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plb
December 10th, 2006, 04:37 PM
Here is a current svn screenshot:

http://clement.stenac.org/projects/videolan/vlc-qt4.png

Also read here
http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/NEWS

Interfaces:
* Windows/Linux
* Brand new interface for Linux and Windows, based on the Qt toolkit
* All
* Improved user interaction

maagimies
December 10th, 2006, 04:41 PM
Nice.

qalimas
December 10th, 2006, 05:09 PM
Awesome, now the only program that's ugly on my computers will be pretty =)

Sluipvoet
December 10th, 2006, 05:34 PM
For me this means, bye bye VLC, I won't use QT-apps if there are GTK-alternatives.

PS.this is not an anti-QT/KDE post, just my personal preference.

ComplexNumber
December 10th, 2006, 05:46 PM
For me this means, bye bye VLC, I won't use QT-apps if there are GTK-alternatives.

PS.this is not an anti-QT/KDE post, just my personal preference.
not necessary. there is still going to be the wxgtk frontend. don't worry, even if you instal the qt4 version, it doesn't mean that you will have to install all those huge kde libs.

darkhatter
December 10th, 2006, 05:50 PM
For me this means, bye bye VLC, I won't use QT-apps if there are GTK-alternatives.

PS.this is not an anti-QT/KDE post, just my personal preference.

if programing in Qt is easier why use gtk :confused:

ComplexNumber
December 10th, 2006, 05:55 PM
if programing in Qt is easier why use gtk :confused:
only maybe for people using qt's variation of C++. not for other languages its not. the reason why they are moving from wx to qt is because the developers were having lots of problems with the wx toolkit.

viciouslime
December 10th, 2006, 05:58 PM
Ewww, bye bye VLC, I HATE Qt apps.

maagimies
December 10th, 2006, 06:04 PM
Ewww, bye bye VLC, I HATE Qt apps.Give me a reason and I will respect your opinion.
Qt isn't perfect, neither is Gtk, but anything is better than wxwidgets (gtk-1 on linux)

ComplexNumber
December 10th, 2006, 06:11 PM
Give me a reason and I will respect your opinion.
Qt isn't perfect, neither is Gtk, but anything is better than wxwidgets (gtk-1 on linux)
i can't speak for viciouslime, but i can see where he's coming from. some viable reasons are:
-qt apps looks awful in gnome
-they often don't play nice with gnome

maagimies
December 10th, 2006, 06:16 PM
i can't speak for viciouslime, but i can see where he's coming from. some viable reasons are:
-qt apps looks awful in gnome
-they often don't play nice with gnomeI'm using Ktorrent quite nicely in Gnome :neutral:
You can use something like the human color theme (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=39402), and try different styles with it. Maybe it's just my taste but in my opinion Qt apps don't look "awful" in Gnome.

Sluipvoet
December 10th, 2006, 06:24 PM
I'm using Ktorrent quite nicely in Gnome :neutral:
You can use something like the human color theme (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=39402), and try different styles with it. Maybe it's just my taste but in my opinion Qt apps don't look "awful" in Gnome.

Maybe not awful but certainly out of place.
And those color schemes are never as good as the original GTK-theme, and if you want to change your theme you've got change it separately for your QT-apps.(all luxury probs, and not everybody cares as much about it, but I try to avoid it by using as few QT-apps as possible).

hanzomon4
December 10th, 2006, 06:31 PM
Qt looks bad to me, but....... Anyway is their a way to use vlc without a front end? I use the "-i dummy" thing but it leaves vlc running in the background when I close the window

Malta paul
December 10th, 2006, 06:34 PM
Well Guys choice is a great thing. I use VLC for what it dose, not how it looks ;)

Kimm
December 10th, 2006, 06:54 PM
I think this is a great move. I personaly use XFCE, but I find Qt4 to be a better toolkit than GTK2 and if there was a light desktop like xfce using Qt4 I'd make the switch any day! :D

zachtib
December 10th, 2006, 07:21 PM
Well Guys choice is a great thing. I use VLC for what it dose, not how it looks ;)

this annoyed me, but i realized that i always have VLC maximized anyways. still, i hope they make it easy for someone to write a simple GTK+ frontend, that would be nice

weatherman
December 10th, 2006, 09:50 PM
-qt apps looks awful in gnome

qt4 is supposed to address the problem

ComplexNumber
December 10th, 2006, 09:53 PM
qt4 is supposed to address the problem
i heard that as well...with the new CleanLooks theme. whether its true or not is a different matter. me thinks not as qt/kde aps are going to stick out like a sore and ugly thumb - the theme is going to have to replicate the current gtk theme rather than just the default gtk theme.

DigitalDuality
December 10th, 2006, 11:36 PM
d

ComplexNumber
December 11th, 2006, 12:05 AM
what preference is that? i hope it's somehow a philisophical one.. b/c gtk is ugly and slow.
hmmm i don't think many will agree with that. qt is slower at the moment because gtk has cairo. qt4 with arthur is meant to be slightly faster than gtk with cairo in its present state. but ugly? nah, most will say that the Ugly Award has always been won by qt. gtk is quite an attractive toolkit.

darkhatter
December 11th, 2006, 01:00 AM
I think this is a great move. I personaly use XFCE, but I find Qt4 to be a better toolkit than GTK2 and if there was a light desktop like xfce using Qt4 I'd make the switch any day! :D

there was a project called KDE-light, but I think it died

darkhatter
December 11th, 2006, 01:01 AM
hmmm i don't think many will agree with that. qt is slower at the moment because gtk has cairo. qt4 with arthur is meant to be slightly faster than gtk with cairo in its present state. but ugly? nah, most will say that the Ugly Award has always been won by qt. gtk is quite an attractive toolkit.

I'm not sure which they your talking about but w/e

kde sucks and its a piece of crap...we get it now you can go back in your hole now

ComplexNumber
December 11th, 2006, 01:18 AM
there was a project called KDE-light, but I think it died
you're thinking of SimpleKDE.



I'm not sure which they your talking about but w/e

kde sucks and its a piece of crap...we get it now you can go back in your hole now
yeah, whatever you say.

jpeddicord
December 11th, 2006, 04:04 AM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech. GTK is LGPL, so that means it can be (dynamically) linked into your application and you can still make it proprietary.

GTK apps look fine in KDE with the GTK-Qt theme, however Qt apps in their current form look absolutely horrible on a default GNOME desktop.

/me smells a KDE vs GNOME debate.

jimrz
December 11th, 2006, 04:52 AM
For me this means, bye bye VLC, I won't use QT-apps if there are GTK-alternatives.

PS.this is not an anti-QT/KDE post, just my personal preference.

tend to agree...don't even use K3B or Amorok, but might just have to keep VLC around for recording live webcasts

hanzomon4
December 11th, 2006, 07:42 AM
tend to agree...don't even use K3B or Amorok, but might just have to keep VLC around for recording live webcasts

How do you pull that one off?

Sluipvoet
December 11th, 2006, 10:14 AM
what preference is that? i hope it's somehow a philisophical one.

Better integration with a GTK-Desktop Environment

mikerduffy
December 11th, 2006, 10:41 AM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech. GTK is LGPL, so that means it can be (dynamically) linked into your application and you can still make it proprietary.

I have heard this quite a few times, and it sounds like ditching QT for GTK+ or whatever would be a good idea.

As for aesthetics, I don't have any problems, since I use KDE.

maagimies
December 11th, 2006, 10:45 AM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech. GTK is LGPL, so that means it can be (dynamically) linked into your application and you can still make it proprietary.So you think a licence that allows you to give nothing back to the community is better than one that secures your freedom?
/me is confused.

DoctorMO
December 11th, 2006, 12:02 PM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech. GTK is LGPL, so that means it can be (dynamically) linked into your application and you can still make it proprietary.

I have heard this quite a few times, and it sounds like ditching QT for GTK+ or whatever would be a good idea.

As for aesthetics, I don't have any problems, since I use KDE.

Well in one regard as an open source programmer it doesn't effect me, on the other regard as a potential business it means that I have to spend money to make money. yawn, so what we have here is not a problem with the technology, and no problems with free software programs; but a problem in that it's not free beer for companies or individuals that with to make money from proprietary products.

hmm, something doesn't sit right with all that; me thinks you are confused about what Free Software is about and why making money is not wrong according to it's principles.

On reflection I think Trolltechs' licence is rather agreeable.

stimpack
December 11th, 2006, 02:59 PM
GTK sucks, Qt is actually very nice. Be a Gnome fan all you like but it is taking the politics of it way too seriously if you are able to fool yourself into thinking they are even comparable.

kuja
December 11th, 2006, 04:21 PM
hmmm i don't think many will agree with that...
I do.

I personally never found GTK attractive ... especially before I installed gtk2-engines-gtk-qt :-# Ugly indeed.

kaamos
December 11th, 2006, 04:50 PM
"Linux - where we have flamewars over text editors and GUI toolkits"

But seriously, I don't think the vlc team had much choice. WxWidgets is quite ancient and is even more farther off from standard C++ that Qt. Gtk is not truly cross platform (in a very usable way) so that pretty muchly leaves just Qt. The licensing is troublesome, but not a problem to a GPL project.

spockrock
December 11th, 2006, 05:35 PM
hmmm at first I was thinking NOOOOOO!!! but then I soon realized that, it doesn't matter to me, I have my qt apps looking and matching my gnome themes.


if this makes vlc better then I am all for it.

ComplexNumber
December 11th, 2006, 06:31 PM
"Linux - where we have flamewars over text editors and GUI toolkits"

But seriously, I don't think the vlc team had much choice. WxWidgets is quite ancient and is even more farther off from standard C++ that Qt. Gtk is not truly cross platform (in a very usable way) so that pretty muchly leaves just Qt. The licensing is troublesome, but not a problem to a GPL project.
gtk is more cross platform than qt. just compare the difference in the number of gtk apps available for window, OS X, and others compared with the meagre number of qt apps available for windows and others.

Erunno
December 11th, 2006, 06:54 PM
gtk is more cross platform than qt. just compare the difference in the number of gtk apps available for window, OS X, and others compared with the meagre number of qt apps available for windows and others.


The first versions of Qt had only two flavours: Qt/X11 for Unix and Qt/Windows for the Windows platform. The Windows platform was only available under the commercial license. In the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0 which added support for the Mac OS X platform. The Mac OS X support was available only in the commercial license, until June 2003, where Trolltech released the version 3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL license.
In 2002 members of the KDE on Cygwin project began porting the GPL licensed Qt/X11 code base to Windows [3]. This was in response to Trolltech's refusal to license Qt/Windows under the GPL on the grounds that Windows was not an open-source platform [4][5]. The project achieved reasonable success although it never reached production quality. Qt/Windows 4 was released under the GPL by Trolltech in June 2005. Qt4 now supports the same set of platforms in the Open Source editions as in the commercial edition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)

Well, why bother with facts (especially easily accessible ones like Wikipedia) when your only intention is to spread FUD.

kuja
December 11th, 2006, 06:58 PM
No, Qt is quite cross-platform as well. I do believe the reason for that not being more windows/mac ports is that, before Qt4, the windows port of Qt was only available under a proprietary license. Besides, after the release of KDE4 there will be quite a few more QT programs running on "Other" OS's ;)

Lord Illidan
December 11th, 2006, 07:05 PM
I for one welcome our QT4 overlords...

what, this aint /. ?

Ok..

1. Seriously, everyone is getting hackled over GTK and QT, and sometimes on a purely nonsense basis. So your QT apps look like sh** in Gnome? Simple...use a different theme. Or wait for Project Portland to complete. But there is no reason to ditch the app altogether, particularly one of the best OSS apps so far.

2. Personally, I'm at home with both KDE and GNOME. I use GTK and QT apps regularly, and imho, they both look good. I hate GTK1 apps, they suck. And as for what VLC was using now, it wasn't bad...better than before at least.

kaamos
December 11th, 2006, 07:05 PM
gtk is more cross platform than qt. just compare the difference in the number of gtk apps available for window, OS X, and others compared with the meagre number of qt apps available for windows and others.

And what would be that meagre number be? Qt apps look native to Windows so I can see how you have come the this conclusion. Gtk apps look out of place on windows and need X to run on OSX (progress is being made on this though). In addition to this, one must install the Gtk-runtime separately before any gtk apps can be used on windows.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Gtk to Qt but cross platform support in Gtk is still quite lacking.

ComplexNumber
December 11th, 2006, 07:05 PM
Erunno
congrats on saying absolutely nothing meaningful whatsoever. maybe you were practicing your typing skills with that post.

Erunno
December 11th, 2006, 07:10 PM
Erunno
congrats on saying absolutely nothing meaningful whatsoever. if you're going to practice your typing skills or something, at least say something with sense.

I thought that the quotes were self-explanatory but maybe I overestimated your reading comprehension skills...

dv_
February 26th, 2008, 10:22 PM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech. GTK is LGPL, so that means it can be (dynamically) linked into your application and you can still make it proprietary.

GTK apps look fine in KDE with the GTK-Qt theme, however Qt apps in their current form look absolutely horrible on a default GNOME desktop.

/me smells a KDE vs GNOME debate.

From my (a programmer's) point of view, Qt has much better documentation, functionality, and design (except for the MOC madness). THESE things matter. Not the license (unless it is absolutely unacceptable). I've used gtk2 before, moved to Qt4, and did not look back.

About the price: keep in mind that these $3000 are PEANUTS compared to the costs caused by an increased development period. For these $3000 you actually get very much. Also, IIRC there is an option for startups ($500 or something).

Luggy
February 26th, 2008, 10:52 PM
From my (a programmer's) point of view, GTK has a much better license than Qt. Qt requires that all apps be open-source, or you must buy a $3000 license from Trolltech.

QT is dual licenced ( as of QT3 if memory serves me right ). You can choose to either:
A) Drop the big bucks and use QT as a properitary product or
B) Accept the GPL and make your source code Free.

QT is a dream to work with, so many nice libraries and container classes make your life so much eaiser. But yes, it is a little big, nothing I want to put on my eeePC that's for sure.

The funny thing is that once QT4.4 comes out there will be built in multimedia support ( along with built in WebKit ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon_(KDE)
I just think it's a little strange to then have an application for multimedia support that wont use the libraries built in functions. Oh well.

CarpKing
February 26th, 2008, 11:36 PM
I just think it's a little strange to then have an application for multimedia support that wont use the libraries built in functions. Oh well.

Then it would just be a frontend for Xine or whatever. VLC is its own thing.

Erunno
February 27th, 2008, 12:07 AM
But yes, it is a little big, nothing I want to put on my eeePC that's for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wedw701Gy8s

;-)

bash
February 27th, 2008, 12:12 AM
I would have prefered if they used GTK+ instead of QT just simply because I use GNOME. That is really what I like bout basically any other system thant windows (OS X, GNOME, KDE, Xfce, ...) that all the apps look integrated. Not your messanger shining green at you, your media player having a black skin and your phone software being white, all the while your sitting in the dark colored vista envirement. But anything is better than wx so I welcome the update.

What makes me a little worried and to get this discussion a bit of the "MY DE IS BETTER THAN YOUR DE" theme: In the screen the layout of the VLC is changed. So I have a question: Is that just the expanded view in the main window or will this main window with playlistbars and so on be default. Because I really like how minimalistic the standard interface is atm when you open VLC. It doesn't "eat" half your screen and before you can watch anything you need to click away 4 toolbars (Warning: Subjective opinion :) ).

regomodo
February 27th, 2008, 01:09 AM
I think this is a great move. I personaly use XFCE, but I find Qt4 to be a better toolkit than GTK2 and if there was a light desktop like xfce using Qt4 I'd make the switch any day! :D

+1

I use xfce and icewm and most of my apps are built with qt. Not something i went out to do but something that i've ended up with

Methuselah
February 27th, 2008, 01:45 AM
I have to chime in for GTK.
Ever since I've been using it, I've found it to be easy on the eyes.
KDE apps tend to have a harsher, more industrial look.

If something uses QT, I'll use it in a gnome environment.
Though I'll generally favour GTK+ apps.

Superkoop
February 27th, 2008, 02:34 AM
Interesting thread revival...

kadath
February 27th, 2008, 03:52 AM
I don't see what the big deal is. MPlayer is superior to VLC, and the Gnome-MPlayer frontend is improving with each release. Why not just use MPlayer if you're unhappy with VLC moving to QT?

racoq
February 27th, 2008, 04:00 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)

Well, why bother with facts (especially easily accessible ones like Wikipedia) when your only intention is to spread FUD.

Ok you're post was not very polite, acusing a forum staff member of FUD, like ComplexNumber, it's you who have not presented a viable source to back your ideas, so i'm afraid it was a dumb comment from you.

I can remember dozen's of cross platform GTK+ APP's for instance running in windows and quite popular, like:

Gnumeric
Abiword.
Pidgin.
GnuCash
emesene
GIMP
Sylpheed
deluge

not to say that GTK is used in many other devices that a single desktop or laptop like:

* Nokia 770 / N800 / N810
* One Laptop Per Child Project
* OpenMoko

(since you like sources here it goes http://www.gtk.org/features.html)

shall i go on?

Fbot1
February 27th, 2008, 04:10 AM
hmmm i don't think many will agree with that. qt is slower at the moment because gtk has cairo. qt4 with arthur is meant to be slightly faster than gtk with cairo in its present state. but ugly? nah, most will say that the Ugly Award has always been won by qt. gtk is quite an attractive toolkit.

Qt should not be confused with KDE and it's not even an issue anymore. Also, I think gtk is gross, harder to use and, not as responsive. :p

Polygon
February 27th, 2008, 07:13 AM
i hate mplayer, i cant play anything with it. And the ui is terrible, cant play dvds....or at least cant figure out how to...etc.

vlc is much more simple, and it works the second i install it, unlike mplayer.

and qt4 and gtk2 seem the same for me, or at least i cant really tell a difference. I hear qt is easier to program so maybe that is why they chose it. Either way, i could care less what vlc uses, as long as it works in linux ;)

kadath
February 27th, 2008, 08:19 AM
i hate mplayer, i cant play anything with it.

You're doing it wrong.


And the ui is terrible

MPlayer is a CLI app. There are several GUI frontends available.


cant play dvds....or at least cant figure out how to...etc.

libdvdcss2+libdvdread+libdvdnav


vlc is much more simple, and it works the second i install it, unlike mplayer.

MPlayer is superior to VLC for a variety of reasons. You need to look into using a better GUI frontend (SMPlayer and Gnome-MPlayer are both nice). It might solve your problems.

Erunno
February 27th, 2008, 09:45 AM
Ok you're post was not very polite, acusing a forum staff member of FUD, like ComplexNumber, it's you who have not presented a viable source to back your ideas, so i'm afraid it was a dumb comment from you.

Well, bringing back a thread via thread necromancy doesn't make it alive again. Think of it as a zombie which moans and groans and wants to eat your brain but is otherwise dead because the people who once participated in the original discussion are long gone or don't remember the exact details of the discussion anymore.

Anyway, but since I already bothered I can also address your other points as well:

1. Why pointing out that ComplexNumber is a staff member? Does it make him anything special? Do I have to treat him in a special way in discussions? To me he's one of the button pushers who graciously sacrifice some of their time to keep the forum in a more or less sane state. I've particpated long enough in forum discussion (both as member and moderator) to not be in awe due to someone having moderation status. And I'm usually optimistic enough to believe that people will not abuse their administrative powers even if a discussion gets a bit heated.

2. At that point in time ComplexNumber had a small history of making false claims which could have been easily verified or falsified by just checking the first 3 links Google offers you.

3. He claimed that GTK+ was more cross-plattform by pointing to the amount of applications on other platforms (Mac OS X and Windows namely). I suggested (by qouting, since I thought the quotes were self-explanatory) that one of the reasons for this was the license situation of Qt back then when it was only licensed under the GPL for OSS platforms. Now, I'm sure it's not that difficult to grasp that this makes porting to closed source platforms rather difficult. Now that Qt4 is licensed GPL for all major platforms the first Qt-based applications start to appear for non-UNIX platforms.
And we didn't even talk about technical reasons which would make ComplexNumber's comment even more ludicrous.

So, I'm not exactly sure with what you want to go on since your contribution to this thread, and to the discussion between ComplexNumber and me in particular, was competely beside the point.

Luggy
February 27th, 2008, 04:57 PM
I can remember dozen's of cross platform GTK+ APP's for instance running in windows and quite popular...


However, as was pointed out in a previous post, these GTK Apps require the instalation of seperate GTK libraries on windows. You can compile QT so that you get a single binary executable, no screwing around with intalling QT libaries on the user's windows machine. QT emulates the operating environment this allows it to look more like a native application, unlike GTK which makes it's applications look alien.

And for the record I use QT to build cross-platform ( primarily Windows ) applications for the oil and gas industry. We have never encountered any problems with speed or appearence. I would also say that because of all the other tools ( SQL drivers, library managers, threading, network signals and slots, painting systems ) choosing to use QT for our application reduced our development time. As far as I know GTK does not have these built in tools and because of that I would not consider using GTK to build a Windows application.

Xbehave
February 27th, 2008, 06:35 PM
VLC will continue to have the ugly widgets it currently has and it will also have the option of using qt4 and looking nice

gnomes failure to make qt look right merely shows that gnome sucks at integrating other widget sets, kde integrates gtk fairly well.

@Polygon
mplayer is superior for many reasons, mainly what your criticizing it for
A) it has a multitude of UIs (in fairness VLC does too its just that most people in this thread were too quick to jump on the qt is ugly band wagon and ignore this)
b) it runs on what you have on your system (so if your system can play DVDs it can, if it cant then it cant, sure this means its harder to get it working if you dont know what your doing (but hey thats what recomendations are for) but if you have a problem its much easier to fix)

Rhapsody
February 27th, 2008, 07:33 PM
I currently like VLC media player quite a bit, and would probably use it in preference to MPlayer were it not for:

a) The fact that it can't yet handle RealVideo (which I sometimes still encounter).
and
b) The fact that it seems to choke on some longer videos, ending up with very jerky video and sound that requires stopping and restarting the video entirely to fix (though I should note that MPlayer can't manage to sync the video and audio on the videos in question, so it's hardly better).

The fact that they're migrating to Qt4 will only help with this. I'm the opposite of the earlier posters who don't like using Qt apps in that I hate using GTK+ apps. I generally find GTK+ apps to be less attractive, harder to use, and (amazingly enough) slower than Qt apps. The latter may be a product of me using KDE, but the first two are just problems with GTK+ itself.

qazwsx
February 27th, 2008, 09:16 PM
MPlayer is a CLI app. There are several GUI frontends available.

+1
I am big fan of mplayer CLI (default gui sucks big time). It is possible to configure mplayer to use OSD (for example geexbox is using it). Very clean, fast and feature rich as CLI.

VLC has better DVD navigation. VLC UI is pretty messy.

GTK open/save dialogs are so horrible. Good choice IMO. And nice to see QT4 spreading around different platforms.

graabein
February 27th, 2008, 09:26 PM
I'll try grabbing the non Qt frontend then... VLC rocks! But I prefer staying away from KDE!

kripkenstein
February 27th, 2008, 09:35 PM
And for the record I use QT to build cross-platform ( primarily Windows ) applications for the oil and gas industry. We have never encountered any problems with speed or appearence. I would also say that because of all the other tools ( SQL drivers, library managers, threading, network signals and slots, painting systems ) choosing to use QT for our application reduced our development time. As far as I know GTK does not have these built in tools and because of that I would not consider using GTK to build a Windows application.
Well, you added 'as far as I know', so I can't fault you for not being accurate ;) But GTK includes, for example, cross-platform threading support. It includes lots of other useful stuff too. However, that it lacks, for example, SQL drivers, is not really an issue for me, for the following reason. If what you want is to reduce development time - which is what you say - then choosing GTK/Qt/whatever is far, far less important than the language. And if you choose, say, Java or Python, then you get a huge standard library, including SQL stuff, etc.

Really, the issue is that Qt is old, and its approach made more sense a decade ago. But now we have things like Python and Java, that provide better cross-platform development for basically everything but widgets (they give you networking, SQL, threading, etc. etc.). These platforms are both far easier to program in than C++ (Qt's native language), and have an extremely rich standard library. That is the direction things are moving, I would say.

Polygon
February 27th, 2008, 10:44 PM
You're doing it wrong.



MPlayer is a CLI app. There are several GUI frontends available.



libdvdcss2+libdvdread+libdvdnav



MPlayer is superior to VLC for a variety of reasons. You need to look into using a better GUI frontend (SMPlayer and Gnome-MPlayer are both nice). It might solve your problems.

I just did a sudo apt-get install mplayer, and it came with a gui.

and about mplayer working:

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5585/screenshotok3.th.png (http://img217.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshotok3.png)

same video, vlc works, with sound, player gives me errors about video and sound output devices. yeah. I had to do a guess and check to see which of the 7 options for video output until it worked, and sound still doesnt seem to work while VLC's does. Still dont like mplayer though. Not to mention mplayer does not seem to have support for dvd menus, and yes i have all of those libs installed.

Whatever...this isnt a mplayer discussion, and ive tried the qt4 vlc, the ui is a bit better (especially in the preferences area), but i never noticed anything wrong in the first place with it.

Arathorn
February 27th, 2008, 11:20 PM
I'll try grabbing the non Qt frontend then... VLC rocks! But I prefer staying away from KDE!
QT is not the same as KDE. KDE is built with QT, but you don't need KDE to run QT apps. In other words: you can install the QT version of VLC without touching KDE.
On topic: I see they're adding a lot of features to the QT version. I'm not sure if I like that, I only use VLC to quickly preview audio files and watch movies, and I don't need playlists for that.

Sammi
February 27th, 2008, 11:20 PM
So if I wanted to try VLC-QT, where would I find it?

herbster
February 27th, 2008, 11:21 PM
I've got my QT apps looking pretty much exactly like my GTK ones, so this is fine by me. I'm interested in seeing how it looks, but regardless, VLC rocks! I use Xine here and there but VLC has always been the go-to player, never even considered others.

qazwsx
February 27th, 2008, 11:26 PM
I just did a sudo apt-get install mplayer, and it came with a gui.

and about mplayer working:

...

same video, vlc works, with sound, player gives me errors about video and sound output devices. yeah. I had to do a guess and check to see which of the 7 options for video output until it worked, and sound still doesnt seem to work while VLC's does. Still dont like mplayer though. Not to mention mplayer does not seem to have support for dvd menus, and yes i have all of those libs installed.
.
You are using gmplayer. USE CLI!! GUI config is pretty bad/unusable as default. mplayer-nogui is the right package :popcorn:

man mplayer
I have printed it in pdf >100 pages of ducumentation in A4 (sweet). Very nice player. As I said before configured OSD makes it really sweet.

maniacmusician
February 28th, 2008, 01:39 AM
Well, you added 'as far as I know', so I can't fault you for not being accurate ;) But GTK includes, for example, cross-platform threading support. It includes lots of other useful stuff too. However, that it lacks, for example, SQL drivers, is not really an issue for me, for the following reason. If what you want is to reduce development time - which is what you say - then choosing GTK/Qt/whatever is far, far less important than the language. And if you choose, say, Java or Python, then you get a huge standard library, including SQL stuff, etc.

Really, the issue is that Qt is old, and its approach made more sense a decade ago. But now we have things like Python and Java, that provide better cross-platform development for basically everything but widgets (they give you networking, SQL, threading, etc. etc.). These platforms are both far easier to program in than C++ (Qt's native language), and have an extremely rich standard library. That is the direction things are moving, I would say.

That doesn't really make much sense...Just like GTK has bindings for python and other languages, Qt does as well. You can write a Qt program using ruby, python, and any other language that has Qt bindings available. With that fact stated, I can't really see another valid argument that GTK is better than Qt. Having worked with both for a little bit (with my limited programming skills), I found Qt easier to work with, and not at all "old" as you said. However, I don't really have too much of an issue with either. It's up to the developers to choose what they want to develop with.

I think there needs to be more of a focus on achieving interoperability between different toolkits, so people don't experience hindrances like Qt apps running noticeably slower in Gnome and vice versa.

Polygon
February 28th, 2008, 02:42 AM
So if I wanted to try VLC-QT, where would I find it?

http://nightlies.videolan.org/

and qaz, i wasnt aware that it was mplayer-nogui...i thought gmplayer would be like called....gmplayer instead of just plain mplayer ;)

Mr. Picklesworth
February 28th, 2008, 04:46 AM
So you think a licence that allows you to give nothing back to the community is better than one that secures your freedom?
/me is confused.

The problem there is about adoption. Proprietary development happens, and most operating systems need to support that in userspace. I don't think many people doubt that for end user software.
It can happen two ways: Not integrated with the UI toolkit (thus horribly out of place in the desktop), or unfairly set back by thousands of dollars because the developers were kind enough to integrate with the existing shared technologies. Good for a toolkit on its own (which is why I am somewhat neutral about this), terrible for a desktop environment that wants any chance of success in "the real world".

As a contrast, not even Windows has people paying up the noses for its GUI toolkit, and even so people are bouncing their own unintuitive conjurings around the thing. (One particularly horrifying recent example: The slow-moving slug that is Steam). For a distro priding itself on accessibility, we would want to avoid this, right?
Someone pointed out that this association of KDE with Trolltech is similar to the FUD spread about GNOME's founder and Microsoft. Granted, the folks at Trolltech are open and friendly, but there are clearly some risky business interests going on there.

Now, if people accept that KDE is a niche desktop environment that can not be widely adopted by all developers, then everybody is happy. Personally, I love the idea of a 100% free environment and consider it a worthwhile endeavour that everyone can definitely learn from. However, if people continue to feed the dillusion that it is the same as GNOME and can ultimately surpass it - that it will become the environment of choice for developers who sit on advanced technology they can't yet afford to openly share (understandable, I think!) - then I for one will consider its use of Qt, as well as the association of Qt with KDE, problematic.

Having said that, tor single applications like VLC to use Qt just because it's a good cross-platform toolkit is, in my opinion, fine. It's a nice toolkit on its own, and does quite well blending in to Windows while being far more capable than that thing's own UI toolkit.

graabein
February 28th, 2008, 10:10 AM
QT is not the same as KDE. KDE is built with QT, but you don't need KDE to run QT apps. In other words: you can install the QT version of VLC without touching KDE.

I know it's not the same but I've always thought installing Qt apps like Amarok and such required a lot of KDE libs, and consequently the system would run slower than using pure Gtk/GNOME?

I'm more than pleased with Quod Libet as my music player but I'd like to hang on to VLC some how, preferably with the smallest added size and response time and with a GUI that fits in with my other apps.

Thanks for the info though. I'll keep it in mind when the time comes. :)

rvm4000
February 28th, 2008, 11:25 AM
I know it's not the same but I've always thought installing Qt apps like Amarok and such required a lot of KDE libs

I think amarok is actually a kde application, not a Qt only app, so it will really install a lot of kde libs.

SMPlayer for instance is a Qt only app, it only requires Qt, it won't install any kde library.

BTW, Qt 4 provides a style (Cleanlooks) which makes Qt applications to look like gtk apps.

MonkeeSage
June 22nd, 2008, 05:35 AM
However, as was pointed out in a previous post, these GTK Apps require the instalation of seperate GTK libraries on windows. You can compile QT so that you get a single binary executable, no screwing around with intalling QT libaries on the user's windows machine. QT emulates the operating environment this allows it to look more like a native application, unlike GTK which makes it's applications look alien.

And for the record I use QT to build cross-platform ( primarily Windows ) applications for the oil and gas industry. We have never encountered any problems with speed or appearence. I would also say that because of all the other tools ( SQL drivers, library managers, threading, network signals and slots, painting systems ) choosing to use QT for our application reduced our development time. As far as I know GTK does not have these built in tools and because of that I would not consider using GTK to build a Windows application.

I don't really care for most of this thread (hey, whatever toolkit gets people hawt with itz sekzy widgits, more power too 'em).

But as a person who has used GTK (and GNOME infrastructure and third-party extensions like libsexy), in eveything from Mono / VS2005 with Boo and C# to python and ruby, I know a little bit about it. Not by any means an expert, but I know enough to get by.

With that said, there are a couple of inaccuracies in your post (I'm paraphrasing you here):


1.) GTK can't be statically compiled into a single windows executable / installer.

- Why not? If you build GTK on MSYS or you download the development packages (http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html), you have the object files. So what is stopping you from statically linking them with your app? If you mean that some / many / most GTK projects for windows don't do that, that is a different matter than whether they could do so if they wished. And even if there were some magic mojo preventing them, why not just bundle the dynamic libs in the same install location like you do with libSDL.dll and zlib.dll? Or if the evil curse even extends that far, why not throw a section in your NSIS script to download them dynamically at install time?


2.) GTK apps look alien on windows.

- Depends. Foobar2000, FruityLoops, CoolEdit, &c look pretty alien compared to say Media Player Classic (heck, WMP10 looks somewhat alien in comparison). But even so, GTK has been shipping their windows port for some time with a theme engine that uses the native GDI+ (and for a while now, the UxTheme engine) for rendering widgets. The only thing that looks "really" out of place, is, perhaps, that it uses GTK's stock icons. But then again, a great many apps use their own icons in menus and toolbars in windows (and they are usually not nearly as colorful or well-designed as GTK's).

Look at how nicely GTK apps can blend in on XP (*can* is the key word -- you can make them as ugly as you like too):

http://www.gtk.org/images/screenshots/screenshot-gimp-windows.jpg
http://www.gtk.org/images/screenshots/screenshot-gnumeric-windows.png
http://www.beranger.org/misc5/evowin1.jpg
http://rowi.standardleitweg.de/uploads/evolution-win32.png
http://www.kksou.com/php-gtk2/gif/glade3.4.gif

3.) QT has libraries, GTK gives you a canteen and a hunting knife and throws you out of a low-flying plane.

- Hmmmm...your list sounds familiar for some reason...let me think...

SQL drivers - GStreamer?

library managers...network signals and slots...hmmm, I wonder if that's anything like ORBit (CORBA) or D-Bus?

threading...I just know I've heard something about that...what is it, now? Oh, right: GLib. With its I/O watches and timeouts (think System.Windows.Forms.Timer), thread notification, idle watches, autolocking and unlocking critical sections, &c.

and of course, painting systems...I've heard of something like that, called Luxor or Thebes or something. Or maybe it was Cairo. Probably never caught on and faded into obscurity. I mean I seriously doubt that companies like Ximian would use something like to drive their libgdiplus that allows them to implement their own Winforms module?


Now granted that Cairo and D-Bus (and to a large extent, GLib, and a lesser extent GStreamer) are not GTK-only. The point is that you can create robust, rich-content, aesthetically appealing appealing applications for windows with GTK. Now whether people actually do that or not is another question. I think it's about a 60-70% ratio towards "yes". :)

And, just to stress, I'm not saying that QT can't do exactly the same, or is less well-equiped to do so. I have zero experience with QT programming, but it looks like a full-featured kit, and I know people have created some great apps with it. So hurry for QT as well as GTK.

EdThaSlayer
June 22nd, 2008, 06:43 AM
I really can't tell the difference in beauty between VLC the way it's now and how it's going to look like in QT4. Maybe that's just me. I use Kubuntu, that could be why. :)

stmiller
June 22nd, 2008, 07:35 AM
I think amarok is actually a kde application, not a Qt only app, so it will really install a lot of kde libs.

SMPlayer for instance is a Qt only app, it only requires Qt, it won't install any kde library.

BTW, Qt 4 provides a style (Cleanlooks) which makes Qt applications to look like gtk apps.

++++

mips
August 4th, 2008, 11:42 PM
I must say that the new interface looks much better to me.

Screenshot of my vlc install:
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/4758/vlcan7.th.png (http://img187.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vlcan7.png)

Polygon
August 4th, 2008, 11:50 PM
i compiled vlc from source a long time ago, and i use gnome, and i dont remember installing all those kde libs. i think you just have to install a few qt ones

anyway yeah the interface is A LOT better in 9.0. i cant wait for it.

miggols99
August 5th, 2008, 12:02 AM
i heard that as well...with the new CleanLooks theme. whether its true or not is a different matter. me thinks not as qt/kde aps are going to stick out like a sore and ugly thumb - the theme is going to have to replicate the current gtk theme rather than just the default gtk theme.
Replicating the theme can already be done. I can't remember what it's called but it can get Qt apps to integrate very nicely with Gtk apps.

pluviosity
August 5th, 2008, 12:04 AM
Is there a ballpark estimate somewhere for when the new version of VLC is going to be released?

doorknob60
August 5th, 2008, 01:14 AM
For everyone saying Qt looks like crap in Gnome, look at this: http://code.google.com/p/qgtkstyle/ It's not a theme for qt mimicing GTK, it uses GTK (similar to how Kubuntu makes GTK apps look good, but the other way around)

SunnyRabbiera
August 5th, 2008, 01:26 AM
My arguement is that QT4 looks like crap, as KDE4 looks like crap still.
I may just go gtk apps only from now on as I really dont like how this is going.
QT4 is still alphaware crap in my opinion, maybe in a year or two it will be good as well as KDE4 but right now both look like crap.

Polygon
August 5th, 2008, 04:12 AM
looks are opinions, i think it looks fine. Not to mention that the special qt theme that just uses your gtk theme pretty much makes a qt app look EXACTLY like a gtk one (ive tried it)...so if you hate qt so much because it looks bad, just use the qgtklooks or whatever theme and it looks like gtk. done deal.

it would be a shame to not use a great program like vlc just cause you dont use it on principal.

init1
August 5th, 2008, 04:25 AM
Yeah I don't want to install qt4 just for vlc. Hopefully Lenny won't have that version.

LaRoza
August 5th, 2008, 04:47 AM
December 10th, 2006 is too long...

mips
August 5th, 2008, 09:23 AM
I installed VLC 0.9.0-test3 last night on kde4.1 and I must say I really like the new QT interface. It looks so much better than the 0.8.6 versions.

According to http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/roadmap vlc 0.9.0 will be available in about two weeks or so which is pretty soon.

Here are the motivations for the move to QT4:
http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2007/02/10/Qt4-Interface

Here are some screenshots, including Ubuntu:
http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/category/Videolan

For the GTK users worried about this fitting with their theme see:
http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/Styles/GtkStyle
http://code.google.com/p/qgtkstyle/

VLC screenshot on KDEmod 4.1:
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/6005/vlcvn0.th.png (http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vlcvn0.png)

JillSwift
August 5th, 2008, 09:41 AM
Oh, that's nice! I am so downloading that when it is released.

Bachstelze
August 5th, 2008, 11:21 AM
Thread reopened, since apparently, the fist VLC-Qt version will release soon-ish.

But seriously, who cares about the interface? That won't make VLC much less of a failure...

Erunno
August 5th, 2008, 12:54 PM
Thread reopened, since apparently, the fist VLC-Qt version will release soon-ish.

But seriously, who cares about the interface? That won't make VLC much less of a failure...

Well, I tend to agree to this unflattering assessment. I downloaded a recent build of vlc 9.0 (about 4 weeks ago) and the subtitle support was as horrendous as in the 8.6 version. I was really hoping that the developers would put more work in this part but alas it seems their priorities are elsewhere (understandably, as VLC has a lot of other issues as well).

mips
August 5th, 2008, 01:09 PM
But seriously, who cares about the interface? That won't make VLC much less of a failure...

Why do you call it a failure? I happend to think it is the best media player out there regardless of platform.

I know some people are dead set against qt though.

Bachstelze
August 5th, 2008, 01:20 PM
One reason was given above. Another one is it's very bad support of Matroska chaptering, which leads to some heavy artifacts that don't appear in any other player.

Basically, it is too rigid, but simply can't afford to do so, because some features are just so poorly implemented. mplayer does the same, but at least it always uses the best libraries, so its rendering of any format is always the best you can ask for.

nrs
August 5th, 2008, 01:30 PM
Random thoughts:
1.) Even when VLC used WxWidgets (and hence GTK+) it still managed to look out of place -- on everything. So it's not like it's going from in -> out.
2.) With Qt, VLC will look -- and function as close as possible -- natively on: KDE, Windows, OS X, better than the none it achieved with WxWidgets, and the GNOME/XFCE only it could achieve with straight GTK+. Don't be so selfish GNOME users!
3.) The only practical advantage GTK+ offers is licensing -- a moot point since VLC is not a proprietary application.
4.) It's not like running KDE/Qt applications in GNOME is an affront to God. I'm willing to bet a sizable number of you are using Amarok.
5.) You can still have your beloved WxGTK interface.

geoken
August 5th, 2008, 01:59 PM
Great, I love Qt. As a primarily gnome user, I can appreciate the fact that Qt & KDE have been the only parties who have made an effort into a cohesive looking desktop. Not only has KDE taken steps to make GTK apps look native under KDE, but qt has even done Gnome's job for it and taken steps to make Qt apps look native in Gnome.

For those who don't know about QGTKStyle;
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/05/22/qgtkstyle-makes-kde-apps-fit-in-with-gnome

Erunno
August 5th, 2008, 02:50 PM
I just remembered that I stumbled upon a YouTube video some time ago which nicely explains some of the gripes I have with VLC. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se9LjFB9Ar0

Polygon
August 5th, 2008, 05:23 PM
the only bad thing ive noticed about vlc is that it crashes when trying to seek through mkv files. Ive used subtitles with vlc and i do not know what they are talking about how with them they lag and are horribly rendered.

Bachstelze
August 5th, 2008, 07:13 PM
Ive used subtitles with vlc and i do not know what they are talking about how with them they lag and are horribly rendered.

Can you see now?

Polygon
August 5th, 2008, 09:00 PM
besides the fact that its a bit bigger then whatever the player is on the right, i see nothing wrong with it...sure it looks a bit more pixelated, but since its subtitles you are not inspecting them for the best of quality...

sure it can be improved but i dunno how having 'slightly bigger slightly more pixelated subtitles' is a reason for shunning vlc as an entire program

Erunno
August 5th, 2008, 09:11 PM
Depending on which container format is used VLC renders the subtitles almost ilegible due to huge and highly pixalated glyphs which usually lack any kind of acceptable shadow (even with the correspondig option turned on). Worse, VLC has problems with multiline subtitles when several persons are talking simultaneously. VLC simply draws the individual subtitles on top of each other which makes them practically unreadable. Plus, as far as I understand it's possible to embed some kind of markup language in certain subtitle formats which VLC tends to ignore and shows the markup tags instead. In some cases VLC simply fails do display subtitles at all.

At this point I'd like to point out that these problems are unique to VLC. I've tested each problematic movie on windows with Media Player Classic and it didn't have any of aforementioned problems.

The image HymnToLife provided is not even the worst VLC has to offer compared to other media players. It looks almost acceptable.

Bachstelze
August 5th, 2008, 09:58 PM
Plus, as far as I understand it's possible to embed some kind of markup language in certain subtitle formats which VLC tends to ignore and shows the markup tags instead.

No, it's much smarter now: it ignores the tags, but doesn't display them ;)

Polygon
August 5th, 2008, 10:00 PM
ooook now i get what you mean =P

Bachstelze
August 5th, 2008, 10:16 PM
And that's why VLC fails as a player. The A S S support was supposed to be included ages ago (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=127001#p127001), but it's still not there.

And then they say VLC supports everything... Oh, by the way, did I mention it couldn't play Lagarith videos either?

Polygon
August 6th, 2008, 01:19 AM
vlc far from fails as a player

i have never even HEARD of lagarith videos. i dont think i would of ever of heard of it if you didnt bring it up to me just now. Of course, the program is open source. Feel free to add support for it yourself.

using the logic that 'vlc fails as a player cuase it sucks at subtitle rendering' is flawed. By that token, ubuntu also sucks because suspend does not work on my laptop and it has overly aggressive power management that wears out my hard disk. But if i came out and said that i would get hundreds of responses that 'ubuntu isnt perfect', etc etc. One bug does not invalidate the entire program and all the hardwork that has gone into it by hundreds of VOLUNTEERS.

Like ubuntu, vlc can be improved. And saying that A S S support was supposed to be implemented 'long ago'....doesn't mean anything. Maybe the bug is too low priority, or no developers have an interest in fixing it. Maybe complications rose up, they forgot about it, some critical shows stopping bug cropped up that made them forget about it.

so you may not like vlc cause of this bug. fine. but don't spread FUD that it fails as a player just because subtitle support is subpar.

LaRoza
August 6th, 2008, 01:42 AM
And that's why VLC fails as a player. The A S S support was supposed to be included ages ago (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=127001#p127001), but it's still not there.

And then they say VLC supports everything... Oh, by the way, did I mention it couldn't play Lagarith videos either?

VLC is good enough for me :-)

Erunno
August 6th, 2008, 08:27 AM
using the logic that 'vlc fails as a player cuase it sucks at subtitle rendering' is flawed.

It is is valid statement because there are a lof of other free players that actually get it right and have also done so for a long time.

JT9161
August 6th, 2008, 10:07 AM
meh. I dont really care either way so long as it still works, I love me some VLC

mips
August 6th, 2008, 10:26 AM
mplayer does the same, but at least it always uses the best libraries, so its rendering of any format is always the best you can ask for.

Are you referring to the codecs? I think I noticed somewhere in VLC preferences (if you select the Advanced ones) you can change the codecs used by vlc.

As for the OSD or Sub Title thing I see what you mean. Hopefully that will get fixed in the future. I rarely if ever watch movies on my pc and those things I have watched did not rquire the use of sub titles. I watch many foreign movies but that I do on dvd&tv.

Hells_Dark
August 6th, 2008, 12:42 PM
I'm using gnome and i sooo don't care.
First i'm a big mplayer fan (with no gui, it's just perfect). I play everythin with it, except dvd where i use vlc.
VLC has always seemed weird to me, not really well integrated, i don't know why..
So, well, i don't care.

karellen
August 6th, 2008, 12:44 PM
VLC is my main video player in both Windows and Linux and never had any problems with it, so for me I couldn't care less if it's using Gtk or QT

Bachstelze
August 6th, 2008, 01:37 PM
using the logic that 'vlc fails as a player cuase it sucks at subtitle rendering' is flawed. By that token, ubuntu also sucks because suspend does not work on my laptop and it has overly aggressive power management that wears out my hard disk.

No. There is a huge difference between adding support for file formats for which libraries are readily available to a media player and adding suspend support to laptops when so many manufacturers use buggy DSDTs that make the process close to impossible.

And no, even if I could, I certainly wouldn't contribute to VLC. Other players already do what I need them to do, so why should I bother coding for VLC? It can die, for all I care. Plus it's GPL, and I'm certainly never ever going to write GPL code.

adam_kimber
August 6th, 2008, 01:48 PM
GTK apps look fine in KDE with the GTK-Qt theme, however Qt apps in their current form look absolutely horrible on a default GNOME desktop.


You could always use a nicer KDE theme. I found one that goes with my GTK theme and installed that. Everything looks rather nice now. Different icons but that is all. Ugly is not a word I would use. That is in GNU/Linux

I hope VLC will look nicer in windows with the Qt4 toolkit as the wx one is horrible.

mysticmatrix
August 6th, 2008, 09:40 PM
Well as for now, one can install the GtkStyle QT engine so as the widget of the QT4 theme are picked up from your GTK theme.
For example, I use a modified form of 'Futurelook' on my computer, and with the GtkStyle engine, most QT4 apps, like SMPlayer, follow my theme.[ 1st screenshot]

However, VLC has somehow decided that it will not follow the QT theme preferences and prefers to use a shabby theme by itself with no option to modify it :( :confused: [2nd screenshot]

Overall, player has improved, but it interface now looks even more ugly. If not anything, they should have provided atleast a simple theme for non KDE4 environment.

BTW, I would have to admit that Linux has spoiled me with respect to look and feel of environment. On Windows, every other application had it own theme, and I never bothered. Now after Firefox 3 also uses native GTK theme, it appears like pain to eyes to see some different looking application.

http://thumbnails.freeimagehost.eu/352/8852d83512203.gif (http://www.freeimagehost.eu/image/8852d83512203) http://thumbnails.freeimagehost.eu/352/a4f9383512204.gif (http://www.freeimagehost.eu/image/a4f9383512204)

Polygon
August 7th, 2008, 12:44 AM
No. There is a huge difference between adding support for file formats for which libraries are readily available to a media player and adding suspend support to laptops when so many manufacturers use buggy DSDTs that make the process close to impossible.

And no, even if I could, I certainly wouldn't contribute to VLC. Other players already do what I need them to do, so why should I bother coding for VLC? It can die, for all I care. Plus it's GPL, and I'm certainly never ever going to write GPL code.

yeah, cause the GPL is soooo much worse then 'core media players' license (aka closed source) *rolls eyes*

and im pretty sure 'lagaranth' video support hasnt been added because the format is like non existent. i have NEVER EVER seen a lararanth video....and i doubt i ever will.

and again, having subpar subtitles support and the inability to play a rare format does not invalidate the entire program. It may suck for you, an avid anime watcher (im guessing) but for me, who watches movies encoded in 'popular' and 'well known' codecs and dvds with their own subtitles, it works fine for me

FuturePilot
August 7th, 2008, 12:54 AM
Well as for now, one can install the GtkStyle QT engine so as the widget of the QT4 theme are picked up from your GTK theme.
For example, I use a modified form of 'Futurelook' on my computer, and with the GtkStyle engine, most QT4 apps, like SMPlayer, follow my theme.[ 1st screenshot]

However, VLC has somehow decided that it will not follow the QT theme preferences and prefers to use a shabby theme by itself with no option to modify it :( :confused: [2nd screenshot]

Overall, player has improved, but it interface now looks even more ugly. If not anything, they should have provided atleast a simple theme for non KDE4 environment.

BTW, I would have to admit that Linux has spoiled me with respect to look and feel of environment. On Windows, every other application had it own theme, and I never bothered. Now after Firefox 3 also uses native GTK theme, it appears like pain to eyes to see some different looking application.

http://thumbnails.freeimagehost.eu/352/8852d83512203.gif (http://www.freeimagehost.eu/image/8852d83512203) http://thumbnails.freeimagehost.eu/352/a4f9383512204.gif (http://www.freeimagehost.eu/image/a4f9383512204)

Try starting it with
--disable-cleanlooks option

mysticmatrix
August 8th, 2008, 01:31 AM
Try starting it with
--disable-cleanlooks option

That option works for Skype, and not for VLC (atleast the way I build it).
However, this guy report that VLC is working using GTK themes. (http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2008/05/21/VLC-media-player-and-GTK):guitar:

Perhaps I build it the wrong way....

banjobacon
August 8th, 2008, 03:33 AM
VLC screenshot on KDEmod 4.1:
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/6005/vlcvn0.th.png (http://img381.imageshack.us/my.php?image=vlcvn0.png)

Tabs within tabs. Two rows of buttons in the main window. Looks like VLC will have a lousy interface regardless of what toolkit it uses. That's a shame.

ghindo
August 8th, 2008, 04:05 AM
And that's why VLC fails as a player. The A S S support was supposed to be included ages ago (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=127001#p127001), but it's still not there.

And then they say VLC supports everything... Oh, by the way, did I mention it couldn't play Lagarith videos either?VLC supports most of the codecs people want to use. Niche codecs such as the ones you refer to are used only by a very small minority, and just because support for said codecs aren't supported in VLC doesn't make it a bad program.

As far as I can tell, the only people who are unhappy with the codec support in VLC are die-hard anime fans.

Polygon
August 8th, 2008, 10:53 PM
VLC supports most of the codecs people want to use. Niche codecs such as the ones you refer to are used only by a very small minority, and just because support for said codecs aren't supported in VLC doesn't make it a bad program.

As far as I can tell, the only people who are unhappy with the codec support in VLC are die-hard anime fans.

which is what hymntolife is =P

and the interface looks different from when i last compiled it....are you sure hes not using the advanced interface or whatnot?

mips
August 9th, 2008, 07:05 PM
and the interface looks different from when i last compiled it....are you sure hes not using the advanced interface or whatnot?

Yes, I am using the advanced interface.

kempfjb
August 12th, 2008, 08:36 PM
That option works for Skype, and not for VLC (atleast the way I build it).
However, this guy report that VLC is working using GTK themes. (http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2008/05/21/VLC-media-player-and-GTK):guitar:

Perhaps I build it the wrong way....

Well, I am 'this guy' and also one of the VLC developers, and you just need to compile/download the QGtkStyle and set it in qtconfig-qt4.

kempfjb
August 12th, 2008, 08:38 PM
And that's why VLC fails as a player. The A S S support was supposed to be included ages ago (http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?p=127001#p127001), but it's still not there.

And then they say VLC supports everything... Oh, by the way, did I mention it couldn't play Lagarith videos either?

Hey, do you know that some rework of VLC *** support has happen ?

http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2008/08/04/VLC-media-player-and-SSA/***-support

Lagarith videos, I have not tried, but I can try to fix it.

kempfjb
August 12th, 2008, 08:41 PM
Tabs within tabs. Two rows of buttons in the main window. Looks like VLC will have a lousy interface regardless of what toolkit it uses. That's a shame.

The two rows of button has been removed, when you use advanced controls...

About the Tabs in Tabs, well, Apple does it, so it might not be that bad, and then, please provide any better idea for accessing those filters.

kempfjb
August 12th, 2008, 08:42 PM
I'm using gnome and i sooo don't care.
First i'm a big mplayer fan (with no gui, it's just perfect). I play everythin with it, except dvd where i use vlc.
VLC has always seemed weird to me, not really well integrated, i don't know why..
So, well, i don't care.

You can launch VLC without any GUI with 'vlc -Idummy' or 'cvlc' if your packager did it correctly.

kempfjb
August 12th, 2008, 08:52 PM
Is there a ballpark estimate somewhere for when the new version of VLC is going to be released?

Probably August, 23rd.

Dread Knight
August 19th, 2008, 05:47 PM
Really looking forward to it.

It has one of the strongest backends.
Hope the UI will respect a HIG and will become very lovely, even get integrated into kde rather then dragonplayer etc.

mips
August 19th, 2008, 07:38 PM
Really looking forward to it.

It has one of the strongest backends.
Hope the UI will respect a HIG and will become very lovely, even get integrated into kde rather then dragonplayer etc.

I'm, not to keen on dragon player myself.

zekopeko
August 19th, 2008, 07:51 PM
is there a repo with vlc nightlies and a repo for qgtkstyle?

ahaslam
October 2nd, 2008, 05:24 PM
Updated my rig & noticed it pulling in qt, thought wtf? Found it to be a vlc dep so tried it out, same thought. Pacman -Rs vlc = +96.62MB.

:p

ben2talk
December 1st, 2008, 05:24 PM
My arguement is that QT4 looks like crap, as KDE4 looks like crap still.
I may just go gtk apps only from now on as I really dont like how this is going.
QT4 is still alphaware crap in my opinion, maybe in a year or two it will be good as well as KDE4 but right now both look like crap.


I don't understand the appeal of QT4 - sure it's a basically clean look, with 'cleanlooks' - but with GTK there are so many more looks, and KDE doesn't make windows look half as good. Is this simply a case of people who use KDE trying to kick Gnome?

I like to be able to change my theme and have that theme work through my applications - so using the default theme for Firefox gives it either a brushed steel panel, or wooden panel - depending on the theme... however, VLC just looks like grey plastic. Does this mean I must install Dull grey themes to match?

blakjesus
December 1st, 2008, 05:51 PM
EDIT: Sorry, i made a stupid post. I didn't realise that this was an old thread.

Meh, VLC seems to integrate fine with Gnome. I dont really have any complaints. VLC is still an awesome video player.

I would prefer to have a gtk app but if i the qt version is alot better (i think vlc is a perfect example) then i dont mind using it.

chucky chuckaluck
December 1st, 2008, 06:12 PM
did vlc display subtitles correctly before it went to qt4?

ramaswamyps
December 1st, 2008, 06:17 PM
qt4 vlc is really good and stable.only change i did not like was the seperation of video window and control window.
otherwise its response time is very good.
and the web interface of the vlc is improved.
root cannot use it .

ZuLuuuuuu
December 1st, 2008, 06:26 PM
Awesome, now the only program that's ugly on my computers will be pretty =)

Don't worry it still looks awful :)

* Joking, it is just my opinion...

Erunno
December 1st, 2008, 07:50 PM
did vlc display subtitles correctly before it went to qt4?

Actually, VLC had horrible subtitle support before version 0.9 and it had nothing to do with the toolkit used.

chucky chuckaluck
December 1st, 2008, 07:51 PM
Actually, VLC had horrible subtitle support before version 0.9 and it had nothing to do with the toolkit used.

so, it's not really valid to criticize qt4 for vlc's subtitle shortcomings, then.

Half-Left
December 1st, 2008, 08:10 PM
Great, about time we had more well known apps going to Qt4.

ellalan
December 21st, 2008, 02:16 AM
In my gnome desktop vlc now looks out of place with this QT4 look, it may be suitable for other desktop environment but I loath it. In desperation I tried the GTKstyle but no luck( it wouldn't apply the GTK style) in Hardy but I got that installed in my Intrepid.