What are consequences (the lack of freedom on the USA)

[Thomas Dodd]

Alan Cox wrote:
>>The point being, toolkit choice does not make an app ugly or bad. The 
>>fact that it looks/acts different also doesn't make it bad. Personaly I 
> 
> It tends to make it bad when you measure it in terms of convenience for
> accessibility tools (custom widget people never seem to get around to adding
> the ATK hooks) and also standards compliance. Actually doing it *right* is
> lacking in many but not all of the "we own your desktop" UI apps.

So if I write an app using Xt (or Motif) it's automatically bad?
And I guess writing with raw X11 (no toolkit) is right out.

>>From a Red Hat point of view the lack of accessibility is a *big deal*, and
> I suspect as a lot of the readers of this list get older they'll begin to
> find some of the accessibility stuff useful too.

I never said "accessibility" was bad. (Although it's a hideous name, 
brought about by the politicaly correct types. Ranks right up there with 
"intellectual property" to me.)

Go back to the start.

Maynard Kuona wrote :
> 
> Xine, mplayer, VLC. They work well, i.e., show video and all, but 
> they are ugly, seem to use some arbitrary toolkit, if any at all. 
> Xine's UI is ugly, mplayers is ugly. They lack proper integration
> into the system

That's what started this. I like Xine's UI. Try a few skins, or create a 
new one. Hell a Bluecurve-like skin would be fine. I won't use it, but 
others would. Even make it the defult.

I also don't like overly integrated apps. Sometimes they are good and 
make sense, but often they don't. Integrating the IE module with every 
app and the window manager has caused a lot of problems for M$. M$ Money 
and Word even used the IE module.

But when many(most) people talk about poor integration, they mean it 
doesn't use the same widgets or colors or something. So they want the M$ 
(MFC/VB especially) world where every single app looks the same. Only 
one radio button, scrollbar, <pick a widget> is used. This make things 
dull and boring to me.

That's something I liked about GTK+ and Enlightenment. I could theme 
almost every widget as I liked. I could make E look nearly identical to 
the Atari STe. When I got bored with the look of things I changed them. 
I always want the ability have per application themes. I like that 
different apps look/behave different.

Just like I liked that different models of cars looked/felt different 
inside. Now different makes do, but nearly every Ford uses the same 
dials, buttons, and indicators. So if I sat you in a Tarus, Focus, or 
F150 you probably couldn't tell which it was. They look the same.

	-Thomas