Richard Stallman On KDE/GNOME Cooperation

Karma Sucks writes: "For the first time that I remember, RMS is encouraging collaboration between the GNOME and KDE projects. He offers a concrete idea: Unifying the themes between KDE and GNOME. Matthias Ettrich once went far enough to propose a default unified 'Linux' theme that both Qt and GTK+ could support."

kde-look.org

[The Great Wakka]

I've never heard of it before. I would have posted themes.org as the link. But that's me. kde-look is a very nice website, but is there a GNOME equivalent?

Re:kde-look.org

[grrae]

I found this page [themes.org]. It seems to be what your looking for.

Re:Hoping

[avalys]

Why would you have stability problems running KDE apps in gnome, and vice-versa? They're only X-Apps - konsole, gimp, and the rest couldn't care less what window manager/desktop environment/file manager/web browser you're using.

Re:Wow

[Yorrike]

I'll say.

Yes, the whole "my desktop is liquid" look is trendy at the moment, but I think there definitely needs to be a super-sexy not-found-elsewhere none-ripoff default theme for both KDE and Gnome.

Just take a brose through something like the GUG galleries ( This for example [sunsite.dk]) and imagine these works as entire themes.

In the same way that flashy graphics make people buy video games, KDE and Gnome need to attract the masses with sex appeal.

Re:Woah

[Anonymous Coward]

The KDE and Gnome projects have completely different infrastructures; making apps interoperate would be a Major undertaking. Different GUI toolkits, different interproc communications, even different languages for most all project-related work if you want to go to that level. And each project believes it's already doing the best thing, so changing to the other way would be a step backwards.

Common theming is one thing; general commonality is quite a different, larger scale effort.

Re:Menubar

[super-flex-o-matic]

the apple-style menubar is patented by apple.

go pay your license fees for intellectual property...

Re:Layering GTK and QT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you some kind of fucking lunatic? Tell me you are joking, please. GTK is not the native widget API, unless you live in Stallman-land with the magical fairies. X is the standard, and that is what Qt should be and is built on.

No reason for KDE/GNOME to depend on Qt/Gtk+

[qweqwe]

The main reason for the split, is the widget set dependence of GNOME and KDE. Until this issue is resolved, deeper interoperability issues won't likely be resolved.

You *should* be able to use Qt write a complete GNOME application that obeys GNOMEs theming rules, uses Bonobo, GConf and other GNOME technologies.

You *should* be able to use Gtk+ write a complete KDE application that obeys KDE's theming rules, uses KParts, DCOP and other KDE technologies.

Yes, it may be *easier* to write KDE applications with Qt, and GNOME applications with Gtk+, each desktop/platform shouldn't be *tied* to these widget sets.

That's not the way it works now. At the moment, I believe that GNOME's technologies (at least the one's in GNOME 2) are more decoupled from the widget set than KDE's. For instance, it's possible to write a Qt application that uses GConf2, Orbit2, GStreamer, and Bonobo2 without linking in any Gtk+. If you *really* work at it, you should also be able to integrate with GNOME's accessibility framework by hooking Qt components to the appropriate ATK+ options. That's a fair chunk of GNOME already. But there are many other GNOME features that Qt applications can't take advantage of.

Re:Not quite.

[dietz]

Gee, that's nice. Care to explain how to make that "sophisticated" clipboard model work with something other than plain text?

It's explained (high-level) right there in that same article [jwz.org] that you didn't bother to read.

Better luck next time.

This happened a long time ago.

[dan the person]

KDE has supported GTK themes for a long time now.

http://www.kde.org/announcements/k3c-announce.ht ml

In addition to native KDE2 themes, we are pleased to announce that KDE now supports pixmap GTK themes. For importing a GTK theme into KDE, you just need to use the 'klegacyimport' wizard, available as a little standalone GUI application. However, while GTK themes are displayed faster and more efficiently than even native GTK itself, we do not recommend using this format for creating new themes. Theme developers should prefer KDE2's native widget theming which yields superior results both in terms of quality and speed. A nice HowTo and some documentation on KDE2 theming is available here.

Re:Better C++!

[Otter]

Specifically, what improvements would you like to see in G++ ? Perhaps you or someone else might want to post your thoughts. We'd be very interested in what you have to say, if your comments are specific and concrete.

I don't claim to be qualified to speak on this myself, but Waldo Bastian's paper [www.suse.de] on this subject would be a good start. (Note that it concerns linking, not g++, although there are plenty of wishes out there for g++ too.) Write Waldo or post to the kde-devel mailing list and I'm sure plenty of detailed suggestions will be forthcoming.

Re:No reason for KDE/GNOME to depend on Qt/Gtk+

[loopkin]

work is already in progress.

KDE can import GTK/GNOME themes.
And, the other day, launching my favorite GNOME app using KDE, the systray icon/menu went in the right place.

Well, you may smile at such things, but it works, and it's a beginning....