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<br><div><div>On Feb 13, 2008, at 11:50 AM, Hal V. Engel wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">I think that we need to keep in mind that all of these DEs and widget sets are<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">built on top of X11 and that X11 is the software layer that is common to all<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">DEs and window managers in the open source arena.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Anything that is done to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">improve CM in X11 benefits all of these tools where as improvements made in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></font></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">KDE or Gnome or QT or GTK... only benefit a subset of users/applications.</font></p> </blockquote></div><br><div>GTK+ (and Qt to a large degree) are not so tied to X11. Qt has strong Windows and Mac support, though KDE not so much (That is, KDE apps are more likely to be running on top of X11 than Qt apps in general).</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>With GTK+, the userbase of Windows users is quite high. Also, the native OS X implemention of GTK+ is now very close to practical and many are really looking forward to using that. Then there is the DirectFB layer for GTK+, etc. And now that Trolltech has been bought, their non-PC support might also increase.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>So for open source applications, non-X11 support is still significant.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>However I definitely agree that KDE and Gnome are too high-level to provide much support to applications. Perhaps a multi-layered view is best, with different functionality living at different levels.</div></body></html>