Why Use GTK+?

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday December 26, 2005 @10:29PM from the who-can-say-why-we-use-anything dept.

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."

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Nokia by ultrabot · 2005-12-26 22:32 · Score: 5, Informative

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

--
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Re:With the bazillion GUI toolkits out there.. by undeadly · 2005-12-26 22:57 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Cross-platform GUI RAD (for GTK+, etc): wxDesigner by Chuck+Messenger · 2005-12-26 23:42 · Score: 5, Informative

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:Interestingly... by adolfojp · 2005-12-26 23:46 · Score: 5, Informative

... 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:Tempting.... by jcupitt65 · 2005-12-27 00:43 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Re:Interestingly... by cortana · 2005-12-27 02:06 · Score: 5, Informative

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.