Would switching to Qt be a good idea?

[samuel ammonius]

(I accidentally formatted my last message as a quote. ignore that)

On Fri, Jul 8, 2022 at 3:28 PM samuel ammonius <sfammonius at gmail.com> wrote:

> "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
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>>>
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>
>
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