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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#371

Post by audidude »

nirvdrum wrote: post #188
Klonoar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust and GTK3/4 are fairly well supported, no? I know QT is a bit more of a pain to do from Rust, but I wanna say that's possible too... though nowhere near as evident as gtk-rs.

GTK and Rust works really well on Linux, which I suppose is the pertinent part given the focus of the article. I've yet to work out how to get GTK and Rust to work on macOS or Windows, which makes cross-platform UI difficult.

I built a new GTK 4 backend specifically for macOS so we have native support for rendering all of the UI with OpenGL like we do on Linux and Windows. I'm fairly quick to fix bugs if I get good reports, and it can be installed with `brew install gtk4`.

You can also build GTK for macOS easily with meson as it has subprojects for everything. In fact, our CI does it from scratch on every commit w/ macOS. On Windows you can just open GTK with visual studio and build it by using Meson to generate the project files.

A bunch of work is about to land to make the macOS backend more solid/faster too similar to the work Firefox did in the last couple of years to reduce power usage w/ OpenGL/IOSurface/etc.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#372

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #324
viraptor wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between "we'll test and support two color schemes" and "we'll design ui with parametrised colors, shapes and text sizes which can adjust to any change and still be usable". If we settle on bright/dark/colorblind mode selectors that everyone expects to be supported, I'm happy. I've seen themes in the past and there was always a few apps which just can't resize elements in the expected way, or the…

Ok, then don't support it. But don't patronise me. Don't tell me I couldn't possibly wield the power of recolouring a piece of UI without hurting myself, and deny me the chance to even try.

But libadwaita hasn't taken away the ability to try? You can still load custom themes through GTK_THEME and specific CSS through ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#373

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #166
zozbot234 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you have touchscreens you can use two-finger gestures, and if you're on a mouse you'll have no issue targeting a thin widget. It makes a lot of sense from that POV.

If the thin widget is directly against the edge of the viewport, maybe. If it's literally anywhere else on the screen , then no, Fitts's Law applies, and it's a bad target. It has height but no width . This is especially true for those with motor or visual handicaps, or both. It's damned near unusable even with very modest levels of distraction or other factors, e.g., using a device as a passenger on a moving vehicle…

[deleted]

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#374

Post by mappu »

ognarb wrote: post #329
mappu wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QML is practically electron - it's runtime interpreted declarative UI plus a Javascript engine. QML still has only rudimentary support for AOT compilation. Both the old qmlcompiler and the new qmlsc compiler are commercial-only: https://www.qt.io/blog/the-new-qtquick-compiler-technology . LGPL users only get the interpreter. Widgets is still the 'Real Qt'. Some very modern, responsive-layout desktop apps like Telegra…

qmlcompiler is open source and the new qmlsc is also open source. It's just the extensions that helps making your qml code compatible with the new compiler that isn't open source. This is indeed annoying but not everything is commercial only.

Where can I find the source code for qmlcompiler and qmlsc?

qmltc and qmlcachegen are available in the qtdeclarative.git repo (on either code.qt.io or GitHub) but i can't find qmlcompiler nor qmlsc anywhere. I believe they are commercial only under the "Qt for Device Creation" license.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#375

Post by bitbang »

wildrhythms wrote: post #328
wink wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying my best not to sound like a raving Linux zealot, but what you see as normal productivity stuff I may not have done... ever. Converting a PDF to a png? Why? Maybe IrfanView could do that, it's what I've been using on Windows for any conversion since ACDSee went out of fashion... I've never seen a GUI tool that works as flawlessly as pdftk. Yes, it's CLI, but it works better than anything I ever encountered. Scr…

Have you never needed to annotate/sign a PDF? On Mac OS just open Preview (the sane default for PDFs), use the annotate tools. There's even a built-in UI for "scanning" a signature via the front-facing camera, the software automatically cuts out the background so you have a signature to drop on the page. Save and the PDF is signed. Trying to do this on Linux requires moving a mountain.

In KDE: - Double Click PDF, Opens it in PDF viewer "Okular" - Select "Stamp" Annotation Tool - Draw region to place stamp - View stamp properties and click to select image source - Select SVG file I always use that has my signature that I created using my wacom tablet. - Adjust placement if needed - Save file

Takes all of ~15 seconds. Don't see how that equates to moving mountains.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#376

Post by yyyk »

anthk wrote: post #281
eric4smith wrote: post #205

Until there is as “simple” to use an app like Preview on the Mac, most of these new generation apps are garbage. I’ve just switched to Ubuntu on a workstation I have lying around. And man, is it hard to use for just normal everyday use. Yes, it has the basics covered, but like many others my job has a lot of simple image manipulation related stuff. Convert pdf to png. Assemble multiple images into a pdf. Quickly shar…

From ImageMagick: convert bla.pdf bla.png convert *.png output.pdf

Note that ImageMagick isn't always the best tool, since ImageMagick always reconverts the image, often with lower quality. Often it's useful to have the image to go in as is, or use a loseless resizing. I use img2pdf for that with great results.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#377

Post by chrismorgan »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #170
floren wrote: post #36

These applications look really pretty and all, but for my selfish purposes, I just really want real goddamn scrollbars back. I use a mouse that doesn't have a scroll wheel, but for the life of me I've been unable to figure out how to make applications like Firefox just give me a real scroll bar on the side of the window that's thick enough to grab without fiddly pixel-hunting.

Touch users don't use the scroll bar, they just swipe up/down.

Speak for yourself. Firefox on my PinePhone is not pure overlay scrollbars like almost all other mobile platforms, and I certainly appreciate the ability to manipulate the scrollbar to achieve more scrolling with less effort, and to jump to different parts of long documents with it with just a touch rather than potentially multiple swipes.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#378

Post by _-david-_ »

jfb wrote: post #82

What if you don't want the same applications with the same interface modalities on different devices? Shouldn't we be much more concerned about data portability than application portability?

> Shouldn't we be much more concerned about data portability than application portability?

If you use the same app on your phone and computer the data is almost certainly portable between them.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#379

Post by malermeister »

ragingrobot wrote: post #335
malermeister wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I want to use GNOME's nice touch functionality and rich set of apps, but not the style? (Which in my subjective view is wayyy too gray). Why do those things have to be tightly coupled all of a sudden? We've made it through decades without breaking theming, what changed?

> We've made it through decades without breaking theming, what changed? According to the GNOME team, application developers were getting bug reports filed against their application about broken interface elements, and GNOME was having bug reports filed for the same. The devs stated it was the fault of the theme being used, and as such it would eliminate a lot of headaches for both if themes were forbidden. "Independe…

That sounds like it'd be solved by a filter rule in their bug tracker, removing theming altogether seems like a strong overreaction imo.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#380

Post by malermeister »

audidude wrote: post #304
malermeister wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I want to use GNOME's nice touch functionality and rich set of apps, but not the style? (Which in my subjective view is wayyy too gray). Why do those things have to be tightly coupled all of a sudden? We've made it through decades without breaking theming, what changed?

That's called GtkGesture. Just use it. The libadwaita components literally bind the gesture to the ui design pattern widget . If you just don't want the ui design pattern just use the gesture, it's already there waiting for you to make something with it.

I'm not talking about a library, I'm more concerned with DEs implementing the library.

Things like swipe with three fingers to switch desktops, swipe up with three fingers to show open windows etc. Why is all that stuff tied to a UI theme?

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