Re: "Why is emacs so square?"

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 22.04.2020 19:55, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> And the icons look the same, no matter what distribution are we
> talking about?  Doesn't something depend also on the desktop that's in
> use, and perhaps also on the window manager?

No, the icons looks different across themes. Hence the whole notion of 
"icon themes". But the set of icon names is fairly stable. This is what 
we'd be relying on.

See x-gtk-stock-map for some more detail.

> I'm not sure I like this direction.  It sounds like the opposite of
> having an Emacs that looks more or less the same on all major
> platforms.

Right. It's already not the case.

> How will the users (and newbies at that, since we are
> talking about them primarily) be able to find their ways in Emacs, if
> the icons change with the desktop/platform, and every few years even
> on the same platform?

People have been doing all right regarding that. At least, I haven't 
seen much criticism of GTK's approach in this regard.

> E.g., you buy the Emacs manual printed a year
> or 2 ago, but the icons it shows are all different from what's on
> display.  I don't even understand how will we be able to show the
> icons in our Info manual, if the images don't come with Emacs and are
> different on each platform/build.

The window looks are different between platforms anyway. As well as such 
fundamental thing as the placement of window's close/maximize/iconize 
buttons.

> Do we really want to go in that
> direction? just to say we look "modern"?

On GTK, we're already there. Since 22.2, apparently. Only we haven't 
been paying attention to keeping this feature in proper maintenance. I'm 
guessing because some of our core developers use other platforms, others 
build with Lucid, and the reset disable the toolbars? But that's not a 
good approach.