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!

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Article text (AC not whore)

[Anonymous Coward]

GTK+OSX has released a native Macintosh 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 is great news for the Mac OS X developer community," says Macworld UK contributing editor Scott Sheppard. "It means that many popular Linux programs can be ported to run natively with Mac OS X's Aqua user interface, avoiding the hassle of users having to run an X server."

GTK+OSX is a spin-off from the Film Gimp project (www.FilmGimp.org). GTK+ is utilized by Film Gimp and many other Linux programs including those of GNU and GNOME. Mac OS X users greeted Mac Film Gimp with enthusiasm at its release earlier in December. But, that X-based compatibility version was merely the first step. GTK+OSX is being developed as the underpinnings for a native Aqua-based Mac OS X port of Film Gimp, scheduled for Q2 2003.

GTK+OSX project manager Robin Rowe is also the release manager for Film Gimp. "As soon as we released the Fink-based version of Film Gimp we began looking for ways to port natively to Mac OS X", says Rowe. "Andy and I began researching different ways of doing that, either switching to another toolkit or making GTK+ run directly on Aqua."

GTK+OSX lead developer Andy Prock is also the Mac port lead for Film Gimp. "My curiosity got the better of me", says Prock. "I discovered an abandoned GTK+ for OS 9 Sourceforge project called gtk-mac, and that became the basis for GTK+OSX". GTK+ co-maintainer Owen Taylor says, "The GTK+ team is happy to see the GTK+OSX project working on bringing the power and flexibility of GTK+ to OS X."

GTK+ has not been available running natively on Macintosh, although there is a native port of GTK+ for Windows. Mac Film Gimp and other GTK+ applications currently use Fink and the XDarwin X server, a technology that enables X Windows programs to run on the Mac almost seamlessly. The relationship between Darwin/Aqua is roughly the same as Linux/X. Both Linux and Darwin are open source, but the Macintosh Aqua interface is not. A fully open source alternative is Darwin/XDarwin. XDarwin enables X to run on Darwin, and it can run "rootless" on the Aqua desktop if a user wishes to run both. However, there's overhead and complexity to running two graphics interfaces simultaneously. That's why it is desirable to have GTK+ run natively on Mac Aqua without X.

Apple offers four GUI toolkits: Cocoa, Java2, Carbon, and Classic. Carbon and Cocoa are both native Aqua interfaces. Aqua renders utilizing Quartz, a technology Apple based upon NeXT Display Postscript. For GTK+OSX a Carbon-based design was chosen over Cocoa because Rowe was influenced by Patrick Beard's description of the challenges Mozilla Chimera experienced working with Cocoa and Objective C (see http://www.opensourceprogrammers.org/meeting/2002/ Jun19.html). "We wanted an easy-to-maintain design, that would play nice with the Linux and Windows versions of GTK+", says Rowe. "That meant choosing Carbon and C, rather than Cocoa and Objective C."

A three-step process was mapped for developing the GTK+OSX library. First, do the trivial GTK+ program Hello World, then a mid-sized Linux application, then major applications such as Film Gimp. Rowe had written an article about porting the Linux-based Gothello GTK+ program to Windows (see http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5574), making it an obvious choice as a test program for a Mac port. Mac Gothello is the first real program to utilize GTK+OSX. Both are available for download at the GTK+OSX site at SourceForge.

* Pricing and Availability

Free at http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net. GTK+OSX is available as source tarball (gz). Download version 0.1 or higher, about 8mb. Optional Mac Gothello download is about 1mb. GTK+OSX has an active mailing list.

* Further Information

http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net

Robin Rowe, GTK+OSX project manager, 510-235-2397, Robin.Rowe@MovieEditor.com

Full rez screenshots: http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/docs/applications.h tml

Re:First impertinent post

[popeyethesailor]

GTK is a widget toolkit, it can be targeted to any rendering engine, X-windows, GDI etc.
BTW, this article is about GTK running natively on OS-X, which means it utilises the Aqua rendering engine. So there.

This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads??

[mustangdavis]

This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads

I don't think so!

Although it is pricey, all the "MacHeads" still are trained on (and prefer) Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately, that is still a superior product when it comes to image manipulation. Yes, GIMP has come quite a ways (and I use it for personal stuff since Adobe P.S. is so pricey), but it is hard to compete with a product that does such a great job and that has become an industry standard.

Nice thought, but it ain't gonna happen! Too many graphi designers have spent too many years of their lives learning how to use all of the features of Photoshop .... they're not goning to convert just because GIMP is suddenl available for OSX. If they wanted GIMP, they would have installed Linux on their Mac years ago and used it then.

Although I think it is great that GTK is now on Mac, I don't think it will change "things" that much ...

Just my $0.02 cents

Re:This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads??

[BMonger]

I'm not a graphic design type but I do need a program to use when I am creating web sites... there's not a chance I'm gonna spend $600 or so on PhotoShop when all I have to do is resize and image and maybe a crop or two...

Right now I use Graphic Convertor because it's cheap ($20) and it's easy to use... but I'd be inclined to install GIMP and use it too if it stopped by OS X...

A lot of power users probably use Final Cut Pro/DVD Studio Pro too but I bet there is a much much larger market that uses iMovie and iDVD because it's easy and it does what "the common man" needs done... this is the same place where GIMP will prevail.

Re:This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads??

[veddermatic]

I learned to get across the room by breaking glass on the floor then stripping naked and wrigginlg across it while squeezing lemon juice on my body.

Every time I try to use my "legs" it seems akward.

If you like the GIMP, neat, it's dirt cheap, and it does some stuff that PS does.. but boy howdy, comparing GIP to Photoshop is, well, re-read that first part of my post. I'm a professional designer... I looked into the GIMP when I was going ot leave WInderz for Linux.... I gave it plenty of time and effort, but sorry, the GIMP UI was designed by an evil robot who's only job it was to make a horrible UI. =)

I left Windows tho... Mmm, photoshop on OS X.

Re:This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads??

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I started on the gimp, and enjoyed it immensely - it was my introduction to graphics in a purely manual sense (as opposed to rendered 3D imagery and the like). I'm glad I came across it when I did. I never saw much reason to bash photoshop at the time, but other linux graphics users seem to have an obsession with bringing down all things PS.

I used photoshop after nearly 2 years with the gimp, and while it was initially freaky without my familiar tools I was stunned at the power in PS. It feels simpler, looks simpler, hell I feel like I'm doing less 'work' but there's more of me going into an image, than into using the UI. You can count me among the pro-photoshop people, but on the other hand I'll never bash The Gimp for what it is. It does well for when you don't need all of PS, and I can't see everyone needing to do everything PS does. It's one of the few pieces of software worth the price, IMHO

Re:This could make The Gimp cozy for MacHeads??

[babbage]

On one level you're right -- Photoshop is in most ways & by most opinions a superior tool compared to the Gimp, and most oldschool Mac users will not be impressed by the Gimp. On the other hand, a lot of newschool Mac users are oldschool Unix users, and a lot of those folks are only passingly interested in creative graphics software. For that segment, noodling around in the Gimp is just fine, and makes far more sense than shelling out a few hundred bucks for the professional grade graphic designers' software. In short, the Mac ecosystem is diverse enough to support both applications just fine.

More importantly, the real gain here is the GTK+ toolkit, not just the most prominent application written with that toolkit. Being one of those unix/mac users, I'm not particularly interested in the Gimp -- but I'd love to be able to use an Aqua-native version of Gvim every day, and with a native GTK+ port there are now a huge number of other GTK+ apps that can be brought over to OSX without forcing users to set up X11 as well. As another commenter noted, no, these will not really have the right look & feel for OSX -- menus attached to windows instead of the screen border is a mistake here -- but as a bridge framework for bringing graphical Unix software to the Mac, this is far better than having to run X11 alongside Aqua.

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?

Re:First impertinent post

[Anonymous Coward]

Aqua is just a look. Quartz is the rendering engine.

Won't make for nice "Mac apps"

[lpontiac]

I've been looking into cross platform toolkits myself recently. A major issue where the Mac is concerned is that it's not just the look, it's the feel; there are lots of nuances that will annoy Mac users if you don't get them right.

The screenshot shows a menu bar at the top of the Othello window, which breaks the most obvious rule of all - Mac app windows don't have a menu bar on them, instead there's a single menu bar up the top which changes depending upon the focus.

There's some specific gotchas in the wxWindows wiki, here.

Don't get me wrong, the GTK port is an achievement and I'm sure it will be very useful to a lot of people. But we'll never get to the point where someone can produce a decent Mac app by taking their Unix sources and recompiling.

Re:Won't make for nice "Mac apps"

[fidget42]

Please remember that this is an alpha release. I would expect a production release to properly manage (most of) then Aqua UI guidelines.

Re:First impertinent post

[llamalicious]

Im looking forward to throwing out Photoshop in favour of The Gimp.

That's enough outta you, mister. Your black turtleneck and beret are being confiscated!

Pffft.

sorry folks, GTK+-1.2 only :-(

[BigSven]

The article doesn't mention much about the technical details and does not even tell us which version of GTK+ this port is based on. Unfortunately it seems to be a port of the older GTK+ version 1.2. This is a surprising at first glance since the 2.0 version of GTK+ is much better prepared for different rendering backends (and comes with GDK versions for Win32, linux-fb and DirectFB). Since this port is closely related to FilmGimp, which is unfortunately still dealing with the outdated 1.2 version, this choice becomes clear. Hopefully this project will soon lead to a GTK+-2.x port or Mac users will have to deal with outdated and mostly unmaintained GTK+ applications.

Don't think Gimp.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Don't think Gimp. Think OpenOffice. Think Mozilla. Think apps that people actually want on the Mac. I've believed for a long time that Apple should be pushing really hard to make these two applications not only available, but downright pervasive on the Mac. This will eliminate Apple's indentured servitude to Microsoft and allow them to push forward in any direction they like without Microsoft threatening to pull the plug on Office (and to a lesser extent, IE) every time Apple tiptoes in a direction that offends Bill's delicate sensibilities.

Native GTK for Mac OS is a good way to kickstart apps like Moz and OO on the platform without requiring XFree86 to be installed first (which works wonderfully, but is a bit too hackish for nontechnical Mac users). Then Apple and others can begin working on making the integration more and more native-looking.