Such an engine is not the courtesy of KDE developers, but of the GTK developers, but unfortunately these are to dumb/lazy/busy/idiotic for doing so.

What we really need is a decent browser in KDE, in KDE 3.5.9 Konqueror ist quite good, but in KDE 4.1.2 it just sucks. Arora looks promising, but it's Qt only so it doesn't integrate into KDE.

blueget wrote:Arora looks promising, but it's Qt only so it doesn't integrate into KDE.

I must say Arora integrates quite nicely from a visual perspective. But you mean that it doesn't following standard KDE interface guidelines (like having the preferences under the same menu item across applications)?

blueget wrote:Such an engine is not the courtesy of KDE developers, but of the GTK developers, but unfortunately these are to dumb/lazy/busy/idiotic for doing so.

Which is why I'm suggesting maybe KDE needs to take this over or produce something to obviate the need for it. This isn't a blame game, it's about solving problems. But since I'm in no position to solve them myself I guess I'll shut up.

What we really need is a decent browser in KDE, in KDE 3.5.9 Konqueror ist quite good, but in KDE 4.1.2 it just sucks. Arora looks promising, but it's Qt only so it doesn't integrate into KDE.

Whether we need that or not, it doesn't solve the problem for the other hundreds of GTK applications people might want to run in KDE, or for people who would rather just use the browser they like.

Bottom line is that it's a regression from 3.5, where GTK apps integrated nicely.

Which is why I'm suggesting maybe KDE needs to take this over or produce something to obviate the need for it.

Well, this isn't a question of a need, it's more of a question of possibility to do something like that.

Gtk/KDE apps will never look exactly the same as Qt/KDE apps, unless their developers switch to Qt/KDE. Which will happen like.... never.

The catch is that gtk look is much simpler, and has much less tweaking options, especially compared to KDE4.

There are only two way that can make gtk apps look good in KDE:
1. Using gtk theme that imitates the look of KDE apps (which is EXACTLY what gtk-kde4 does), but expect to compromise because gtk apps have different kind of color schemes/styles/layouts and use different set of icons. Which obviously means that perfect imitation can never be achieved, and we have to live with those imperfections. And, btw, default oxygen theme is very hard to imitate, which is one of the main reasons why it takes so long for gtk-kde4.

2. Using good looking gtk theme that doesn't at all imitate KDE style, but it looks good anyway simply because it's a theme made for that kind of app, so you have no imperfections. And, yes, good looking gtk themes CAN be found.

It is an obvious fact that gtk style/look is only a matter of - oh, what a surprise - gtk look/style.
I simply don't see how can KDE devs have anything to do with it, unless you want them to rewrite all gtk apps to look the same as KDE ones.
Tweaking gtk styles is a job for someone who's familiar and experienced with gtk.

And another thing: I managed to set up gtk apps to look 80% like KDE (with gtk-kde3 it was abut 85%, but, hey, still work in progress ), so everyone can do it. The fact that most of us have to do it manually is not the problem of KDE but a problem of our distro assemblers not doing their job.

XiniX wrote:Here's a good solution:
- install gnome-control-center and some gnome themes
- use the control center to give a nice look to the GTK apps
- launch gnome-settings-daemon at startup in your profile

Githzerai wrote:With a little quality time invested GTK apps *DO* look great in KDE4.

Is this something we can tell new users? I don't think so...
These are solutions for KDE-enthusiasts.

I know from experience many people are willing to give open source software a try; many run illegal versions of Windows they want to get rid of. But when they install Linux/KDE it looks like a pile of workarounds to them, so they think it's not ready for mainstream, and they go back to what they're used to. And what's worse: after their negative experience they'll advice others not to try it. And 1 negative experience may last a lifetime.

I've introduced many people to Linux/KDE; I think about 90% went back to their illegal copies of Windows because of solutions like oh, but for this problem you need to install packages X, Y and Z, and then edit config file A to include undocumented option B, but set it to D, not C, and then reboot while pressing Ctrl-BLA...

This means people would rather be thieves than use KDE!

I think that, if we want to convince users to use KDE in stead of other software, perfect integration for apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org is much more important than plasmoids and activities, no matter how much I personally like them.

Unfortunately, Windows needs those same hacks generally as well, except developers make up applications to make everything look all right... when in reality it is just a hack.

mensch wrote:That's strange, my OOo 3.0 currently looks like this.

The "Appearance" section in the preferences also doesn't list any themes for OOo, but I'm pretty sure some are installed. gtk-kde4 is certainly installed and running, because OOo is the only application having this kind of trouble.

Me too! I'm having exactly the same problem with Mensch, that my OOo 3.0 toolbar and menu are totally broken after installing gtk-qt-engine in KDE 4. I use Oxygen theme too. And my OOo cannot look like the screenshot of Githzerai. (on the 1st page of this thread) If there is no workaround on this, I guess I'll have to abandon the idea applying Qt theme to Gtk applications. (sigh)

OOo is currently the only application that doesn't respect my gtk-qt settings. I have other OOo themes installed which don't show up under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Appearance, so my guess there's something broken. Of course everything is still usable, it just looks extremely ugly, uglier than the default native GTK look as well.

RobertoMS, are you using Debian as well, or another distribution?

One problem with using style bridges is that when used with applications which are not directly using the target engine, weird things are almost certain to be a result.

While gtk-qt might work quite reliably for GTK applications, it will always be a misfit for application which use different widget abstractions, e.g. OpenOffice.org or Mozilla products.

During the OOo 2.x and KDE 3.x phase, real integration work was being done by implementing at least certain aspects of the OpenOffice.org abstraction framework on top of Qt/KDE libraries.
AFAIK they (OOo) are looking for someone who wants to work on something similar base on current versions of the libraries.

Probably the same goes for Mozilla, i.e. integration into the host platform becoming increasingly important.

Unfortunately getting into these code bases is not an easy task, so it might take a while until some developers are bored enough to give it a try or until some company wants that integration to happen sooner.

Cheers,
_

mensch wrote:OOo is currently the only application that doesn't respect my gtk-qt settings. I have other OOo themes installed which don't show up under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Appearance, so my guess there's something broken. Of course everything is still usable, it just looks extremely ugly, uglier than the default native GTK look as well.

RobertoMS, are you using Debian as well, or another distribution?

Hi, I forgot to mention, no, I'm using Mandriva on my Eee PC. I can't recall how gtk-qt-engine worked for OOo on my Ubuntu 8.04.1 KDE 4 since it was a couple of months ago when I used KDE 4 on Ubuntu. But in Mandriva 2009, the gtk-qt-engine they offer does break OOo.

People who are interested may want to refer to this page: GTK-Qt Theme Engine bug #24, which deals exactly with this issue, and recently they seem to have add a patch, which I don't know how to apply to my system (perhaps a recompilation? But believe me, my ratio of successful build experience is close to 0 ). And Fedora people seem to have build a patched RPM, which I have downloaded, however it's not working on my Mandriva.

XiniX wrote:Here's a good solution:
- install gnome-control-center and some gnome themes
- use the control center to give a nice look to the GTK apps
- launch gnome-settings-daemon at startup in your profile

Hmmm, before my distro (Mandriva) adapt the patch of gtk-qt-engine to fix OpenOffice.org problem, this is probably my choice for now.

This is what I am doing: installing Murrine engine and themes (my favorite and most recommended themes for Gtk applications), and using gtk-qt-engine to load them; gtk-qt-engine is still needed to apply my KDE fonts to Gtk applications. This way, I keep the fonts consistent, while using some MurrinaXXX theme for Gtk, and Oxygen for Qt. Dual swords, but I can enjoy the beauty of both themes, until one day they make OpenOffice.org really compatible with Qt themes.

However, there are still a lot of settings of Gtk apps not obeying settings in GNOME, so I'm going to do as XiniX has mentioned, installing gnome-settings-daemon and making it autostart. I hope this way I will got perfect Gtk styles under KDE 4.
[update]Hmmm... after my test, gnome-settings-daemon is not doing what I expect it to do... Gtk apps under KDE 4 still don't follow GConf settings. Weird.

Do you think that we could add a new topic in kde brainstorm about that particular topic ?

I fully agree that gtk-qt-engine is a must-have component to make some inescapable applications (OOO, Firefox, GIMP, thunderbird, Pidgin...) fit properly into kde4 environment.