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Halfway down to Icon Tooltips

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Wow I don't even notice these. Is it just on first installation (which is maybe why I don't remember...my Slack lasts so long ;-) ), or they continuous?

I'm glad for those who can ignore the tooltips. They annoy me horribly and always have, going back 30 years ago with Windows.

My solution is a sledge hammer, suggested by EdGr. I patched GTK3 to never show tooltips. Thus far I tested only in 14.2, but the solution succeeded. I hope to soon test in Current too.

I predicted this kind of nonsense would happen when the Xfce devs adopted GTK3. Just sad.

I have some sympathy for the Xfce team, although the way a couple of the younger devs bulldozed CSD through was not quite what we've come to expect from that quarter.

Recently I've been using Mate, and to be honest, with kwin as window manager, it's at least as good as Xfce, certainly much better than I had thought.

Regarding tooltips, I don't really notice. I've disabled the thumbnail tooltips on the panel. But I don't notice them elsewhere. I use Krusader as file manager and don't have icons on the desktop. Where else do they annoy you?

As do I, as well for the MATE devs. They have little to no control over GTK3. The GNOME team reigns with tight control. I wish the MATE and Xfce devs would maintain there own branch of GTK3.

The kicker is the key line in the GTK source code:

That line is the culprit. The line seems to show presumptions made by the GNOME devs. While I have read denials that the GNOME devs are creating a table/smart phone interface, that line seems to imply otherwise. The code disables tooltips for touch environments only. The GNOME devs seem to think that nobody can live without tooltips.

I agree that tooltips are important to some users, but there should be simple support to toggle when tooltips appear. The GNOME devs have refused to provide any such support.

Everywhere! Panel icons, desktop icons, file managers, terminal tabs, GUI dialogs, etc. I just want no tooltips. I accept that such a desire might be a minority opinion, but I suspect many people do not want tootltips appearing.

And Gtk 4 on its way!

It's disheartening the way the Linux desktops have gone. It's clear that KDE and Gnome have teams of developers in their 20s and 30s who just don't listen. No maturity and no manners. Just bull ahead with their own ideas and forget half the world out there who don't want to be bulldozed into accepting their vision of the desktop.

Tiling is not really a solution for those of us who don't live in Vim, Emacs or some programming environment. People can sneer at the mouse but it's just as old as, if not older than, Emacs and Vim.

I'm slowly making my way down a list of stacking window managers to see if I can settle on something a little more sensible and predictable than the big players. IceWM is nice ; so is Openbox with jgmenu and tint2. JWM too. Fluxbox. All of them coded and released by developers with manners, and with a desire to contribute to good and inclusive UX and UI design. We hear a lot of talk from KDE and Gnome ; talk is cheap when you have to actually USE their desktops.

The trouble is, it's never long till you need something from Gtk or Qt, and then you might as well just use Plasma or Xfce anyway. Another problem is that development has stopped with most of these window managers, IceWM excepted. That's not a big problem while X11 and 1920x1200 monitors are still the standard, but I think it will be a problem when Wayland and 2k or 4k monitors are the default.

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Interesting you mention IceWM. Yesterday I felt so disheartened about the direction desktop environments are going I wondered if I needed to revert 30 years and just use a window manager. Again, I do empathize with the Xfce and MATE devs because they have little influence over GTK, but I empathize only partly. Those devs could pave their own road if they wanted.

I see Paul Sherman still has Absolute Linux rolling. Perhaps I should look at what he is offering. Still would not resolve all tooltip issues unless GTK3 is recompiled without that support.

Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old man. At least I am a grumpy old man who has a clue abut usability.

I'd take a look at Openbox + Tint2 + jgmenu, for window management, panel(s) and launch menu, respectively.

I've just tried this combination in BunsenLabs Linux (virtual machine), which offers a nice configuration of all three. Although Thunar is used as the file manager, it seems tooltips are not used when Openbox is the window manager. The Tint2 panel has tooltips but they are very easy to toogle on and off. And tooltips do not appear in the jgmenu either. That's a good start, I think. As far as terminal tabs are concerned, as I told you some time ago, you should be using xterm and tmux or screen anyway. Terminal tooltip problem solved as well!

While a tabless terminal emulator might eliminate tooltips for that specific tool, I am addicted to terminal window tabs. Actually, I am probably am addicted to tabs. I well remember the 1990s Netscape days with dozens of open instances. I was hooked on tabs when I discovered Opera -- I think the first web browser offering tabs.

Same with file managers. I fell in love with the old KDE 3 Konqueror. My way of thinking and work flow use tabs a lot. I use Caja although using Xfce. I like XFE, possibly the fastest GUI file manager, with dual panes but no tab support.

That said, I did add a bunch of xterm tweaks to my user profile. I just get frustrated without tabs.

Yes, but tmux and screen offer you tabs.

And if you use either of these terminal "multiplexers" in xterm or urxvt you get tabs without tooltips.

How cool is that?

Gentlemen!

Why not maintain a patch for GTK3 doing away with the ever annoying tooltips? Moreover develop it to a full fledged toggle setting somewhere?

Since when are we bitching the itch instead of scratching it (in the sense of rolling our own)?

Just my 2c

Any such patch has to be maintained locally because the GNOME devs control GTK and will not support any such patch.

Yes.

But that would not be the first nor the only such project, right?

For everyone (or just upnort?) upset about gtk3 and Xfce tooltips popping up like pimples on a teenager, here is an old (2017?) workaround. For some reason, using Gordie's icon tooltip setting location doesn't apply to taskar, program menus, etc.

Edit the file: ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
to add:

For Firefox and that ilk, you can disable tooltips in 'about:config'

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I tried that to no avail. Others online report the same failure.