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We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

mitchellh.com

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Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#71

Post by TheDong »

Lerc wrote: post #6

> Whatever your feelings are about OOP and memory management, the reality is that if you choose GTK, you're forced into interfacing in some way with the GObject type system. You can't avoid it. In the past this has also been my assessment of GTK. It lead me to decide to take the other path, to never directly use GTK. I appreciate the value in having a unified user interface between applications, but I have always tho…

> It is my choice not to use it and I am fine with that. However I also have encountered people who seem to think it is not my choice not to use it

I'm curious what the main opposing opinion you've hit there is? Is it accessibility and non-roman-alphabet input? Those are the things that kinda stand out to me as "gtk does this pretty well, and most developers who hand-roll stuff wouldn't think about it".

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#72

Post by AceJohnny2 »

aidenn0 wrote: post #66
mitchellh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That lead me to think that GTK and the GObject system is opinionated in a way that are not terribly compatible with my own opinions. This might be amusing for me to say but... I also feel this way. I disagree a lot with the Gnome ecosystem's point of view. Funny! Using GTK for Linux was a pragmatic choice. A goal of Ghostty is to be "platform-native" (defined here because there's no such thing on Linux: https://gho…

I hate GTK enough that I'm considering porting Ghostty to literally any other GUI system. I think that Qt is probably the only alternative that anyone might consider "platform native" so I'll probably go that direction, even though Qt development is rather special in its own way (you know how GTK decided C needed an object system? Qt decided that C++ needed a more better object system).

> Qt decided that C++ needed a more better object system

I haven't used Qt, nor C++, in many moons, but my understanding was that `moc` [1] filled a gap of run-time dynamicism that C++ didn't natively support when it was invented. Has C++ since evolved to make that obsolete? Seems like moc is still a thing.

[1] https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/moc.html

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#73

Post by eviks »

crawshaw wrote: post #3

Nice example of how good programming is often about meeting systems where they are: Whatever your feelings are about OOP and memory management, the reality is that if you choose GTK, you're forced into interfacing in some way with the GObject type system. You can't avoid it. Well you can avoid it and we did avoid it. And it leads to a mess trying to tie the lifetimes of your non-reference-counted objects to the refer…

Giving in a bad system is more pragmatic rather than good

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#74

Post by eviks »

hactually wrote: post #42
LambdaComplex wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Linux because it gives me the freedom to make my system behave how I want. The GNOME devs seem to think that GNOME should only behave how they want. For example, last time I checked, GNOME required a third-party plugin just to move the clock from the center of the status bar to the side. I'm not at all surprised to see that this mindset extends to GTK.

Can you do that on Windows/mac? Gnome devs not withstanding, you have access to the source to change it if you want or put up a PR?

You can't put up a PR if the gate keepers reject your whole design approach

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#75

Post by eviks »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #44
ripley12 wrote: post #35

> This has already led to more easily introducing GUI features like a new GTK titlebar tabs option Yes! This is huge, I previously gave up on Ghostty because the title bar wasted so much space on my laptop screen: https://bsky.app/profile/reillywood.bsky.social/post/3lebapf... I found the PR in case anyone else is curious what the new functionality looks like: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/8166

If it’s not maximized, the space isn’t wasted. The title in the response image looks incredibly crowded. May be ok if several buttons could be removed from the titlebar.

It's literally wasted because it's used for nothing useful. Also, you can have other apps that now can take up less area.

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#76

Post by mixmastamyk »

eviks wrote: post #75
mixmastamyk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s not maximized, the space isn’t wasted. The title in the response image looks incredibly crowded. May be ok if several buttons could be removed from the titlebar.

It's literally wasted because it's used for nothing useful. Also, you can have other apps that now can take up less area.

Titlebars are quite useful, I use them frequently to move, raise, lower, and maximize windows.

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#77

Post by eviks »

Zambyte wrote: post #56
metaltyphoon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've migrate to it as I need a terminal that is truly cross platform.

Cross platform doesn't mean your platforms. I use Ghostty on GNU/Linux and MacOS, because it truly is cross platform.

It doesn't mean his platforms, it means the top ones, so at least his and hundreds of millions of others'

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#78

Post by sevg »

corsica wrote: post #2

I don't get the hype around this application. The only UI Ghostty has is tabs and the context menu, is it really worth the integration pain and now this rewrite? Maybe they're planning for more, like those GUI configuration dialogs that iterm2 has? Kitty uses OpenGL for everything and draws its own tabs, they're fully customizable and can be made to look however you want. By not wasting time on integrating with massi…

> Kovid was able to quickly implement

Is this new account actually Kovid?

Context: “aumerle” had posted only about Kitty for years as though impartial. And talked about Kovid as if they were a different person. Turns out “aumerle” is Kovid and got banned. He was trash-talking ghostty and advertising Kitty in every ghostty thread. (He does the same using “aumerlex” on reddit, but nobody has called him out on there yet.)

I’m suspicious here because Kovid spent hours trying to force me to admit that he writes code faster than Mitchell XD https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42567224 (you’ll need “showdead” enabled, all of Kovid’s comments got flagged to death).

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#79

Post by monksy »

Biggest issue I have with Ghostty is that on the mac with Nano.. you can't copy and paste multiple lines into the editor. It's something about how the terminal handles "bracketed pasting".. but yet this isn't an issue with iterm2 and term.

Re: We rewrote the Ghostty GTK application

#80

Post by eviks »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #76
eviks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally wasted because it's used for nothing useful. Also, you can have other apps that now can take up less area.

Titlebars are quite useful, I use them frequently to move, raise, lower, and maximize windows.

Oh sure, but some people use more ergonomic ways to perform those actions, so to them the title bars would be a waste even if not maximized
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