Slashdot Mirror


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."

10 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Distribution on Windows by Max+Threshold · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, right. How big is the latest vbrunxxx.dll?

  2. Re:Distribution on Windows by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

    vbrunxxx.dll? That's nothing. Try the .NET runtime, and talk about bloat again.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  3. Re:Distribution on Windows by TheLoneCabbage · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one distributes software on floppies any more. 6-8MB added to your installer isn't a BIG deal. It translates into another 30sec worth of download. If its a burden on anyone, it's a burden on your webservers.

    The Advantage of course is that for that 6-8meg, it installs with virtually no hassles, and all the way back to w95.

    I've dealt with numerous ditribution issues, and while sysadmins are worried about the package size, mostly they are worried about hassle. Try shoe horning .NET apps onto w98 systems (it won't install on anything earlier), it's a 21MB hair ball and a real paint to install. Once my employer made the decision to port their entire app base to .NET, which made development LOTS easier, but we went from a 5meg install to a 30meg nightmare that wouldn't run on w95 no matter what (still an issue believe it or not).

    The GTK pack isn't HUGE and it installs with virtually no problems. If download size is a problem the NSIS2 installer does support on the fly package downloads.

  4. Re:Interestingly... by adolfojp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You make a very good point.

    I like to call the GPL the viral open source license. Everything it touches is also made open by default.

    You would be surprised by the number of developers that I know that developed their apps using MySQL and then had to pay for the comercial license many months later because they didn't read the fine print. Lets just say that if they had known beforehand they would have charged a little more for their applications ;-)

    I am not against the GPL. I am just amused by the large number of people that advocate it fanatically and yet don't understand it.

    Cheers,
    Adolfo

  5. Re:GTK is alright...but no raves by ichin4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Um, you mean like this C# code?

    DialogResult result = MessageBox.Show("Quit without saving?", "", MessageBoxButtons.YesNoCancel);

    Many slashdotters like to drone on about how evil business practices got Microsoft where it is today. But one thing that definitely helped is that, for much of GUI history, it's been easier to write GUI code for Windows than for almost any other platform.

  6. Re:GTK is alright...but no raves by Techster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not even close to what the OP wanted. Yours just specifies text, an empty title, and the fact that it has three buttons (yes, no, cancel). You still need a block statement to handle the response, not to mention the fact that width and height will be determined automagically.

    His code specified the height, width, alternate text for the buttons (which some of us want without having to make a new dialog at times) and methods/functions to perform when the buttons are activated. Currently, a wrapper/class/function is the only way to accomplish all that in one line.

  7. Forget something? by RedBear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one distributes software on floppies any more. 6-8MB added to your installer isn't a BIG deal. It translates into another 30sec worth of download. If its a burden on anyone, it's a burden on your webservers.

    I think you meant to say it IS a big deal, since it translates to 30 MINUTES of extra download time on a dial-up line, which unfortunately most users are still stuck with. Even broadband lines aren't all 1.5Mb/s.

  8. Re:Interestingly... by Nugget · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It absolutely does if you're using the mysql libraries to connect to the mysql database. Rather than being sanely LGPL'd, the mysql connector libraries are GPL which precludes their use in non-GPL codebases. So, unless you're a GPL developer, you need to purchase a commercial license for mysql (or find a database with less restrictive licensing).

    The fact that you're ignorant of this crucual detail (which is the foundation of mysql ab's ability to make money) reinforces the GP's point.

  9. Re:Interestingly... by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Insightful
    But when Qt is using GPL, suddenly the GNU zealots turn around and say, hey that's bad, you can't write proprietary software with it
    I'm trying to work out why you'd assume that someone criticising a product for not letting you produce proprietary software that uses it is a "GNU zealot". Is the GP known to you and always ranting on about GNU and how wonderful the GPL, or are you just making an assumption?

    If the GP is genuinely against a license because it means a library cannot be linked against a proprietary program, then they're not a "GNU" (or FSF, or GPL) zealot. They may be a zealot, but they're not a GNU one.

    Many Free Software people, which is a diverse group encompassing many opinions, eschew the GPL for precisely this reason and consider themselves active opponents of it. One example would be the OpenBSD team, and Theo DeRaadt in particular, who is strongly against the GPL because he wants his work to be freely available even to those who'd not make public the source of their released changes.

    These are legitimate opinions. Your characterization is as bad as someone who sees, say, Bush criticised for not proposing a clearly religiously-motivated supreme court nominee, and then Bush criticised for reversing his position, withdrawing the nominee, and making an apparently religiously-inspired one, as "Christian Conservative Zealots not letting Bush win". They're different critics.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  10. Re:Interestingly... by Tellalian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It'd be interesting to see if such a "claim" would ever hold up in court. You'd think if it did, AOL or MSN would have sued Gaim years ago for breaking their "license". Commonsense would dictate if Gaim can implement a proprietary protocol for interoperability, than anyone could implement MySQL's protocol for the same reason. I don't have a reference on hand, but I believe a court decided client-server interaction didn't constitute a level of usage where licenses like the GPL were applicable.