D Binding to GUI libraries

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

On 10/22/18 1:08 AM, Gerald wrote:
> 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

Wow! I really am out of the loop then. That is SERIOUSLY *MEGATON*-level 
announcement. I'm shocked that I missed it. I would never have even 
guessed. Thanks for the input!

> 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.
> 

Fair enough. For me, I find GTK/Gnome to be chunky (ex: problematic 
overuse of margins/padding) and Apple-level "zee must conform!" (ie: 
under-use of configuration). That, and an outright bad file-chooser ;)

But, it's possible I might agree with you if we were talking KDE's 
defaults - I don't actually use KDE's defaults. But that's kinda my 
point though: KDE is based around the philosophy of configurability, 
whereas Gnome (while admittedly does have a certain level of 
configurability) it very intentionally designed around a philosophy of 
conformity being superior to configurability.

But more importantly than anything else, it seems we all clearly agree: 
The key (and beauty) of Linux is "user's choice", not "GTK vs Qt".

> 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.

Personally, I think you're underestimating the group-think factor in 
modern software management. From a managerial perspective, there are a 
LOT of VERY STRONG motivations for promoting conformity over 
configurability. Not the least of which is "That's the way of 
Apple/Facebook/etc, and Apple/Facebook/etc are extremely 
popular/successful".

That, combined with both modern tech's current focus on "buzz" and 
"popularity", AND the practical software-dev-management benefits gained 
from disregarding the user as anything but collective commodity, creates 
a VERY potent motivator to prioritize similarly-minded projects over a 
purely population-driven decision.