Dear Debian GTK+ Maintainers, I'm thinking of moving to Debian Stretch from Jessie. I have already started trying it out on Virtualbox, however I always get sick of GTK3. It is just driving me crazy. The more its development advances the more annoyances affecting usability and productivity are introduced which makes me end up willing to scream something like "I'm not using a damn iPad / Android tablet, this is a desktop computer!!!!" every time. Since I'm really sensitive to feature removals, dumbed-down user interfaces, UI changes based on pure fashion (e.g. tabletized desktop interfaces), and the fact that EoL of Jessie LTS is near, I must find a solution. So what should I do with a piece of open-source software that has gone awry? First thing that pops into my mind is reverting the hell out of those nasty commits causing the unwanted behavior. I'm neither a maintainer myself nor a programmer. Just a sysadmin with 10 years in the field who uses Linux desktop on a daily basis with my favorite distro Debian that I'm using almost since the beginning. I highlighted desktop with bold, because it's not a tablet, not a smartphone, so I don't want it to work like a tablet or look like a tablet. I also don't care if guys at Gnome and Red Hat don't have a better idea than aping even dumber UIs of Google Android and Microsoft (Metro) with their shitty UI designs.
I try to avoid GTK3 as much as possible but there are some vital applications at which I just can't. For example, Google Chrome as well as Chromium which I wouldn't want to patch and re-compile ever. They default to the GTK3 file dialog which is the single worst file chooser ever developed. I would like to get rid of the following annoyances hardcoded into GTK3. I also managed to recompile Xfce 4.12.3 with GTK2 using Debian Stretch source packages. So far it runs without problems. So I thought I'd do the same with libgtk-3-0 but it doesn't seem that easy at first. 1. Scrolling Indicator Cursor Every time I scroll inside GTK3 File Chooser, a cross cursor is shown, which I don't want to be there. Default cursor used to stay during scrolling and it should stay. I'm not a lame dumb f*ck who doesn't know what sort of gesture he's just made on the touchpad. If I want to scroll, it's intentional from my side. I don't need the mouse cursor to be changed to know that I'm scrolling. If I scroll, I should see list items (files and folders) moving within the file dialog. That's enough visual response for me. I find the scrolling indicator cursor annoying. I find it offensive that it's hardcoded and I can't turn that off via gsettings or gtk.ini. I would like to turn that off. It seems to have been introduced in commit de8af768 <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/commit/de8af768974b12e6b290fb813ed45bbb66a24f16>, however I need some advice on how to revert it properly as there are also further changes based on it (e.g. by commit 9eb356d9 <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/commit/9eb356d9f29a881e05937a0089d88154cfc6364a> ). 2. Overshoot Animation Another annoyance that is basically aping iOS/Android scroll widgets. Since I'm still not using a smartphone or a tablet but a desktop computer, I would like to get rid of this feature completely. Which means I don't even want to mess around with CSS hacks <https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/250880/how-to-disable-or-fix-gtk-scrolling-indicators> as they're tied to particular themes. Plus I don't even want an event to be fired by the underlying GUI toolkit when I reach the bottom of the scrollable area and then try to overscroll. I don't want CPU cycles to be wasted for firing useless events like that. I just want the good old behavior. No animation, no indicator of overshooting, no overshoot events. I find the overshoot animation annoying. I find it offensive that it's hardcoded and I can't turn that off via gsettings or gtk.ini. It seems to have been introduced in commit 103e11c9 <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/commit/103e11c9372c1fbdb6bd8311b7b7f2ee9981ccf8>, however I need some advice on how to revert the changes properly as there are a lot of futher changes based on it. 3. Recursive directory search Most annoying of all. When I'm in GTK3 File Chooser and start typing, the file dialog will start off a recursive search traversing through all my directories, on a type-to-find basis. I can't type-ahead a file in the current directory any more, which allowed me to quickly jump to a file by typing its initial letters. The new behavior is pretty annoying, raises many concerns regarding performance, privacy and general usability. It has already been discussed in many bug reports and forums. [1] <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/839> [2] <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=748672> [3] <https://mail.gnome.org/archives/nautilus-list/2012-August/msg00002.html> [4] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1164016> [5] <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=772634> [6] <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784029> A proposed patch / pull request <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=753892#c6> has also been created but stubborn GNOME developers don't even want to understand why their forced recursive search is an issue. They don't hesitate to push their will down every single desktop Linux user's throat, without giving an option to restore the old behavior. It seems to have been introduced in commit b3c28e14 <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/commit/b3c28e14fe184ee61f1904021ba42af5052bc9da>, however I need some advice on how to revert the changes properly as there are a lot of further changes based on it. I don't really want to start an argument about why maintainers have let all the menace coming with GTK3 into Stretch, because I'm afraid we would end up somewhere like those systemd-related discussions in the past, without finding a constructive solution. I also don't want to adapt to these annoyances. If that was an option for me, I wouldn't have turned to you with this e-mail. If there is no chance of maintainers doing this (which is very likely because Stretch has already been code-frozen) then I would like to ask for help on how to revert the changes that introduced the annoyances above, while maintaining stability. And I mean all of them, without any compromise. I appreciate any help on finding a sustainable way of patching GTK3 in Debian Stretch source packages to achieve the goals above. Alternatively I'm okay with a system-wide setting in every GTK3-dependent application where I can replace GTK3 File Chooser with GTK2 File Chooser, however I highly doubt this is possible. Best Regards, Pál Tamás Ács
