Simon, Thanks kindly for your detailed write up, especially the details including "Gtk everywhere" examples like Firefox, Libreoffice as well as reasons around the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP values/usage.
Interestingly, apps like IntelliJ have ditched themes like Metal/Win32/Gtk in favor of their own, but maintaining a custom Look&Feel is and undertaking that's unreasonable for the vast majority of Java developers. I'll begin unit-testing the Gtk theming across various Unix/Linux desktops -- especially those that are not Gtk-based -- and see how well it works. - tres.finocchi...@gmail.com On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 9:40 AM Simon McVittie via desktop-devel-list < desktop-devel-list@gnome.org> wrote: > On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 at 15:27:02 -0400, Tres Finocchiaro via > desktop-devel-list wrote: > > For reference, the commit which introduced this change: > > [1]https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/commit/ > > 00e0e6226371d53f651cc881e74c0543192c94a8# > > 5b3005b925ed5c2612a9604ad3c756b1f9472165 > > > > Note, at the time of committing that, Debian still had 225 instances of > the OS > > relying on this for detection of a Gtk-desktop (such as the mail > launcher to > > prefer Evolution to KMail, etc). > > Debian's gnome-session package carries a patch to revert that commit, > unfortunately. We'd like to stop doing that, but as you say, there are > at least 225 instances of packages doing it wrong. > > However, with or without that patch, anything that is looking at > the deprecated GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID and expecting its absence or > presence to indicate "non-GTK-based desktop" vs. "GTK-based desktop" > is certainly a bug - not just because newer GNOME no longer sets > GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID, but also because there are several GTK-based > desktops that are not GNOME. > > LXDE (before Qt) and XFCE are examples of desktop environments that you > would probably consider to be "GTK-based", but are not GNOME (not even > forked or derived from GNOME - they are their own thing, only sharing > lower-level libraries like GLib and GTK). They set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to > something that doesn't mention GNOME, and they don't set > GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID, because they are not GNOME, and claiming to > be GNOME would be inappropriate. > > MATE, Cinnamon and Deepin are examples of desktop environments based on > a fork of an older version of GNOME, but which are not GNOME *any more*; > again, they don't set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to GNOME or anything containing > GNOME, because they are their own independent desktop environments. > > I would recommend that Java GUI apps running on Linux (and probably > all Unix platforms) should use whichever "look and feel" is considered > to be high-quality and doesn't look hugely out-of-place. If the GTK > "look and feel" is considered high-quality, it should probably be used > everywhere. If it's considered low-quality (lots of bugs or missing > functionality or whatever), then it would likely be better to use one > that *is* high-quality, even if it doesn't visually resemble other apps > on the desktop. > > Firefox and Libreoffice use GTK everywhere. If it's good enough for them, > it's likely also good enough for Java. > > smcv > _______________________________________________ > desktop-devel-list mailing list > desktop-devel-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list >
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