Re: [gentoo-user] Qt5 - should I worry?

[Peter Humphrey]

On Thursday 31 December 2015 13:34:17 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 31/12/2015 13:19, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > Hello list,
> >
> > I've built a separate system in spare partitions, using the
> > desktop/plasma profile and the kde overlay, to see how I like it.
> >
> > I don't.
> >
> > I won't list all my objections here, but I have attached two screen
> > shots of KMail: one in the standard qt4 KDE environment and the other
> > in qt5. You can see how much less compact the qt5 version is, even
> > after I've fiddled at some length with fonts and qt tweaks, including
> > installing the noto fonts which you see here. And the qt5 screen shot
> > is half as big again as the qt4.
> >
> > My question to the panel is: is this just a temporary stage of
> > development, or are we going to have to live with it down the years?
>
> A lot of what you see there is not Qt itself, but the theme.

Yes, I understand that, but it's not easy for an ordinary user to separate 
them. Someone who designs a whole theme is not an ordinary user, either.

> The modern trend in gui elements is to make them less busy, use more
> whitespace and try to display on thing on the screen at a time (less for
> the user to focus on). You can see this for yourself: look at typical
> web sites over the last 15 years, then compare how gui elements are done
> in kde3, 4 and now 5. You will see a pattern. It's also in OSes and
> toolkits: gnome, macs, windows since 8. And on your tablets and phone.
>
> The Qt5 theme you are looking at reflects this general trend.

I know what you mean, Alan. As my Scottish landlady used to say in the '60s, 
the world's going to pigs and whistles. It's part of the apparently 
universal trend to dumb everything down (even BBC Radio 3!) - and having 
mobile devices take over from the desktop isn't going to help one whit. 
Meanwhile, those who don't need or enjoy being condescended to have to suffer 
the banality.

> I have not found a Qt5 theme that looks Qt4-esque, but it's totally
> possible to do it.
>
> I think in your case, you should go back to Qt4 until a quality theme is
> available for Qt5 that you like. Do keep in mind that Qt4 is already a
> good distance down the end-of-life process so you will have to switch to
> Qt5 some time (but not today or tomorrow)

Oh, I haven't abandoned Qt4 yet. It's my main, everyday system, while the 
Qt5 one is just for playing with via dual boot.

-- 
Rgds
Peter