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

[Steven Blatnick]

I'm being a bit off topic, but one problem I have with having both Gtk2 
and Gtk3 apps is that there have been settings and theme discrepancies.  
For example, I use Linux Mint MATE, and there have been some problems 
with bookmarks being in sync between the file open dialog in Gtk2 apps 
vs Gtk3 apps.  Plus, if I don't use a theme that is available in both 
versions of Gtk, then I end up with foreign looking apps in my 
environment, almost like I'm port forwarding X and getting things 
theme-less.  Even geany hasn't been flawless in this Gnome Civil War, 
with the default external file browser being nautilus, where my system 
uses the nearly identical caja, although I changed the setting in geany 
of course.

On 11/12/2013 03:23 PM, Matthew Brush wrote:
> 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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