Why Use GTK+?

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running an interesting student article that introduces users to the world of GTK+. It explains what GTK+ is, why you should consider using it, and the benefits it provides. Together with the rest of the series, this installment provides enough introductory information that, if you decide to use GTK+ in your own projects, you'll know where to look for further materials."

Comments

Nokia

[ultrabot]

One interesting consideration when determining what toolkit to go with is that the GUI toolkit for Nokia's new internet tablet is GTK+.

Re:Nokia

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a modified version of GTK+, with some components removed (those that they felt weren't needed given the constraints of the device) and some new stuff added in (mainly the "Hildon" libraries) for creating new applications that can take advantage of the device-specific widgets and layout.

Interestingly...

[Lendrick]

These all apply to Qt as well. To each their own. :)

• It's both modern and actively developed and maintained, with a vibrant surrounding community.
  
• It offers a wide array of options for extending your work to as many people as possible, including a sophisticated framework for internationalization, localization, and accessibility.
  
• It's simple and easy to use, both for developers and users.
  
• It's well designed, flexible, and extensible.
  
• It's free software with a liberal open source license.
  
• It's portable, both from the user's and the developer's perspective.
  

Re:Interestingly...

[adolfojp]

It's free software with a liberal open source license.

Eh... not quite, unless you plan to make open source software exclusively. http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.htm l
The same thing applies to MySQL but people seem to mistake the GPL for the LGPL.

Re:Interestingly...

[adolfojp]

... I dislike disingenuous articles like the present developerworks article which pretends that GTK+ is the only toolkit that exists.

From the article:

In actuality, modern GUI tool kits do more than merely avoid duplication. They offer many advanced capabilities that users have come to expect in their applications and which wouldn't be attainable otherwise because the time and work investment in such tool kits exceeds whatever you could spend on a single application. Therefore, if using a GUI in your application is important to you, use a tool kit. There's simply no other way. Now, the only question left is, which tool kit should you use?

The author makes it very clear to the reader that other GUI toolkits exist. Since he likes GTK+ he writes an article advocating it. It is not meant as a comparison between different toolkits. It is meant as an introduction to one of them.
Also, considering the wealth of GUI toolkits avaliable, his article would loose focus quickly if he meant to mention all of them.

Re:Interestingly...

[cortana]

The MySQL client libraries are under the GPL, not the LGPL.

MySQL even claim that if you implement your own client, it speaks the MySQL protocol, and as such is a derivative work of the MySQL server and so must be made available under the GPL.

Re:With the bazillion GUI toolkits out there..

[undeadly]

Are there any cross platform (linux, mac, windows) GUI RAD tools ala Builder, yet?

You have QT Designer that is part of the QT Toolkit.

Re:Just curious

[strider44]

Yes Gimp still uses the Gimp Tool Kit.

Cross-platform GUI RAD (for GTK+, etc): wxDesigner

[Chuck Messenger]

Are there any cross platform (linux, mac, windows) GUI RAD tools ala Builder, yet?


Yes -- wxDesigner is a very nice RAD for use with the wxWidgets GUI-building environment. wxWidgets is a cross-platform GUI framework which uses native widgets. On Linux, it uses GTK+. On Windows, it uses Windows widgets. On Mac, it uses Mac widgets. There are other somewhat-supported platforms. This approach contrasts with that of the Qt framework -- another cross-platform builder (which is excellent), which implements all its own widgets on each platform. Also unlike Qt, wxWidgets is not bound by the GPL -- you're pretty much free to do as you like with it (i.e. incorporating it into commercial apps, without the requirement that you release your source code, or pay any licensing fee). wxDesigner is a very nice GUI RAD builder for wxWidgets. It's not free, but it's cheap. You definitely get your money's worth.

Re:Tempting....

[jcupitt65]

The official docs are OK, I think. There's a tutorial too. There's also an excellent book: The Official GNOME2 Developers Guide, but sadly it's not available as a free download.

People do rave about the Qt docs I know.

Yes but...

[wwahammy]

IBM seems to skip over one of the biggest reasons to NOT use GTK+ - it just doesn't look right on Windows. I'm not sure who said it but a commentator suggested a while ago that one of the reasons open-source programs weren't overtaking closed source was due to a lack of polish (which does of course cover more than just appearance); he used GAIM vs. MSN Messenger as an example. The jarring difference between controls in GTK+ or Java or even Mozilla to some extent vs Win32 is important when you're creating an application for normal end users. In my opinion, that difference can look unprofessional. I would figure that the issue of appearance could be mitigated but it hasn't yet so I don't know for sure.

A question for someone who knows more about GUI toolkits: What are the issues involved in matching the appearance between toolkit controls and the native controls?

Re:Distribution on Windows

[Richard W.M. Jones]

if it depends on 6-8 MB for GTK

Our cross-platform "hello world" program including Gtk is about 300K compressed in total on Windows.

Rich.

Re:Distribution on Windows

[Theatetus]

I don't know about vbrun but the MFC DLL is less than a meg in size.

And MFC.DLL is the equivalent of maybe half of glib and the stubs for the rest of the libs. Count all your non-Office OCX files; those are delivering the rest of the equivalent capability