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>