Mozilla Firebird and QT

gorunmez · Post by **gorunmez** » March 4th, 2004, 5:18 am

I actually care about the toolkit. It is not only about appearance. For example I like being able to use emacs keybindings without need to change user.js or something like that (thanks to gtk).
More importantly, things like transparency in CSS seem to be real challange for Mozilla* developers mainly because lack of support from toolkits (even windows, partially)

gbil · Post by **gbil** » March 4th, 2004, 9:54 am

I also don't care which desktop each user has, BUT if you use KDE you must alter the Gnome theme in order to have a good looking Firefox.
And can anyone really explain the fact that Opera under Linux is faster than Firefox when rendering pages? In windows is not like this.

flavio · Post by **flavio** » March 5th, 2004, 9:54 am

David James wrote:I'm sorry to say this, but basically Mozilla does not like QT. The issue about a maintainer is a dodge - Mozilla could have used QT rather than GTK as the default toolkit.

The story goes something like this. Mozilla chose GTK in the era when QT wasn't entirely free. Mozilla embedded Gecko so deeply in GTK that it was nearly impossible to get Gecko back out of it. KDE found it easier to create their own rendering engine (KHTML, which is so much easier to use and embed that Safari for Mac uses it) than to extract Gecko. Mozilla lost what little interest it had in supporting QT.

The sad thing is that (1) Mozilla looks awful in KDE without some heavy modifying of your GTK2 theme and (2) all those KDE developers who created KHTML could have helped make Gecko even better.

Oh, and btw, I've never been able to build FB with QT and have it actually use QT.

I think people in this thread don't see the point. David said:
1. Mozilla does not use QT, because Gecko is tied to GTK. This is a problem, because Gecko should be toolkit independent, no matter if GTK is better or worse.
2. KDE developers did not contribute to Gecko because of point 1. and Mozilla lost a big chance.

I think mozilla should try to catch and make mozilla apps run with QT. Furthermore, I think they should decide which rendering engine is better and start using the same, even if this means dropping Gecko.

gorunmez · Post by **gorunmez** » March 5th, 2004, 10:59 am

I would be suprised if Gecko is that tied to GTK, considering it is really cross platform. If I recall correctly, Gecko and GTK are isolated. there is XUL between.

Still Gecko is the best rendering engine around, but khtml had a lot of improvents too.
In addition there may be a licensing problem, gecko should be able to be released as MPL/NPL.
No need to mention the ties between khtml and other kde stuff.

slippytoad · Post by **slippytoad** » March 5th, 2004, 11:55 am

gbil wrote:I also don't care which desktop each user has, BUT if you use KDE you must alter the Gnome theme in order to have a good looking Firefox.

This is a genuine question. How do I alter the Gnome theme from KDE? Could you provide a bit more info on how to do this? Thanks.

gorunmez · Post by **gorunmez** » March 5th, 2004, 11:59 am

try gnome-theme-manager
from a terminal or konsole

Malakai · Post by **Malakai** » March 5th, 2004, 11:34 pm

I prefer gtk2 over qt any day.

I don't use kde or gnome though, but I do keep the qt libs, gtk libs, and gtk2 libs on the pc of course.

Jimmy_C · Post by **Jimmy_C** » March 5th, 2004, 11:57 pm

Mozilla does not use QT, because Gecko is tied to GTK. This is a problem, because Gecko should be toolkit independent, no matter if GTK is better or worse.

Mozilla can be compiled without GTK support, you know. Gecko isn't tied to GTK; otherwise, it wouldn't compile on Mac OS X or Windows.

Offtopic: The KDE developers are too political (was obscenity, deleted) if they let a something as silly as toolkit choice determine their involvement. They're not on Trolltech's cheerleading squad; they don't need to make all things QT!

P.S. This whole thread is offtopic and should be moved.

Hooded One · Post by **Hooded One** » March 6th, 2004, 3:07 pm

Jimmy_C wrote:Offtopic: The KDE developers are too political (was obscenity, deleted) if they let a something as silly as toolkit choice determine their involvement. They're not on Trolltech's cheerleading squad; they don't need to make all things QT!

Their entire desktop environment is in QT. KDE integration mostly depends on QT. Not quite so much anymore -- now you can get various levels of integration without QT. But electing to have a QT browser for a QT desktop environment is *nothing* political. Anything else would be just plain silly.

Gecko itself isn't tied to GTK (you can actually use Gecko in Konqueror, for example), but at the moment the Mozilla UI on Linux is.

Jimmy_C · Post by **Jimmy_C** » March 6th, 2004, 4:48 pm

Hooded One wrote:Their entire desktop environment is in QT. KDE integration mostly depends on QT. Not quite so much anymore -- now you can get various levels of integration without QT. But electing to have a QT browser for a QT desktop environment is *nothing* political. Anything else would be just plain silly.

From a technical point of view: Toolkit choice shouldn't really matter for well-written programs. There are several well-known patterns that should be used to separate an engine from its interface. Using a new engine should be as easy as a few modifications and a recompile.

From a legal (IANAL) point of view: In any case, I know that the non-windows ports of the QT library are licensed under the GPL, but the windows port isn't. However, Mozilla code must be licensed under the triple combination of the MPL, GPL, and LGPL. I don't think that the GPL is compatible with LGPL or MPL code, so QT can't be used. Even if Mozilla branched to a GPL-only codebase, they still couldn't use QT and maintain compatibility with Windows (Mozilla compiles with GTK support on Windows, but they wouldn't be able to get a Free license from Trolltech to use QT under that OS). This breaks cross-platform compatibility with Windows, which means more work than GTK code provides.

I'm not saying that Trolltech's licensing positions is wrong or bad - just that it is incompatible with the goals of the Mozilla Organization.

willll · Post by **willll** » March 7th, 2004, 11:44 am

Jimmy_C wrote:From a legal (IANAL) point of view: In any case, I know that the non-windows ports of the QT library are licensed under the GPL, but the windows port isn't. However, Mozilla code must be licensed under the triple combination of the MPL, GPL, and LGPL. I don't think that the GPL is compatible with LGPL or MPL code, so QT can't be used. Even if Mozilla branched to a GPL-only codebase, they still couldn't use QT and maintain compatibility with Windows (Mozilla compiles with GTK support on Windows, but they wouldn't be able to get a Free license from Trolltech to use QT under that OS). This breaks cross-platform compatibility with Windows, which means more work than GTK code provides.

Nobody is suggesting that QT be used for an non-X11 platforms (at least, I hope they are not).

Saying that Gecko is tied to GTK is a ridiculous assertion. That's why we have six active ports to different toolkits not including the two gtk ones. Even if you are talking specifically about Unix, hell, we have an xlib port.

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&threadm=4048e9cf%240%2416036%243b214f66%40usenet.univie.ac.at&prev=/groups%3Fdq%3D%26num%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26group%3Dnetscape.public.mozilla.qt%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26start%3D0">Some people are trying to get a new QT port started</a>. Whether or not it gets anywhere is yet to be seen.

Jimmy_C · Post by **Jimmy_C** » March 7th, 2004, 12:36 pm

willll wrote:Saying that Gecko is tied to GTK is a ridiculous assertion... (examples)

I agree, didn't I say that? What, I didn't! Well.. um.. I.. um.. Second It! Ya, that's it! :-)

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&threadm=4048e9cf%240%2416036%243b214f66%40usenet.univie.ac.at&prev=/groups%3Fdq%3D%26num%3D25%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26group%3Dnetscape.public.mozilla.qt%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26start%3D0">Some people are trying to get a new QT port started</a>.

Good luck.

LayZ · Post by **LayZ** » March 7th, 2004, 1:02 pm

Anyone know if the xlib port still builds? I think (considering Mozilla implements most of its own widgets anyway) that a version that's not tied to any particular toolkit is a good idea. Unfortunately the documentation I can find for it is grossly outdated http://www.mozilla.org/unix/xlib.html

JeroenV · Post by **JeroenV** » March 21st, 2004, 4:28 am

Jimmy_C wrote:From a legal (IANAL) point of view: In any case, I know that the non-windows ports of the QT library are licensed under the GPL, but the windows port isn't. However, Mozilla code must be licensed under the triple combination of the MPL, GPL, and LGPL. I don't think that the GPL is compatible with LGPL or MPL code, so QT can't be used. Even if Mozilla branched to a GPL-only codebase, they still couldn't use QT and maintain compatibility with Windows (Mozilla compiles with GTK support on Windows, but they wouldn't be able to get a Free license from Trolltech to use QT under that OS). This breaks cross-platform compatibility with Windows, which means more work than GTK code provides.

As long as mozilla doesn't release a Qt-enabled build using the MPL or LGPL without having a Qt license, there's no problem AFAIK. E.g. the Psi-project (http://psi.affinix.com/) uses the Qt toolkit and is GPL, however they only need a windows Qt-license to make a windows-build.

I personally would like to have a Qt/KDE build. Firefox is te only GTK-program I use, so it doesn't really fit in. And the GTK-Qt-theme doesn't work that good with Firefox.

Mozilla Firebird and QT

The still can't use QT, because of the license.

Re: The still can't use QT, because of the license.

Re: The still can't use QT, because of the license.

Re: The still can't use QT, because of the license.