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:Distribution on Windows

[Max Threshold]

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

GUI?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is wrong with printf?

Re:GUI?

[archeopterix]

What the hell is wrong with printf?

Yeah, everyone seems so excited about printf. Having spent 40 years programming computers I can tell you its another fad.

Thousands of developers all over the world are misled with the apparent ease of printf'ing the text to the stdout. They all miss the most important fact: the printf doesn't actually generate the text! You still have to supply it, although the printf marketeers might want you to think otherwise.

Another thing - where are the mathematical foundations for printf? Relational databases rely on solid theory that dates back to 1795. Printf enthusiasts cannot deny the fact that it just lacks proper scientific support. It's a sad thing that giant amounts of investors' money are poured into a technology that relies on a wishy-washy muddy set of 'format specifiers'. Haha, 'format specifiers'! I challenge you to come up with a proper mathematical definition for that!

And a final death blow to the whole 'printf' craze. It has no support whatsoever for colors or blinking text! Young printf-bamboozled programmers all over the world realize they're using a purely academic technology when the real world requirements call for a blinking 'Hello world\n' or a colourful 'Foobar'!

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.

GTK is alright...but no raves

[Hosiah]

I'm not a very big fan of *any* GUI toolkit. GUIs are a pain to program in anyway, no matter what language or library you use. GTK is much easier if you hook it up with Glade, which drains some of the pain from the experience. Personally, for small jobs, I'm more apt to use Tcl/Tk, which is very brief. Literally, I will be unhappy with *every* GUI toolkit until I find one where you can express an entire dialog box in a SINGLE LINE (I don't care how Perl-like the syntax!) and get on with your life.

No, I'm not kidding: a dialog box with three buttons should be:
D(H:50,W:200){M:"Quit without saving?",B1:"Save"(do_save()),B2:"Don't Save"(no_op&exit()),B3:"Cancel"(drop_quit())};

Re:GTK is alright...but no raves

[ichin4]

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.

Re:Interestingly...

[adolfojp]

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

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: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: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.

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.