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The end of the nice GTK button

blog.brixit.nl

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Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#511

Post by Hackbraten »

sgt wrote: post #329
porker wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In modern Windows, press Win-key and start to type, oops, it missed the first keypresses, presented the completely wrong results and made a mess of your workflow. On Win10 I'm getting regular delays in keypresses and just enough lag when typing to be noticeable. I've been trying plugging in two USB keyboards as a poor man's split keyboard, and the amount of software (looking at you IntelliJ in particular) that does…

Delays on keypresses.. in 2022. Are we going backwards?!

Even Apple’s bootloader on Macs is dropping keypresses now!

Starting some time in 2020, the FileVault password dialog will drop characters whenever I’m typing quickly. And it never dropped characters before 2020 – even though I’ve had FileVault 2 on for many years.

And that’s at bootloader runtime, with not a single bit of the macOS kernel loaded yet!

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#512

Post by zozbot234 »

mrob wrote: post #465
azornathogron wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be solved in software, due to the Nyquist limit: Sharp high-contrast edges (text) necessarily have high frequencies, and you need a high sampling rate (pixel density) to produce a good approximation of that signal. People have spent a lot of effort to push anti-aliasing techniques as far as they can go, but displays with higher pixel density are just better for displaying text. I agree that if you are making…

Bitmap fonts (and hinted fonts are automatically generated bitmap fonts) are pixel art, so the Nyquist limit doesn't apply. In pixel art, the pixels are treated as little squares or rectangles, not band-limited point samples. This means you sacrifice the ability to display arbitrary shapes, but I'm not trying to reproduce printed text so I don't care. I have perfectly sharp text on a 1080p monitor because I disable a…

Nitpicking, but a pixel is always a point sample, not a little square. The native medium for displaying pixel art is CRT displays, where these point samples are used to control an electron gun that introduces a Gaussian blur, basically the best case for purely analog upsampling (or DAC, rather) of a pixel raster. No little squares in sight, though! What you're talking about is using pixel-perfect control to reach the Nyquist limit, as mentioned in my sibling comment.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#513

Post by marcus_holmes »

Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

I would love it if we could all just decide on a single WIMP interface and stick to that.

I understand that this would annoy designers. But they're annoying me so I think this is fair.

My go-to example at the moment is Figma, which is a design tool that I find almost impossible to use because it has so many hidden, unexplained "features" in its UI. If I accidentally brush the keyboard I have to quit the application and restart because I have no idea how to get back to the state I was in.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#514

Post by badsectoracula »

jandrese wrote: post #73
jabbany wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The devs and designers are all using 4k, 5k displays these days. Trying to use modern apps etc. on just "FHD" (1080p) displays is painful.

Over 2/3 of regular users are still using 1080p[1]. If your design looks bad on FHD then it looks bad to most people. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Perhaps a better survey would be the one by Firefox[0] since it isn't biased towards gamers. Basically HiDPI monitors are like a combined 2% of all Firefox users.

1080p usage is lower than on Steam but that is because 768p usage is higher :-P.

[0] https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#515

Post by hnlmorg »

ogurechny wrote: post #494
hnlmorg wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What system was this? I've used every version of Windows (literally), DOS since the 80s, Macs since the 90s, Linux since the 90s, Atari ST, and several different 8-bit micros and I don't recall ever using F2 to save. I do believe your anecdote but it's completely escaped me what platform might have used F2. Also worth noting that keyboards do still have function keys. In fact I use F2 as my `tmux` control prefix. :)

Borland IDEs, Norton Commander (and its alternatives) built-in text editor, and programs that mimicked those green-grayish or blue-grayish text mode windows. Or those simply made with Turbo Vision.

Ah yes, I now remember using F2 on Turbo Pascal. Thanks for the reminder :)

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#516

Post by naoqj »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #467
aftbit wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox desktop app is written in QT, at least on Windows and Linux. Mac uses its own custom UI to better fit with the Mac-app world.

Also EA Origin is written with Qt no? At least last I ran windows?

The Blizzard app is.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#517

Post by prmoustache »

jraph wrote: post #89

It seems like KDE and Plasma is the place where look and feel is constantly but incrementally refined; we've been saved from this flat design trend so far and things keep looking pleasant and modern and being usable. We know they care, and have great attention to details because that's documented weekly [1]. I find the Breeze theme really well done and its GTK port, Brise, is also very nice, to the point Gnome looks…

> It seems like KDE and Plasma is the place where look and feel is constantly but incrementally refined;

Every time I see a comment like that, I try again KDE, only to leave it 15 minutes later because it is a huge mess. Everytime I try configuring the panel to my liking nothing goes where I want to and I end up with widgets everywhere.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#518

Post by mrob »

zozbot234 wrote: post #512
mrob wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitmap fonts (and hinted fonts are automatically generated bitmap fonts) are pixel art, so the Nyquist limit doesn't apply. In pixel art, the pixels are treated as little squares or rectangles, not band-limited point samples. This means you sacrifice the ability to display arbitrary shapes, but I'm not trying to reproduce printed text so I don't care. I have perfectly sharp text on a 1080p monitor because I disable a…

Nitpicking, but a pixel is always a point sample, not a little square. The native medium for displaying pixel art is CRT displays, where these point samples are used to control an electron gun that introduces a Gaussian blur, basically the best case for purely analog upsampling (or DAC, rather) of a pixel raster. No little squares in sight, though! What you're talking about is using pixel-perfect control to reach the…

Pixel art is defined by treating pixels as little squares. There is no single native medium for displaying pixel art. The same techniques were used for games on portable systems with LCD displays. Additionally, there are many examples of printed art using blocky pixels.

The Nyquist limit is irrelevant to pixel art, because the Nyquist limit applies only to reconstructing signals from point samples. Using pixel art on a monochrome LCD (no subpixels), I can display signals with maximum frequency limited only by the sharpness of the edges of the little squares.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#519

Post by drdec »

hn_version_0023 wrote: post #509
Flow wrote: post #270

I really miss a consistent user experience. A core idea that I as a user can rely on to predict how a new app will work. I was in awe when I discovered as a kid that user interface were a research area. Things like Fitt's Law and so on. It was not just opinion. Today I get the feeling it's mostly just opinion. Either the designer's opinion or the wish to copy the look of something. Whenever I see a hamburger menu I s…

This reminds me of one of my personal bugaboos, which seems especially bad in Microsoft Windows: windows that spawn child windows that require input focus, but that don’t grab focus leaving you typing into nothing at all! Truly its crazy making.

IMHO, a worse practice is when you are happily typing along and the system throws up a dialog randomly, grabbing the focus and thereby "pressing" one of the buttons when you thought you were typing. Who knows what you just agreed to.

Re: The end of the nice GTK button

#520

Post by drdec »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #510
dspillett wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how can it be so slow? Because it is trying to be all things to all people: including supporting sponsored content and integrating with any fancy new/copied idea that the company is pushing (which may be quietly deprecated in the next major revision, but the hooks left adding abstraction load to everything else so that the few who actually found it useful don't complain).

Computers are ludicrously fast nowadays. Games are capable of doing a whole lot of shit in <16ms consistently while responding to user input, so I don't buy this "it's doing a lot!" argument, it is coded badly.

I imagine the hold up is that it is connecting to an external service.
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