Recently, other Open Source toolkits such as Qt (used by the KDE
project) and GTK (used by the GIMP graphics editing software and the
Gnome project) emerged as powerful and free alternatives to Motif for
X-Window GUI development. The rapidly growing success of Open Source
systems such as GNU/Linux helped both toolkits attract a vast
community of developers, and the firm (and sometimes friendly)
competition between both communities led to an explosion of new
features. Thirst for freedom and customizability created the need for
themeability.
The current implementation of Tk only provides native look&feel on
supported platforms (Windows, X-Window, MacOS). This lack partly
explains Tk's loss of mind-share, especially amongst Linux developers,
where theme support is considered a "cool" or must-have feature.
While yesterday's goal of many GUIs was cross-platform visual
uniformity (Qt and GTK borrowed much of their visual appearance from
Windows, which borrowed earlier from NeXTStep), it is now quite common
to find huge visual differences on today's desktops, even on similar
systems. Screenshot contests are quite common nowadays.
...
Many Tk users may see themes support as cosmetic or of lower
importance than much needed features such as megawidgets or
objectification. Nevertheless, this is a critical feature to be
implemented for the long-term viability of Tk. Many courses are now
promoting Qt, GTK or (aarggg!) Swing in place of Motif, leaving no
room for Tk. Whatever its qualities (cross-platform, performance, ease
of use, internationalization and Unicode support), the lack of
themeability will always be seen as one of the main reasons for not
using Tk. Applications using Tk instead of GTK will look as "foreign"
on pixmap-themed Linux desktop, or even on newer MacOS and Windows
versions, as pre-8.0 applications were on non-X desktops.