GTK+OSX for Mac OS X Aqua

Scott Sheppard writes "GTK+OSX has released a native Mac OS X Aqua port of the Linux-based GTK+ open source graphical user interface library. GTK+ (GIMP Toolkit) is a popular widget library supporting graphical applications for Linux. GTK+OSX version 0.1 is an alpha release intended for developers." This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads without installing XDarwin and OroborOSX. Looking good!

Comments

Probably a stupid question

[sheriff_p]

This is probably a stupid question, but:

There are programs like FreeCIV that use GTK. How long until I can natively compile FreeCIV, or some other arbitary *nix program on OS X, without needing an X server?

What about existing Fink Installations?

[ewwhite]

How will this affect those of us with existing XFree86 and Fink applications? I currently use Gnome and Gtk for my X applications... is this an entirely-standalone product, or could it possibly integrate well with an existing Gtk install?

Re:First impertinent post

[IamTheRealMike]

But, why would anyone use GTK when OS X provides the vastly better Aqua?

Because GTK lets you write apps for Linux, Windows and now MacOS X, whereas Aqua is OS X only?

Also, how are you comparing GTK to Aqua? Looks? Have you got extensive programming experience of both? Or are you just assuming it's worse?

I think you could make a good case that GTK is superior to Aqua (as a widget toolkit).

GTK2 is much better than GTK1 bear in mind (I think they ported gtk1). I personally think the most common theme engines look much better than Aqua, because the flat, clean look appeals to me. Seeing screenshots of Aqua apps makes me glad I'm not using it, I mean every effing widget is full of stripey lines: I find it incredibly visually distracting. Of course GTK is natively themable (Aqua is not without some horrid hacks) and has been for some time, so if you must have an Aqua style GUI you can have one, but I much prefer for instance Mist which is stylish without getting in your way.

Programming wise, although I don't know much about MacOS coding, I do know that GTK2 has more bindings than Aqua (it's based on object oriented C meaning it's incredibly easy to bind to other languages), can have multiple backends (which is where it gets its display portability from), with the X backend can be network transparent, uses FreeType for superior text antialiasing (OS X has heavier, fuzzier AA at small sizes), has full accessibility support (aqua may have this too, i dunno) and of course is open source (which is why this is possible in the first place).

So - if you have credible arguments for why Aqua is better as a toolkit than GTK, let's hear them. And no, "I like animated buttons" is not a credible argument, you can have them with GTK too if you write a theme that uses them.

what about adobe

[digitalsushi]

I wonder what Adobe's take on this is, with the GIMP on the horizon? I wonder what percentage of Photoshop installations are legal viewed from both PC and Mac perspectives. Anyone know that stat, roughly? Course it's a hard number to calculate.

Re:First impertinent post

[IamTheRealMike]

Ahhh, well that's sort of cheating. A better example would be using a high level language. That doesn't use Glade (UIs loaded externally). I've written a hello world GTK app in Python that is only 4 lines of code using glade, one of which is loading the file.

If you're going to compare APIs you should at least make use of the features of each, and use languages of similar levels. No, ObjC is not a low level language either.

GTK UI construction in C is verbose yeah, but so is anything in C. You can make GTK apps very simply if you use the right bindings and use Glade (equivalent to .nib files), ditto for any part of the GNOME apis. Oh and I'd much rather not use Objective-C for anything, I find it incredibly hard to read, and I know many languages. I'm sure I could learn it if I wanted to, but I don't, language neutral APIs are generally much nicer imho.

Re:Why bother? Apple doesn't want this.

[bnenning]

Apple wants people to port their applications to Cocoa. That's the only kind of GUI they want on OSX.

True, and false. Apple emphasizes Cocoa and doesn't provide a built-in X server, but that doesn't mean they're hostile to the concept of running X apps. They even link to the XFree86 Darwin port.

I don't see any point in fighting it, and I don't see any point for open source efforts to waste any time on doing something Apple doesn't want in the first place.

There's nothing to fight, and even if there were, Apple doesn't control what software you run. By that reasoning developing Mozilla for Windows is pointless since Microsoft doesn't like it.