| >I don't think anyone has ever said "native GUI" in the last 20 years. It's pretty nonsensical if you actually break down that passage to it's core components because it doesn't actually describe what specifically is "native" They have, and they have said it exactly as the parent mentions. See for example complaints about webkit based apps not looking and behaving native on iOS, and similar complaints for all kinds of desktop apps using some third party toolkit: from Eclipse and Firefox to Opera (when it used to do that) and GIMP on OS X, anything Swing. >it doesn't actually describe what specifically is "native" It's pretty much agreed what's native is the specific, OS-based (or user-chosen-toolkit-based on Linux) implementation of widgets and controls, as it pertains to both look and feel. There are even whole terms often associated with such complaints, such as "uncanny valley" etc. >So would that mean there's no native Linux GUI's because Linus Torvalds hasn't written any Linux widget libraries? No, for a Gnome user, non native is anything non Gnome (GTK). For a KDE user anything non KDE. But the analogy is not perfect, because Linux doesn't come with a pre-built specific GUI lib for all users, so users are accustomed to a hodgepodge of varying behaving and looking apps to serve all their needs anyway, with some sugar of cooperation for things like drag and drop on top. |