D Binding to GUI libraries

[Gerald]

On Monday, 22 October 2018 at 04:41:08 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> On 10/21/18 1:13 PM, Russel Winder wrote:
>> [...]
>
> First of all, minor nitpick: Unless some bombshell news 
> occurred that I managed to miss, Ubuntu pushes their own Unity, 
> NOT Gnome. Yes, that's still GTK, but still...accuracy...FWIW.

To be accurate, Ubuntu announced the dropping of Unity back in 
April 2017. Current versions of Ubuntu use Gnome.

https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Dropping-Unity

>
> But more importantly, "prefer" is vague a weasel word in this 
> situation. The claim is that the distros "prefer" GTK over Qt. 
> The *reality* is far more simple: The installers for the 
> distros give you a choice between Gnome, KDE and (on Ubuntu) 
> Unity, and Gnome/Unity just happen to often be the default. 
> That's the *only* thing that "prefer" means in this context, so 
> let's call a spade a spade: It's a common installer default. 
> That's all.
>
> Furthermore, regardless of what distro you've installed, KDE 
> can always be installed and used. And (unless things have 
> changes since last I looked) every single one of the distros 
> you mention maintain the full set of KDE packages in their 
> repositories.
>
> So yes, saying that GTK "won" over Qt is hyperbolic nonsense. 
> Does it have a slight dominance WRT Linux DE's? Yes. 
> Unfortunately. But that's like claiming a victor between iOS 
> and Android: BOTH still have significant user-bases. BOTH are 
> still actively developed with no end even remotely in sight. 
> BOTH are still relevant and will remain so for the foreseeable 
> future. So long as they both coexist (and the GNU/Linux 
> ecosystem actively promotes coexistence of competitors - which 
> it does), any claim of a victor, or of one competitor "winning" 
> over another, IS, yes, hyperbolic nonsense.
>
> Plus, as others have said, industry tends to take Qt more 
> seriously than GTK anyway. So once again, hyperbolic nonsense 
> to claim GTK "won".
>
>> [...]
>
> I believe this is pretty much exactly my own point, too ;) Ie, 
> regardless of the Win/Mac crowds unfortunate misconceptions, 
> Linux is about choice, not about one option "winning" over 
> another. Thus, for one competitor to defeat another in Linux, 
> the loser would have to either cease to exist, or become 
> extremely marginalized. Note that "extremely marginalized" is a 
> far, far stronger notion than "not majority" or "not the 
> default of the options given by the installer".
>
>> [...]
>
> Ditto for Qt. Which again, is a key part of my point.
>
> But that said, out of all the people I've come across who use a 
> GTK-based DE (ie, Gnome or Unity), very few of them, if any, do 
> so because they like GTK apps better than Qt apps (Or the 
> GTK-file chooser over the Qt file-chooser ;)). The vast 
> majority of the time, it's simply because they *don't object* 
> to Gnome/Unity and merely go along with it - *not* because they 
> consider it superior to KDE, nor because they prefer GTK apps 
> to Qt apps.

Chalk me up as one who prefers Gnome over KDE. I like the clean 
UI that gnome provides and the adherence to a common HIG. KDE is 
way too fussy and busy for my taste. I also don't agree this is a 
minority viewpoint.

Like Russell though I'm glad there is choice and people can use 
what they prefer be it Gnome, KDE, Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, i3 or 
whatever.

I would also be white happy to see D support Qt as well just to 
have more options.

> For that matter, out of those people I've come across who DO 
> have a significant preference regarding "GTK app" vs "Qt app", 
> the vast majority of people who actually care are on the "Qt 
> UI" side. Out of the minority who prefer GTK apps, the majority 
> are GTK or Gnome developers themselves. (BTW, Note, in ALL of 
> this, I'm referring to GTK/Qt UI, not GTK/Qt API. Just to 
> clarify.) On top of that, it's no secret that GNOME 3 triggered 
> an exodus of GNOME developers, and for very well-known reasons. 
> But there's no such equivalent for KDE.
> I have no doubt there *are* people out there who do consider 
> GTK/Gnome/Unity superior to KDE/Qt, and Ihave no intention to 
> claim that they are "wrong". But in my experience, such people 
> account for a vast *minority* of GTK/Gnome/Unity users.

Not in my experience.

> Ultimately, everything points to the same thing: Those who 
> actually CARE about GTK/Gnome/Unity vs Qt/KDE, typically prefer 
> Qt/KDE. The rest are just swing votes.
>
> As for the distros choice of "which do we make default?", 
> that's really no surprise and implies nothing significant: The 
> tech industry's current runway-fashion wind direction is 
> clearly "The user should adapt to the software", not the other 
> way around. Thus fully explains GTK/GNOME/Unity as the 
> gatekeepers' current suggestions. Just like Win/Mac: "Actual 
> user opinions: not relevant."

Most distro maintainers want their distro to be as popular as 
possible. If KDE was a slam dunk like you imply they should be 
jumping over themselves to make it the default yet they do not. 
When Ubuntu dropped Unity they had a perfect opportunity to make 
KDE (or something else) the default yet they did not.

I think that says volumes about the argument.