Re: How to detect a gtk desktop programmatically

>
> How do they decide if they should use GTK 3 or GTK 2?


I had to research this, but apparently they made a cut-over at some point.
https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8198649 (not attempting to
minimize the problem, just wanted to isolate it from what we're discussing)

And even if someone decides to standardize it and sends merge requests
> to all major desktop environments, it will still take ages before it is
> widely available.


That's an unfortunate truth which is why I was hoping for an alternative
way to detect this.

At time of writing this, Ubuntu's the only one I've found modifying
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP and keep something indicative of Gtk inside e.g.
(ubuntu:GNOME).   I assume that's because they've ditched Unity and are
finally back to using Gnome, but in a customized form; whereas the others
are simply Gtk-based and use their own name.

It would be nice to have a consensus on a long-term supported property that
exposes the presence of a running Gtk-based desktop to application
developers.  Even if such a value provides presumptuous information, it's
information, which is valuable.

If this consensus were agreed upon, the 80/20 stop-gaps of the world would
become the new "deprecated; a path to detection would be sanctioned,
instead of a mispurposed one.



- [email protected]


On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 5:40 PM <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed, 2020-04-29 at 17:03 -0400, Tres Finocchiaro wrote:
> > > The best you can do is have a mapping of common DEs to their
> > > preferred
> > > toolkits
> >
> > This would mean each Gtk-based DE will require a patch to OpenJDK,
> > which is unsustainable.
>
> I agree that this is inconvenient but in the absence of a better
> option, you either make a list, or come up with some heuristic.
>
> > > There is no such thing as GTK desktop
> >
> > Wikipedia has its own category:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Desktop_environments_based_on_GTK
>
> But that is only what people see. Desktops do not care about toolkits,
> only thing that matters is that the app can connect to the desktop’s
> display server.
>
> And while it would be possible to make desktops record the consensus on
> the preference of toolkits in their respective communities and expose
> it via some API like an environment variable, someone would need to
> come up with the API and then convince all desktop environments it is
> something they should implement.
>
> Given the limited usefulness of such API, I do not see anyone spending
> time on that effort.
>
> And even if someone decides to standardize it and sends merge requests
> to all major desktop environments, it will still take ages before it is
> widely available.
>
> > In regards to Gtk2 versus Gtk3 binding, those issues haven't changed
> > as results of this missing variable.
>
> How do they decide if they should use GTK 3 or GTK 2?
>
> > I'm not sure I understand the reluctance to provide such information.
>
> I do not think anyone is opposed to that but I doubt anyone will
> consider it a priority. Especially since the intersection of
> toolkits supported by AWT and toolkits prefered can be emulated using
> much simpler algorithm.
>
> preferred | GTK | Qt  | EFL
> ----------|-----|-----|-----|
> has GTK   | GTK | GTK | GTK |
> no GTK    |error|Motif|Motif|
>
>

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