Discussing UI Toolkits is somehow always a heated emotional discussion for some people, although I am not entirely sure why.
But anyways, I just want to make sure that this childish nitpicking about how KDE uses some KB more memory, for this or that, or whether gnome sucks for reason X, Y or Z does not happen here. This is going to be a "Serious" Discussion about the Graphical User Interface of the next generation Linux Video Editing Tool, whatever that might be then. Presumption: While I am aware that there are many toolkits besides GTK and Qt, und while my personal preference is the FLTK Toolkit. I truly believe that both, GTK as well is Qt are well up to the task provide a Widgetset for a Video Editor. Period. So don't even think about recommending your personal favorite niche Toolkit. Oh, and while we are at it, NO LGPL vs GPL Discussion either. This is going to be about TECHNICAL merits and requirements, and ONLY about those! Another Point: I am lazy and impatient! I want to have results fast and I want to write little code! Some People claim that things should be done RIGHT no matter how long it takes, and then carry on to lament about how doing the right thing in totally and unnecessarily time-wasting ways. I suggest to keep this bullshit out of the discussion! At last, sorry for being that harsh, I know that those above complaints do not apply to anyone. But they apply to some, therefore it had to be said. ======================================== The Real Stuff: ======================================== So, what do we want to have for a GUI in a Video Editor. Und this is about a cinelerra successor, so we want an "Advanced GUI". And by advanced I guess we want to be relatively easy to adjust and reconfigurable. That includes for example being able to dock/undock individual panels for multiscreen usage. This is a common UI Feature, and is available in both GTK+ and Qt, I'll link to some screenshots from a Development Environment in GTK and an Audio-Multi-Track Sequencer in Qt: http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/screen-shots http://qtractor.sourceforge.net/qtractor-index.html If you look closely you will see little buttons to un-dock parts of the windows. Next we wont fancy Multimedia Widgets, Sliders, Knobs, Scales, Volume Meters, Canvas', Custom Widgets, etc. And preferable we want to reuse other peoples fancy widgets, because we are lazy. ;-) Look at some of the following examples: (This is not a complete List, Google will help you find more examples), also look at the screenshots linked above. Fan Sliders for GTK+: http://phat.berlios.de/ http://thorwil.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/fan-sliders/ Fancy Node/Noodle Canvas in Qt: http://clam.iua.upf.edu/screenshots.html Lots of "Plugins" with custom fancy circular nodes (Qt): http://lmms.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php And Ardour of course (GTK+): http://ardour.org/ Multi-Platform-Stuff: Both GTK+ and Qt are available for X11, win32 and OSX! They work well on those platforms, and are used by a large number of users. As far as I know though, Qt is better "supported" on OSX and win32, that is, it works "out of the box", while GTK+ does need a little tinkering. Since I am lazy, and GTK+ does not provide ANYTHING that is so significant that it makes it vastly superior to Qt, I would suggest the lazy route, and go for Qt. This of course is only my opinion, there is no need to argue against it, unless you can show me THE vastly superior feature of GTK+ that I OVERLOOKED. (no License and evil Corporation Talk, only technical!) What's next? Please reply and post Ideas that you have that a GUI should do, that goes beyond simple things. Also post links to fancy projects that have cool widgets and stuff that could be reused. :-) Cheers, and have fun -Richard _______________________________________________ Cinelerra mailing list [email protected] https://init.linpro.no/mailman/skolelinux.no/listinfo/cinelerra
