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Portland looks to unite Linux GUIs

Submitted by stro on Wed, 2006-04-05 11:43. FreeDesktop.org
FreeDesktop.org

The Open Source Developer Labs is previewing work that attempts to make life easier for software companies by bridging GNOME and KDE, the two competing graphical interfaces most widely used with Linux.

The effort, called Project Portland, began showing its first software tools on Tuesday in conjunction with this week's LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston. Using them, a software company can write a single software package that works using either of the prevailing graphical interfaces.

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The article states that a

Submitted by Tyr_7BE on Wed, 2006-04-05 13:41.

The article states that a set of command-line tools and APIs are provided. That's a step in the right direction. APIs and command-line tools will provide uniform access to components not yet standardized by freedesktop.org. However, what about graphical widgets? The layout and style of windows are quite different between KDE and Gnome. How does Portland attempt to solve the problem of differing HIGs?

As far as I understand, it

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Wed, 2006-04-05 14:50.

As far as I understand, it doesn't. From what I gathered, it aims to provide with common functionality API and tools that applications will find interesting or necessary to behave properly on either system, like opening the default browser or email client, finding out the mime type of a file, or opening that file on the default client for that mime type, etc.

Indeed it would seem so.

Submitted by Tyr_7BE on Wed, 2006-04-05 22:34.

Indeed it would seem so. Sorry. The article title is a little misleading.

My understanding is that one by Anonymous George (not verified)

Not really

Submitted by Anonymous George (not verified) on Thu, 2006-04-06 09:39.

Portland is more of an add-on that makes GNOME and KDE apps (and others, of course) interact better with each other. But what you're saying, using either Qt or GTK+ widgets on the same app, will be possible under Qt 4.2, ant that's grrrrreeeat! :-)

Little correction by Anonymous George (not verified)