On Friday 16 June 2017 14:06:14 Chris Austin wrote: > On Wednesday 14 Jun 2017 12:35:12 Timothy Pearson wrote: > > We need to plan out a roadmap to determine whether or not we should > > be trying to get e.g. GTK3 into a form we can use as the backend and > > common interface to third party programs like LibreOffice. > > I would recommend avoiding the use of any version of GTK, (if TDE > R14.0.4 does not depend on GTK), because it might cause more problems > than it solves. I have just done a test of GEdit from Debian 8.7, (as > a representative gtk+3.0 application), in TDE R14.0.4, and there are > several issues. > > I expected to see the very clumsy and awkward Gnome/GTK system for > resizing windows by dragging their borders, but instead, I saw the > nice KDE/TDE system. This appears to be because TDE puts its own > border right round the GEdit window. But this comes at a price. The > GEdit window now has two title bars: the TDE title bar, and below > that, what is presumably the GEdit title bar, which takes a lot of > space to repeat the filename, for no useful purpose. This GEdit title > bar is about twice the height of the TDE title bar. > > I very often tile two windows one above the other, for example a > spreadsheet and a text file, in order to note down results from the > spreadsheet in the text file. For speed and convenience, the data > areas of both windows need to be as high as possible, and wasting > window height with the GEdit title bar would be a significant nuisance > if I used GEdit. > > GEdit has no menu bar and no toolbar! In contrast to that, in KEdit, > the menu bar and toolbar fit in a vertical space that is only slightly > larger than the GEdit title bar, and in KEdit, I can hide or show the > toolbar and/or statusbar in a moment from the Settings menu, if I need > more vertical space. > > Instead of a menu bar and toolbar, the GEdit title bar has a button > for a file open dialogue, a peculiar button that a tooltip indicates > is to create a new file, a Save button, and a button with three > horizontal lines on it, which drops down a primitive menu, which looks > roughly like a truncated or merged form of some of the items from the > menus in the KEdit menu bar. > > The GEdit file open dialogue initially shows no files at all, and you > have to click on the Other Documents ... button at the bottom, to get > a file picker. And if you don't like the file picker in LibreOffice, > this one is far worse. It is basically the same as the LibreOffice > file picker, but WITHOUT the field where you can paste in the name of > the required file, as in the trick to open a file fast in LibreOffice, > which I described in another message in this thread. So in my home > directory with 8804 files and directories, I just get those 8804 files > and directories in a vertical list, which I have to comb through to > find the required file, and there is no short cut. > > So I would strongly recommend continuing the present TDE policy, (if I > understand it correctly), of maintaining support for important third > party programs, by wrapping new versions of Qt as they appear. Or of > using the TQt layer to enable Qt 3 and Qt 4 both to be installed on > the same system without symbol conflicts, if that is how it works. If > TDE R14.0.4 does not depend on GTK, I think introducing some sort of > dependence on GTK would be unlikely to provide any net benefits, and > it might introduce a lot of trouble. > > I don't think there's any need for a TDE backend and common interface > to third party programs. The important ones, such as LibreOffice and > Firefox, work perfectly without any help. That's also true for other > programs I use a lot, such as TeXmacs. > > As a general comment, in my installation of TDE R14.0.4 in Debian 8.7, > everything important seems to work extremely well. I can use the best > of KDE4, (such as Okular, the pdf viewer), alongside favourites from > KDE 3.5, such as KEdit and Kasablanca, all in the very nice TDE > desktop. And third party programs like LibreOffice and Firefox work > perfectly. It's great. > > Do I understand correctly, that in my installation of TDE R14.0.4 in > Debian 8.7, what is really happening is that I have Qt version 4.8.6 > running in the background, and Trinity Qt (TQt) is wrapping that, so > that it looks like Qt 3 to the Trinity desktop and the KDE 3.5 apps? > > Or do I actually have BOTH Qt 3 and Qt 4 installed, and the main > benefit of the TQt layer is to resolve the Qt3 and Qt4 symbol > collisions when Qt4 is installed alongside Qt3? (That is what > https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Understanding_the_TQT_Interface seems > to say.) > > Is being able to use Qt4 applications in TDE, like I am, something > that was not actually planned, but works anyway, due to the TQt layer? > > Whichever way it works, it is great at the moment, and I hope it will > continue. I'm a bit afraid that introducing dependence on GTK could > damage TDE, and provide no real benefits. > > Chris > One final thing about gedit people: Do not, under any circumstances, edit an important file, it will play 52 pickup with it on the following save a bout 10% of the time, throwing away whole pages of code, and then pickup a random page in the middle of a word, and divide it by 4 or so, and scatter it repeatedly thru the code you've spent weeks fine tuning. geany has yet to so scramble a file for me, it Just Works(TM) like nano, but with a prettier face by far. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: trinity-users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: trinity-users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Read list messages on the web archive: http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/ Please remember not to top-post: http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/mailing_lists/#top-posting
