Would switching to Qt be a good idea?

[samuel ammonius]

>
> "Switching to Qt" would basically mean completely rewriting everything
> from scratch as far as I can tell.


Not really. Most of XFCE's code is actually internal. Moving away from GLib
> would mean rewriting everything from scratch, and since QtCore is actually
> a replacement for GLib, it would be something that would need to be done
> eventually. However, rewriting the graphical parts of XFCE to use another
> toolkit won't be as difficult as it may sound. It also helps that Qt is
> extremely well designed compared to GTK, even if we leave out the
> gnomey-junk. Just look at this empty Qt button example
> <https://riptutorial.com/qt/example/12519/hello-world> as opposed to this
> empty GTK button example
> <https://www.gtk.org/docs/getting-started/hello-world>. I could probably
> rewrite a full copy of Mousepad alone in less than a week.


On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 11:07 AM Mark Ballard <markjballard at googlemail.com>
wrote:

> I for one would welcome any effort to stop the over-simplification of
> xfce. Operating Gnome apps is like trying to knit while wearing mittens, or
> type with club fists.
>
>
> On Fri, 8 Jul 2022 at 12:45, samuel ammonius <sfammonius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> If you fork the project, do the work, attract enough developers to
>>> maintain it, and eventually prove it's better, then it will become a
>>> de-facto better project. Maintainers are not stubborn gatekeepers, they try
>>> to do what's best for the project, but they rarely commit to accepting code
>>> that has not been written yet.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for informing me about all of that. I'll try to start with smaller
>> things like mousepad and the screenshooter, and move on to things like
>> thunar and the panel when I'm familiar with the process of converting
>> GTK/GLib to Qt.
>>
>> IMHO, time would be better invested in a Wayland compositor, but that's
>>> another huge task.
>>>
>>
>> What would a wayland compositor do?
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 4:27 AM Olivier Fourdan <fourdan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> On Thu, 7 Jul 2022 at 19:06, samuel ammonius <sfammonius at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I posted a similar question on the XFCE forum, where a moderator told
>>>> me I should go here. The forum post is here
>>>> <https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?pid=67869#p67869>.
>>>>
>>>> The reason I was suggesting this is because GTK4 removed menus
>>>> completely, because they were too "X11-centric". I think this is just an
>>>> excuse to force people to use their designs, and XFCE's adoption of
>>>> client-side decoration is proof that it's working. I'm not complaining
>>>> about CSD in particular, but I'm trying to say that over the years, similar
>>>> situations will arise and GTK will start to become a larger burden with
>>>> every version that gets released.
>>>>
>>> I know that switching to Qt isn't something little. What I'm asking is,
>>>> if I can fork all of XFCE's gui and make it use Qt, is it possible at all
>>>> that it might get merged?
>>>>
>>>
>>> This is a theoretical question impossible to answer without anything
>>> tangible to evaluate.
>>>
>>> This is all open source, so eventually, the best ideas win.
>>>
>>> If you fork the project, do the work, attract enough developers to
>>> maintain it, and eventually prove it's better, then it will become a
>>> de-facto better project. Maintainers are not stubborn gatekeepers, they try
>>> to do what's best for the project, but they rarely commit to accepting code
>>> that has not been written yet.
>>>
>>>
>>>> It won't take as long as it might sound because I've made both GTK and
>>>> Qt applications and Qt is at least twice as easy to deal with.
>>>>
>>>
>>> So if you believe it's a good idea, have the will, time and energy to do
>>> it, then why not?
>>>
>>> IMHO, time would be better invested in a Wayland compositor, but that's
>>> another huge task.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Olivier
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Xfce4-dev mailing list
>>> Xfce4-dev at xfce.org
>>> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce4-dev
>>
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