose they all just walked away). I suppose this CSD
> episode will just speed up this exodus.
>
> We might be looking at a completely different GTK here than we did a few years
> ago, and that's pretty bad news for interoperability on the freedesktop.

Exactly, they seem to have forgotten what the G actually stands for
:-)  Which makes me wonder how apps like Gimp who use Gtk but are not
part of Gnome and want to be cross-desktop and cross-platform are
going to be affected?  And how are the other Gtk desktops like XFCE
affected?

Pardon my ignorance, but does Gtk impose CSD on all apps, or just
those apps that opt-in to using it?  I'm assuming it's opt-in, in
which case perhaps the app authors don't realise the implication for
other desktops/platforms?  If they do realise what it means then
that's their decision to only support Gnome and I don't see why we
should even bother to try work around it: if it looks ugly elsewhere
and that costs them users, that's their problem not ours.

Either way, it seems to me that the Gtk app and desktop authors may be
the people in the best position to influence Gtk to work on these
issues, the Gtk maintainers may not care about what KDE thinks, but
you'd hope that they would listen to their own users.  Perhaps if/when
the direct approach fails, we need to raise bugs reports against the
apps themselves to get their authors interested?

John.

P.S. If Gtk keep this up, we could see another surge in apps switching
to Qt, and that presents a great opportunity for KDE as a community
interested in being cross-platform/desktop