[Geany-Devel] Gtk2 vs Gtk3 (was. Re: A direction for Geany)

Matthew Brush mbrush at xxxxx
Tue Nov 12 22:23:15 UTC 2013


On 13-11-12 09:47 AM, Frank Lanitz wrote:
> Am 11.11.2013 10:31, schrieb Matthew Brush:
>> The other way we could go is to just strive to be a proper, modern GTK+
>> application. By this I mean using stuff like GtkApplication,
>> GtkApplicationWindow, GSettings, etc. The GTK+ stack has lots of cool
>> stuff to make doing applications easier/better that we don't use because
>> of the ever-present restriction about needing to be able to support LTS
>> distros with old GTK2 and not wanting to "GObjectify" and/or make large
>> changes to the code.
>
> As mentioned in another mail already, we got a lot of users requesting
> to still support Gtk2 as they don't want to change to some Gtk3-based
> desktop. These users will decrease with time for sure and once Xfce 4.12
> is ready for Gtk3 hopefully will disappear, but currently it looks a bit
> like this will be happen when GNU/Hurd final is released.  Until this
> eternity, we need to find a way for users not using Gtk3 in favor of
> Gtk2 -- even I know it's a pain in the back.
>

It would be a less painful if we could at least use the current/last 
supported GTK+2 version at least (2.24-ish). Supporting back some half a 
decade of GTK+2 versions when already the most recent version is 
deprecated/dead and shouldn't really be used for any new code is kind of 
crazy.

I'm curious if you asked the users complaining about not wanting to 
"switch to a Gtk3-based desktop" whether they actually have libgtk3 
installed anyway? For example I use XFCE 4.10, which isn't technically a 
Gtk3-based desktop environment, and I'm happily using Gtk2 and 3 apps 
side-by-side without any issues. Is it possible the users were just 
expressing more GNOME-hate and directing it GTK3 instead or you think 
they really are using super old desktop environments before Gtk3 started 
being widely distributed?

Cheers,
Matthew Brush


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