[DonHopkins]

Dude, I know. I've been implementing user interface toolkits since the early 80's, but I've still never heard of a "Tolkit", which you mentioned twice, so I asked you what it was -- are you making a silly pun like "Tollkit" for "Toolkit" or "Lamework" for "Framework" or "Bloatif" for "Motif" and I'm missing it? No hits on urban dictionary, even. And also you still haven't explained whether I'm a revisionist or not.

Just like you, I love to write articles about user interface stuff all the time, too. Just in the past week:

My enthusiastic but balanced response to somebody who EMPHATICALLY DEMANDED PIE MENUS ONLY for GIMP, and who loves pie fly, but pushed my button by defending the name GIMP by insisting that instead of the GIMP project simply and finally conceding its name is offensive, that our entire society adapt by globally re-signifying a widely known offensive hurtful word (so I suggested he first go try re-signifying the n-word first, and see how that went):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38233793

(While I would give more weight to the claim that the name GIMP is actually all about re-signifying an offensive term if it came from a qualified and empathic and wheelchair using interface designer like Haraldur Ingi Þorleifsson, I doubt that’s actually the real reason, just like it’s not white people’s job to re-signify the n-word by saying it all the time...)

Meet the man who is making Iceland wheelchair accessible one ramp at a time:

https://scoop.upworthy.com/meet-the-man-who-is-making-icelan...

Elon Musk apologises after mocking laid-off Twitter worker, questioning his disability:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-08/elon-musk-haraldur-th...

The article about redesigning GIMP we were discussing credited Blender with being the first to show what mouse buttons do what at the bottom of the screen, which actually the Lisp Machine deserves credit for, as far as I know:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38237231

I made a joke about how telling GIMP developers to make it more like Photoshop was like telling RMS to develop Open Software for Linux, instead of Free Software for GNU/Linux, and somebody took the bait so I flamed about the GIMP developer’s lack of listening skills:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38238274

Somebody used the phrase "Easy as pie” in a discussion about user interface design so I had to chime in:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38239113

Discussion about HTML Web Components, in which I confess my secret affair with XML, XSLT, obsolete proprietary Microsoft technologies, and Punkemon pie menus:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38253752

Deep interesting discussion about Blender 4.0 release notes, focusing on its historic development and its developer’s humility and openness to its users’ suggestions, in which I commented on its excellent Python integration.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263171

Comment on how Blender earned its loads of money and support by being responsive to its users.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232404

Dark puns about user interface toolkits and a cheap shot at Motif, with an analogy between GIMP and Blender:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38263088

A content warning to a parent who wanted to know which videos their 8-year-old should watch on YouTube to learn Blender:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288629

Posing with a cement garden gnome flipping the bird with Chris Toshok and Miguel de Icaza and his mom at GDC2010:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606531754&set=a.5173...

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606491754&set=a.5173...

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=299606436754&set=a.5173...

[vore]

It was clearly a typo you could choose to ignore charitably instead of nitpick. Also, what is the rest of this comment and how is it related to GTK?

[DonHopkins]

How was it clearly a typo when he repeated it with exactly the same spelling and capitalization, two times in a row?

And neither of those things are even toolkits like GTK: "GIMP Tolkit" is an image editor, and "GNOME Tolkit" is a desktop environment.

And even if you ignore the two typos and the two mis-namings, his whole point is factually incorrect, and jdub was correct and not a revisionist when he said "That is ahistorical, and the misnaming doesn't help make your point".

I'm simply giving him the benefit of the doubt, and asking him to explain what he means, or why not only his main point was wrong, but also why he got both of the names wrong two times in a row, and thinks an image editor and a desktop environment are incorrectly spelled toolkits.

And he still hasn't explained, or admitted he made two typos and misnamed two projects in a row while trying to make an incorrect point, while claiming to be an expert tech writer, and accusing someone who was correct of being a revisionist, so the jury is still out. But your theory it's clearly a typo just doesn't wash. Maybe they're the names of his own forks, or maybe he's just a charlatan, who knows? ;) Why don't you ask him yourself.

[DonHopkins]

Because he was incorrectly nitpicking himself, and was wrong to call somebody else a revisionist without citing any proof, while he was factually incorrect himself, and offering an appeal to authority of himself as a writer and "random Gtkmm contributor" instead. I too have lots of strong opinions about GTK, GNOME, and GIMP, so I am happy for the opportunity to write them up, summarize them, and share them.

You'll have to read the rest of the comment and follow the links to know what it says, because I already wrote and summarized it, and don't want to write it again just for you, because I don't believe you'd read it a second time if you didn't read it the first time. Just use ChatGPT, dude.

Then you will see that it has a lot to do with GTK and GNOME and GIMP, even including exclusive photos of Miguel de Icaza and his mom with a garden gnome flipping the bird.

[pjmlp]

Oopsie I touched a nerve.

[DonHopkins]

You HAD to mention MOTIF! ;) There's a reason I call it BLOATIF and SLOWTIF...

https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-x-windows-disaster-128d398...

>The Motif Self-Abuse Kit

>X gave Unix vendors something they had professed to want for years: a standard that allowed programs built for different computers to interoperate. But it didn’t give them enough. X gave programmers a way to display windows and pixels, but it didn’t speak to buttons, menus, scroll bars, or any of the other necessary elements of a graphical user interface. Programmers invented their own. Soon the Unix community had six or so different interface standards. A bunch of people who hadn’t written 10 lines of code in as many years set up shop in a brick building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was the former home of a failed computer company and came up with a “solution:” the Open Software Foundation’s Motif.

>What Motif does is make Unix slow. Real slow. A stated design goal of Motif was to give the X Window System the window management capabilities of HP’s circa-1988 window manager and the visual elegance of Microsoft Windows. We kid you not.

>Recipe for disaster: start with the Microsoft Windows metaphor, which was designed and hand coded in assembler. Build something on top of three or four layers of X to look like Windows. Call it “Motif.” Now put two 486 boxes side by side, one running Windows and one running Unix/Motif. Watch one crawl. Watch it wither. Watch it drop faster than the putsch in Russia. Motif can’t compete with the Macintosh OS or with DOS/Windows as a delivery platform.

[anthk]

Motif today isn't that bad compared to the bloat of GTK4. Today's '486' in the era of Pentium 3's would be an Atom netbook. EMWM (enhanced MWM) + XFile flies. I quickly hacked NNTP auth support through some quick code and an Xresources value for NCSA Mosaic. Yes, that one.

Also, you get XFT and UTF-8 support thru fontconfig and XFT on every Motif based software. Far from the propietary Motif of 1996...

Compare it to Gnome and dconf...

[DonHopkins]

Motif is only free if your time is worthless. ;)