[HN Gopher] Audacious 4.0 released, switches from GTK to Qt 5
___________________________________________________________________
Audacious 4.0 released, switches from GTK to Qt 5
Author : jrepinc
Score : 127 points
Date : 2020-03-22 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (audacious-media-player.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (audacious-media-player.org)
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Kind of a tangent, but why switch from GTK to Qt 5? Or rather,
| why Qt 5 rather than some other cross platform UI framework or
| even GTK 3? Is it ease of porting it for new features compared to
| something else? And/or is Qt just that much nicer to use?
| kitotik wrote:
| Curious, what would you choose?
|
| For whatever reason, the cross-platform UI story seems dire as
| ever if you don't count web.
| paride5745 wrote:
| GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific, while Qt5 is still
| agnostic and easy to port on different platforms.
| cycloptic wrote:
| Can you elaborate? If you're talking about the client-side
| decorations in GTK, those are up to the app developer to
| choose if they want them or not.
| ori_b wrote:
| As a user, I don't want them, and I don't want the app
| developer to make that choice for me.
| arghwhat wrote:
| The developers makes _every_ decision on how an
| application works and looks (It 's _part of the code_ ).
| The top row of pixels is no different.
| rixed wrote:
| The developers of Qt applications do not force how the UI
| will look like. Users can customize it with local style
| sheets (usually from the desktop environment).
| [deleted]
| cycloptic wrote:
| GTK also supports customization via local style sheets.
|
| In Qt it's absolutely possible for applications to force
| client-side decorations and force a certain stylesheet.
| Maybe it's not common in the apps you use, but again,
| it's up to the app developer if they want to make use of
| those things or not.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > GTK also supports customization via local style sheets.
|
| They also break them at every release.
| cycloptic wrote:
| That's just plain FUD. The only release I remember
| breaking CSS was 3.20, and that was because all the CSS
| was refactored to allow for way more theming
| possibilities.
|
| Regardless of that I don't see anything based on
| "cascading styles" as lending itself to a stable theming
| system anyway. The CSS is probably going to change any
| time a widget is added/refactored/bugfixed, this holds
| true on the web as well once you build up a complex
| library of React components or whatever. The point of it
| is that there are multiple styles from multiple sources
| that can cascade together. It's powerful but it can
| result in a lot of complexity, anyone who's had to add
| !important directives can attest to that. It needs to be
| strictly managed by the developers to really work
| correctly and to prevent the style overrides from getting
| out of hand. Allowing custom user CSS is only for power
| users who understand the caveats.
| arghwhat wrote:
| You can do that under Gtk3 too, but like with Qt5 it only
| allows small adjustments in line with how the developers
| built the UI. You can affect layout and style of
| _certain_ components, but that 's it.
|
| From the perspective of making design decisions, it's
| somewhat equivalent to swapping the phone shell on a
| Nokia 3310.
| infinity0 wrote:
| It feels like everyone someone voices an opinion about
| GTK3 explaining why they don't like it, some GTK3 fanboy
| has to chime in questioning the opinion and implying it
| isn't rational. Yeah, this makes me want to stick with
| GTK3 even less.
|
| People don't have to explain their preferences in a
| rational way, they will just switch away from GTK3. It's
| cheaper.
|
| Successful developers will try to interpret these users'
| feedback in a self-critical, introspective and positive
| way, and tweak their product based on the feedback. As
| opposed to continually challenging the giver of the
| feedback to explain their opinion in more detail, as if
| by repeatedly digging deeper and deeper into an opinion,
| you will at some point find some fundamental logical
| contradiction in their views that will make them re-
| evaluate their life philosophy on why they just don't
| like GTK3.
|
| I for one think the two opinions given above are
| perfectly clear ("GTK3 is becoming very GNOME3 specific",
| "As a user, I don't want them") and can't see why further
| clarification is being requested. If you really need
| clarification on these perfectly clear opinions, it is
| your problem.
| arghwhat wrote:
| No clarification at any point was necessary. Despite your
| rant here, I made no claims as to which was better, or
| whether a users opinion on that particular aspect was
| valid. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so one
| cannot claim right or wrong.
|
| What I stated was that development decisions, whatever
| they are, are up to the developers, including which
| frameworks they wish to use, and how they wish to use
| them. Saying in any form that you don't want developers
| to make decisions is nonsensical, as they would not be
| able to write anything then. Decisions have to be made,
| compromises chosen, and ultimately, not everyone will get
| their will.
|
| If you don't want other developers to make decisions for
| you, you're stuck writing all the software you want to
| use yourself.
| cycloptic wrote:
| A toolkit unfortunately can't enforce that. You have to
| ask the app developers to change their design.
| Paianni wrote:
| Cross-platform toolkits are the lazy way. Good quality graphical
| apps are available in derivatives that match the interface
| guidelines and optimum toolkits/APIs of their platforms.
| betenoire wrote:
| I think I have a similar preference, but lazy and good are not
| mutually exclusive
| DagAgren wrote:
| In this case, though, they are. There are no good cross
| platform UI kits, and there probably never will be.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > There are no good cross platform UI kits
|
| Qt is one.
| simonh wrote:
| Good quality graphical apps sounds great, but do those exist
| for every single use case? Unfortunately not. It doesn't matter
| how great the native graphical sketching apps on MacOS and
| Windows are, that isn't going to help me when what I want to do
| is analyse packet captures. That's when I reach for Wireshark,
| and do do full of appreciation to the devs for the excellent
| tool they have provided.
|
| Would it be better us every platform I use it in had an equally
| high quality fully native port with full feature parity across
| platforms? Sure, but I also understand the huge extra
| commitment of resources that would require, so I'm content to
| let them choose the trade off that works for them.
| randyrand wrote:
| Any screenshots?
| jccalhoun wrote:
| there's one on the front page: https://audacious-media-
| player.org/
| MawKKe wrote:
| I just built it on ubuntu 18.04. It looks pretty much identical
| to the native 3.9 version, except for icons.
|
| FYI anyone reading this, take a backup of your
| $HOME/.config/audacious before trying the new version. It did
| something funny there and no files would play on the old
| version anymore...
| overgard wrote:
| GTK integration in terms of look and feel on windows and macos
| has been so bad for so long that I think the only valid use case
| for it is if you're targeting gnome specifically.
| edgarvm wrote:
| Qt's license and cost is another valid reason to continue
| developing on GTK
| emilsedgh wrote:
| Qt is free and LGPL for Audacious, any other FOSS app, or any
| other project that is not looking to ship a patched version
| of Qt.
| slavik81 wrote:
| It's even free if you want to ship a patched version of Qt,
| as long as you also share the modified Qt code.
| mixedCase wrote:
| All the important parts of Qt are available under LGPLv3.
| This only makes a difference to you if you want to do
| Tivoization of your software (Gtk uses LGPLv2, this being the
| only major difference AFAIK). In which case you still have
| the option to buy a commercial license.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeeeeahhh.... at the moment. They have gotten really
| aggressive about commercial licensing recently, and even a
| conservative extrapolation should give one pause.
|
| Today they might limit themselves to forced registration,
| SEO, and spamming business contacts with carefully crafted
| statements designed to stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt
| around free licenses by strongly suggesting (without
| actually claiming) that commercial use without a commercial
| license is illegal. But tomorrow? Also, keep in mind that a
| business partner who isn't already familiar with Qt and
| LGPL is going to be about 10x more susceptible to the FUD.
| That's the whole idea.
|
| My guess: 30% chance of an ugly fork and lots of drama in
| the next few years. Then, absent a change in direction,
| another 30% chance in the few years after that, and so on.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Qt will be free because there is agreement with KDE Free
| Qt Foundation
|
| https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-
| and-o...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The Qt Company went over my head and tried to deceive my
| boss (as I perceive it).
|
| We don't even use Qt. I was just evaluating it. A year
| before they "reached out."
|
| I still see that as a strike against Qt, even though I
| understand that the existence of a technically free fork
| is effectively guaranteed.
| stormdennis wrote:
| Yes, there is a lot of FUD about the licensing for Qt
| when you search online, definitely not helped by how
| unclear the Qt site's explanation of it is (to me at
| least)
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > unclear
|
| That's charitable. The FUD is consistent, persistent, and
| targeted enough that I'd call it "intentionally
| deceptive."
|
| Monetizing open source is hard. Maybe this is necessary,
| and if it is, maybe that's fair. But it's also fair to
| stay away because of it.
| Frondo wrote:
| I don't find this unclear at all. I'm not sure what you
| would do to make it clearer. Thoughts?
|
| https://www.qt.io/download-open-
| source?hsCtaTracking=9f6a217...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| My boss looks at this page, he sees that open source
| programs can use Qt for free and that commercial programs
| need to pay. That's not the case, but the page is
| carefully worded to prevent him from confidently coming
| to the correct conclusion.
|
| If this were the extent of the shenanigans, I wouldn't be
| mad. I like having a "help me sell this to my boss" page.
| But it isn't the extent of the shenanigans. They went
| around me to shake someone down on my behalf (as I
| perceive it). Last time it was my boss. Next time I
| choose a GUI framework for an open source side project,
| I'll primarily worry about it being my users.
| cycloptic wrote:
| >he sees that open source programs can use Qt for free
| and that commercial programs need to pay.
|
| Where does it say that? Can you mention what he is having
| trouble with? I just took a quick glance at that link in
| GP and it seems to spell out the obligations of the LGPL
| pretty clearly.
| minraws wrote:
| > Make "open" consumer devices
|
| So Macs are out of question... Can't be signed can they?
|
| What if we get a commercial license? Apple disallowes
| GPL...
|
| Can't support GTK either, Expat Licensed GUI alternatives
| please...(I suggest Godot but it comes with a bit of pain
| and some baggage as well)
|
| There are also other corner cases that they might want to
| cover, with more documentation.(Not sure if I have missed
| something)
|
| If anyone has more info pls do share it. :)
| arendtio wrote:
| I thought the license issue was one of the past?
| cztomsik wrote:
| Both reasons are why I'm trying to develop an OSS alternative
| with easiness & platform-independence of the web but much
| lower system requirements than what electron has.
|
| I'm currently close to prealpha, if you're interested.
| https://github.com/cztomsik/graffiti/
| wccrawford wrote:
| A friend and I were just wishing something like this
| existed. "pre-prealpha" is a bit too early for me, but I
| definitely wish you luck in this.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Under project scope, there's this statement:
|
| > To name just a few things you usually don't need: ...
| flawless i18n & accessibility
|
| Lack of basic accessibility support is (or should be) a
| complete nonstarter for any serious project.
| simias wrote:
| Qt being C++ also makes creating language bindings often
| harder so not all languages will let you build a Qt
| interface. GTK is C so it's more straightforward.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Switching to Qt isn't automatically a slam dunk on Windows.
|
| I can tell when an app uses Qt because it opens in a
| microscopic window on my Surface. VLC users have been waiting
| on a fix for Qt-related fractional DPI scaling issues on
| Windows for years.
| joezydeco wrote:
| All Qt developers have. I wouldn't put all the blame squarely
| on Qt. Windows high DPI support is just awful on top of Qt's
| neglect.
|
| Have you ever hooked a high-DPI laptop to a low-DPI second
| monitor? What a freaking headache that is.
|
| Say what you want about MacBook owners being brand snobs, but
| they _never_ have to deal with this nonsense.
| akiselev wrote:
| As someone who regularly uses a 15" MacBook Pro (for work)
| and a workstation desktop + Thinkpad X1 Extreme with
| Windows 10/several Linux distros (for hardware and software
| personal projects, respectively) with lots of expensive
| brand hardware for both laptops, I loathe them all with a
| passion.
|
| MacBooks get the hardware DPI consistency sort of right,
| but multimonitor support is still flaming garbage to the
| point where I have to run caffeine 24/7 and use rigid
| window manager layouts configured per scenario (coding at
| my desk, pair programming at someone else's desk, meeting,
| presentation, etc.) to be able to efficiently context
| switch between the modes and keep the screensaver from
| mutilating my layout. Windows gets the window layout
| consistency between monitor configurations mostly right if
| you ignore chrome and Electron but multi-DPI support is
| flaming garbage. Linux is completely hit or miss for me
| depending on the monitor and drivers I've got configured
| but in a desktop you can at least make Linux reliably _not_
| flaming garbage.
|
| I just now realized that my 20th anniversary with computing
| must have passed in the last few months and looking back,
| all I can remember is how much every operating system I've
| ever used has gotten in my way.
|
| /rant
| toastercup wrote:
| Audacious is pretty slick (especially with this latest release),
| but lacks the features that Foobar2000 has that I need (namely, a
| directory/folder view that can replace the active playlist when
| clicked).
|
| If anyone is looking for a decent Foobar2000 alternative, Foobnix
| (https://github.com/foobnix/foobnix) has worked really well for
| me. It has some rough edges and doesn't seem (that) actively
| maintained, but it gets the important stuff right. Haven't come
| across anything else quite like it for Linux yet, unfortunately.
|
| If there was a Foobar-like folder view plugin for Audacious, I'd
| switch to it in a heartbeat.
| Arnavion wrote:
| I just run foobar2000 under wine. The font rendering is a bit
| iffy (some lines of text get clipped horizontally and
| vertically, as if the calculated dimensions are smaller than
| the rendered dimensions), but it doesn't bother me enough to
| investigate.
|
| That said, most of my music listening these days has been
| pointing mpv at an internet radio steam.
| modzu wrote:
| just posting to say thank u and share some love for audacious
| Naac wrote:
| Looks like this is moving from GTK2, not GTK3 ( latest ).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new
| projects / dead?
|
| How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X? Do they
| look near native or can you tell it's a Qt project and not a
| Cocoa project?
| empyrical wrote:
| Qt5 can be made to look pretty close to a native Mac app, but
| one thing I haven't figured out yet is if there's a way to
| get that "bouncy" effect you get when you scroll to either
| end of a list.
| syockit wrote:
| Is this "bouncy" effect the elastic one pulling against the
| end, snapping the list back to position when you release
| it, or is it the the one where the scroll ricochets off the
| end when you apply great force in order to quickly scroll
| to the end? The former is a very nice UI cue, but who on
| earth thought the latter was a good idea? As an Android
| user, I wish there was a way to disable the ricochet on all
| apps.
| empyrical wrote:
| I am referring to both styles of "bounce". Would be nice
| to have the former to implement "pull to refresh"
| unixhero wrote:
| Well if that's the means to an end, then this world has
| gone just crazy.
| kelvie wrote:
| They don't look quite native, but I feel the trend is moving
| away from native-looking apps anyway (like via electron, or
| forgoing an UI at all and just doing a web UI).
| jcelerier wrote:
| > Does this mean GTK2 and GTK3 are... to be avoided for new
| projects / dead?
|
| not dead but... here's for instance how Wireshark looked on
| macOS when it was using GTK :
|
| https://blog.wireshark.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/10/osx-x1...
|
| and here's how it looks now that it is using Qt :
|
| https://news-
| cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/wireshark-3-0-re...
| lazka wrote:
| Here is how a gtk app looked in 2014 on macOS:
| https://i.imgur.com/1e669Tp.png
| ori_b wrote:
| Yeah, nobody set a theme for GTK in that screenshot, and
| GTK themes tend to look different from the native theme on
| non-Linux OSes regardless.
|
| But, the trend is towards Electron, which also integrates
| poorly with the OS -- so, I'm not sure how much looking
| native matters any more.
| LaGrange wrote:
| Eeh. It might be perception, but I feel like it was the
| other way around -- around the time iPhone came out, a
| lot of apps eschewed compliance in favour of achieving
| clearer identity. I think that cleared the way for
| electron -- I actually vaguely remember some people
| talking about using html-based apps because they made
| achieving a specific visual design easier, not because of
| the portability benefits.
|
| And for example AFAIK the new Apple Music app is using a
| web view for some parts of itself, and as much as I like
| having "light" apps, I generally prefer interacting with
| Electron UIs over most QT apps.
| ducktective wrote:
| not bad-looking for gtk?
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| I like the first one more, am I weird?
| toast0 wrote:
| The first one isn't Mac like --- the menu bar doesn't go
| on the top of the window. I don't necessarily think
| that's great, but that's the way it should be on a Mac.
| pojntfx wrote:
| NO. GTK has really been getting more and more import for
| FLOSS as the Librem 5 and the vast majority (Ubuntu switched
| to GNOME by default, so GNOME is now the default on
|
| - Ubuntu - Fedora - OpenSUSE - Debian - CentOS - ...
|
| GTK+ since version 3 is really neat. They rust re-did the
| site as well: https://www.gtk.org
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X?
|
| They're in the uncanny valley.
| bjoli wrote:
| a lot of apps look non-native on os X, with apple starting
| the trend of ignoring their own HIGs about 5 years ago.
|
| I don't really mind, since osx happens to be my daily
| driver since about a year, but whenever people claim that
| osx is visually coherent I can't shake the feeling they are
| stuck in 1998 and Mac os 8.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Looking _different_ is ok.
|
| The problem is that Qt and other cross-platform
| frameworks tend to look _glitchy_ , as in their
| differences are non-intentional and jarring.
|
| They also tend to just look pretty old-fashioned, because
| these frameworks are pretty old now and the controls,
| layouts, and workflows they provide are a bit old-
| fashioned.
|
| So the first impression you get for software using Qt is
| old and glitchy. Which isn't great.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _How do Qt projects look + feel when ported to Mac OS X?_
|
| I haven't seen any cross-platform toolkits that abide by Mac
| standards. Funny enough, the closest is Mozilla's toolkit.
| Other than that, there are always telltale signs--e.g. no one
| seems to grok Mac's toolbars even though they're organized by
| the basic laws of proximity and grouping. Qt apps have the
| lazy grid toolbars just crammed from left to right,
| occasionally with extra-large icons for the 'designy' look,
| and always with colorful icons unless something app-specific
| is made (like in Calibre). Plus the noisy dividers.
|
| Also, since Qt handles all the graphics and input, it has to
| reimplement everything high-level that the systems provide
| out of the box, and presumably to track changes in all of
| that. Hence the past bugs of one-pixel offsets between
| elements where they can't be in the system. And the present
| non-support for system-wide key rebinding on Mac--e.g.,
| home/end instead of cmd-left/right.
|
| But yeah, Qt is better than something like not-obsessively-
| tuned Swing. As for GTK, it seems to depend a lot on the
| author specifically not forgetting to bundle the native-look
| theme.
| torstenvl wrote:
| wx seems to be sufficiently Mac-like...
| matthewbauer wrote:
| Doesn't wx just use GTK under the hood?
| zerr wrote:
| On Linux, yes. On Mac it uses Cocoa and on Windows -
| Win32 API. i.e. it is a wrapper for native controls.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > GTK3 are... to be avoided for new projects / dead?
|
| Despite rooting for GTK, I think this is where it is going.
|
| A lot of criticism as of late was that GTK is turning from a
| Gimp ToolKit into a Gnome ToolKit, and you can see how
| dramatic was the drop in mindshare has been since that trend
| started.
|
| Just like Gnome didn't really survive the 3.0 transition
| because the project been really stolen by thew few people who
| force fed Gnome Shell onto the wider community, the GTK did
| not survive the transition from GimpTK to GnomeTK.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's more like the gnome people picked up abandoned
| torches.
| bronson wrote:
| The existence of MATE indicates the torches were never
| abandoned.
| pengaru wrote:
| Only if you conflate the users with the existing pool of
| GTK/GNOME developers and maintainers of the time.
|
| I'm thrilled to see that fork attract enough new talent
| to apparently maintain itself and meet the needs of
| what's a relatively small fraction of linux desktop
| users.
| markstos wrote:
| Didn't survive? The most popular desktop distro, Ubuntu,
| switched their DE from Unity to Gnome.
| cycloptic wrote:
| I think GTK3 will still be viable for a least a few more
| years. It's currently in maintenance mode -- no new features
| will be added, and all feature development is happening in
| git master in preparation for the GTK4 release. The first
| release of GTK4 is currently planned for this fall.
| aasasd wrote:
| It's alive!
|
| Which reminds me, foobar2000's Mac port seems to be chugging
| along--though not open-source.
| ssivark wrote:
| Back in the day when I used desktop music players on linux I
| cycled through a whole bunch: Audacious, Rhythmbox, Banshee,
| Amarok, Songbird(Mozilla!), Moc(Oh, so minimal!), Cmus, mpd
| (server/client), and probably more that I'm forgetting now.
|
| Feel a touch nostalgic for the uncomplicated time when I had
| music on my devices, regularly "organized my music library" and
| could play whatever whenever, and shared them with friends. I can
| still rummage through my old disks and spin up some of that music
| from time to time.
|
| Mostly use cloud players these days; crazy to imagine that
| there's nothing I can do if my favorite song/recording today is
| not available ten years later!
| nine_k wrote:
| Buy music, don't rent it. Pay for downloadable files, or for
| physical media if you are into it.
|
| This is rather widely available.
| RussianCow wrote:
| It's significantly more expensive if you listen to a wide
| range of music. Buying albums, or even just individual songs,
| can very quickly surpass the $10/month you pay for Spotify.
| Maybe that's worth it to you, but I can't blame most people
| for just paying for a subscription.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| The issue is control. Albums are regularly disappearing
| from the Spotify catalogue, sometimes reappearing later.
| Sometimes specific albums in a band's history are missing
| because that particular label doesn't have an agreement
| with Spotify. And you never know if it's a crappy modern
| brickwalled remaster. Not to mention the woefully bad
| curation, mixed up artists, incorrect genres/years, you
| name it.
|
| With music you buy, _you_ are in control.
|
| It's about quality over quantity.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I bought my first music on Bandcamp a couple of days ago
| (they had a day when 100% of sales went to the artists). That
| seems like one of the best ways to support artists while
| still having a cloud-hosted library.
| aasasd wrote:
| If your library of favorites doesn't amount to a couple
| terabytes like in, ahem, some cases, then it's pretty easy to
| dump the selected bunch with `youtube-dl`.
|
| Death of a couple sites with not-widely-available music, in the
| past few years, has distinctly shown which of those two
| terabytes should be more closely guarded. 'It's all on the
| web', I've been told--well, not quite so anymore unless I
| upload it somewhere first.
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(page generated 2020-03-22 23:00 UTC)