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GTK+ for BeOS Update
BugMaster ChuckyD writes to us with the latest info about the GTK+ porting to BeOS effort. Alpha stage, so it's still crashy-the-crash guy, but the screen shots look sweet. I'm going to have put this on my Be machine later.
C'mon, why is this not news? And if you don't think it is -- skip to the next one! I'm not a Linux user, but I read Slashdot every day. You're whining.
BeOS will never be open source idiot. Be has signed licenses with various hardware companies not to disclose the code used to develop the drivers. If they went open source, they would have to remove the drivers and rely on people reverse engineering crap half assed drivers like linux. The driver situation is already bad enough. Be will never do it. I really don't understand this whole idea of an OS 'winning'. Most intelligent people will use what works, not what 'rules'. >:P
No, slashdot is not freshmeat.
No, you dont see news stories on freshmeat.
I dont use linux (or any unix) on my desktop - though a "long term goal" is to migrate over. So I dont read freshmeat randomly - there are too many gminsweapers and the like to weed through.. I proably wont randomy go there when I do uses gnome on my desktop, either.
Apache is important. I maintain some sites that run linux and use apache. Its nice to know.
A Be gtk port is less important (to me) but there are proably lots of Be users who dont run linux and gnome, but like some of what they see. They would be interested in something like this.
Besides, its not like there is a hundred stories a day on ./ Do you realy think that these displaced something more important?
Does this mean that the GTK backend of wxWindows will work as well? Yippee! Now my wxPython programs run under Windows, Mac, Unix, AND BeOS!
(1) it's commercial
(2) it's not Unix
(3) it's partially owned by Microsoft
Essentially, OS/2 doesn't exist in the "Linux world" (as you put it), so it's no real shock that Slashdot isn't all over an OS that most people aren't even aware is still in production.
(I know it's unfair, but OS/2's fate as a nitch OS has been sealed for a long time. Blame IBM, Microsoft, fate, timing, whatever. Expecting "News for Nerds" to pickup on news which only interests what can be fairly called a legacy user base is a little odd. There's not much AS/400 or VMS news here either, and those plaforms are growing much faster than OS/2 is right now.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Oog, through misfortune, I had to work with OS/2 2.1 -- **$300** for the TCP/IP stack. And one wonders why so many people run Windows NT.
And the WPS was so unstable that we ended up booting into command prompts on the server, but that's a different story...
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
You are speaking the truth. I don't know why OS/2 fans are so blind to the real problems which afflict OS/2. IBM didn't care. A whole industry developed around the fact the IBM treated OS/2 users like dirt. (FACT) I don't like Microsoft, but in my opinion, any *current* MS product beats OS/2 hands down. That is a fact.
Sorry to the people who ported this, but I feel this has to be said...
YUCK, it's not using BeOSes L&F.
One of the reasons I left Linux was the lack of the standardised L&F, yeah there is 'GNOME' and 'KDE' etc, but not all apps use it.
Mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
would there not be a speed reduction in using this?
Plus how many 'themes' are perfect?
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Windows does. (Some people call MFC a C++ wrapper, but MFC is more of a terribly designed spaghetti-code application framework, so I don't think it counts)
Anyway, it doesn't matter at all what language the GUI source code is in (I'm willing to bet the majority of GUI's are written in C) --- the point being made was that there are bindings for many languages. You don't "link to" C code to get to the GUI, you link to a dynamic library. A dynamic library isn't "C" or ANY language for that matter, its assembly opcodes - the only "C" there may be the calling convention for the functions, but that doesn't restrict anyone linking to the library to C. You could write BASIC code that links to GTK+.
Yes, OS/2 is commercial, but then, so is BeOS.
Or did you think that $59 price tag was to be donated to the FSF?
Hmm?
Secondly, since when does an OS need to be Unix to be mentionable? Clue: Linux is not Unix! Its origins are not from the BSD school because the kernel sprouted from the head of Linus. Just because a distribution *looks like* System V at the command line, doesn't make it a descendent of any of the BSD lineage.
Thirdly, Microsoft pulled out of OS/2 a looooong time ago and stole a bunch of code (why hasn't IBM sued yet?) in the process to make Win9x and NT.
Lastly, as a former OS/2 user/hacker, I must remind you that posting non-facts here can make you look silly.
As for who to blame, I place the blame squarely on IBM's shoulders. They refused to fight the FUD with facts and had the WORST advertising campaign known to mankind. To this day, they have no idea what kind of decent OS they had or what kind of challenge they could have given Evil Bill. Remember that this was an OS that was full 32 bit, had drag-n-drop capabilities that NO version of Windoze has to this day, a decent scripting/batch language, and better DOS support, and this was back in the days of Win3.11 being the best out of Redmond.
OS/2 is dead because IBM eats its children.
(Late I know)
Note that I was referring to the fetishes of Slashdot editors more that I was talking about OS/2. I should have added [(4) It's not a new OS], which explains Slashdot's fixation on Be, Mac OS X, and so on.
But to address your points in particular:
- Nobody here thinks Be or Solaris or OS/400 is free software.
- Linux is a nearly perfect clone of Unix. Apologies if calling it unix offends your delicate sensibilities, but most people consider it a unix variant.
- Microsoft didn't steal any OS/2 code. At the time of the breakup, both MS and IBM got rights to each others projects - DOS, Windows 3, and OS/2 2.
- I didn't attempt to post any facts - just 100% opinion. Babbling a bunch of nonsense about System V not being BSD and accusing Microsoft of stealing something that they own looks pretty silly too.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
That's why all us OS/2 users think that Slashdot is anti-OS/2.
I'm amazed at how good those fonts look. Just one glance at that proves to me that X needs to get anti-aliased font rendering.. I don't care if it has to be a built-in part of GTK+! I just wish I knew enough to get it in there on my own..
I have yet to encounter any anti-os2 feeling among linux users. Your comments indicate that there is a lot of hostility in the reverse direction, though. If I have anything against OS/2, it is just that IBM does not seem to know what to do with it. They don't even state that they will support it in the foreseeable future.
It always amazes me when I hear non-C++ programers compare C to C++. C is a clumzy launguage, definitly not suitable to an object metaphore like GUI development. Until you can breath objects, please dont compare an outdated, prodcedural launguage like C with an Object-Oriented lauguage like C++.
I dunno about anti-OS/2. I mean, it does, at least, point to Warpcast and OS/2 News&Rumors.
ON THE OTHER HAND, somebody submits a GTK+ on BeOS story and that gets printed.
A story on GTK+ on OS/2 was submitted and NOTHING showed up on Slashdot.
BeOS is cool too, but there are a heck of a lot more OS/2 users than BeOS right now!
Cool! Now if only my fonts looked that good.
And... what's the graphing widget?
BFD, why dont you go do something productive.
well, that either means you have perfect timing, or just way too much free time on your hands ;P
Dude, you can download M8 for the BeOS now. Jeeez, to many un-informed boobs on /.
I think it's both.
You should wait for the native gimp port
none Yet.
Each GTK+ toplevel window runs it's own thread in GTK+ for BeOS. GDK is thread-safe. Since the compiler on BeOS is gcc and g++, of course you can use C just fine. It is the higher-level libraries which are written in C++, like BeOS's native interface toolkit. Mixing C and C++ isn't a problem.
Others could port Gtk-- to beos, but it's not a priority at all.
The BeOS version does run themes, although the only one so far that I've tried is ThinIce. It works wonderfully.
I can't wait for this to get stable so i can have gimp up in BeOS. I like moho but I know gimp hella better.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Oh yes! The Metrowerks->GCC switch!
Well, cool. More apps for another cool platform! Get porting, boys!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I wonder what (horrible?) thing GTK+ will do to the BeOS' nice OO and threading. Is GTK+ thread-safe? Not apparently (see 5.2 in the FAQ -- "thread aware" -- uh huh).
... is there any sort of wierdness or impedance mismatches that happen as a result? Is Gtk-- going to be ported?
And BeOS likes to programmed with C++, not C
For porting apps from Linux, it might be useful, somewhat -- at least some of the UI code will carry over.
Does the BeOS version support themes?
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Doesn't Mozilla use GTK+?
Have you checked out Zoid.com yet? Zoid.com
It is based on C++ and has a much nicer API. Unfortunately, though, its license has been a subject of controversy:
Red Hat's Marc Ewing speaks out on Qt License
QT Goes OpenSource
It doesn't hurt that the BeOS native compiler is EGCS [which will soon (already?) become the official gcc compiler].
[ReidNews]
Everyone else seems to have picked up on this, but this is now getting crazy.
Why do we have Freshmeat.net? Why do we have Slashdot.org? I thought that they were two different places, with two different themes. But now, all we have is the same stuff on both sites!
I'm not in a position to question Rob and Jeff's editorial decisions. After all, it is still their site and their's to do with as they please. But could we get some clarification as to what we can expect to see here? If Slashdot keeps going like this, we might as well autoforward to Freshmeat.net
Just my $.02
GTK+ with Anti Aliased Fonts (and not even MS's crappy implementation). I never thought I'd see the day...
indeed, the GIMP screenshot was beautiful.. having never actually seen BeOS, it just looked cool. I'll have to check it out one of these days...
Insert mind here.
I'm getting tired of people flipping out when one story in 50 commits an unforgivable crime of being related to a new software release.
Freshmeat, in the last week, has posted over 200 software version updates. Similarly, Slashdot has posted a huge amount of news and information. If you cannot cope with the occasional overlap, you are free to download Slashdot's source code and offer an alternative news site completely devoid of news about software updates. Otherwise, cope.
Unfortunately OS/2 3.x has a lot of problems such as crippled networking (PPP only, no ethernet). Its fabled WPS window manager routinely locks up requiring a reboot in order to get control again. There is a kludge called FreeTCP available for OS/2 3.x (it is a way of cannibalizing free upgrades for other versions of OS/2 in order to extract full networking). But OS/2 FreeTCP doesn't work that well. It is not that stable.
Supposedly OS/2 4.x includes networking but it costs over $200. I was in our local computer store the other day and BeOS was selling for $59; why can't OS/2 be priced likewise?
I used OS/2 3.x with FreeTCP for about 2 months, then I erased it. It works ok but not without many irritating problems.
Yes lets turn this into a C/C++ flame fest! You outdated C people against you memory leaking C++ people. The truth is the two are so inteoperable, if you know C++ and some C library stuff, you know it all. If you don't take the object thing too far (ahem MFC) A C++ API is a better way to go. But GTK being ported to Be is okay long as it remains for PORTING purposes only. No point in such a nice API like Be's being sullied with Unix stuff.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I agree that C++ fits naturaly into the GUI model of programming. (Ditto Java, and likely many other OO languages, although GUIs weren't around when I was programming in Simula-67).
Which is why I've used it the last few times I had to do Motif development. Pretty easy to wrap classes around the Motif stuff you need. Heck, I even used C++ to do X Windows 10 stuff, back when.
C makes sense in some problem domains, and I'll grant that too many C++ programmers tend to write unreadable code, but graphics and GUIs are domains that practically beg for an OO approach. (And yes, you can do OO in C, but why?)
-- Alastair
There is a native port going on. I would expect that to be much better than any GTK based port, since GTK applications can't integrate themselves into BeOS properly, let alone use the facilities offered.
For one example, threads -- the GTK framework isn't thread safe, not to mention actually having integrated thread support.
John
John_Chalisque
BeOS has an excellent one. But wait -- since BeOS supports the BeOS API, why not use that -- it's much better featured than Qt in many regards...
John
John_Chalisque
On the other hand, you can't use any C++ features such as namespaces, templates, operator overloading etc.
C is an excellent low level systems programming language. C++ is just about usable for GUI's, but its a lot better than C for that sort of thing. p.s. you don't need to do thread management and locking manually to program BeOS.
John
John_Chalisque
Qt also has a good API, but runs on virtually all Unixes and Windows.
You can download GTK+ 1.21 for XFree86/2 from ftp://24.2.168.186/pub/os2/unix/ xfree86/ports/gtk/. Granted, it doesn't run on the OS/2 desktop, but that will change once EverBlue is done. Don't expect Slashdot to mention it, of course. With all their pro-BeOS anti-OS/2 stories, you'd think that there are more BeOS users than OS/2 users (there aren't).
We may be able to see in the future GTK+ becoming the defacto standard cross-platform GUI toolkit. It is fairly easy to program, and has lots of language bindings. Thats one key aspect. You don't need to use C++ to program GTK+. This more than anything will draw developers to the toolkit.
It can be debated whether this announcement is 'worthy', but I don't care. It's not Freshmeat material, it belongs here if anywhere.
Wah!
But you have a good point that OS/2 deserves a lot more attention and credit. I think they're both excellent.
They all use C++. And since the Gnome C++ bindings suck it's reach will be limited.
You can always hit up gtk.themes.org and check out the "BeOS" theme! ; )
/. password again:: : P
(Besides, the default gtk sures looks a helluva lot better than Motif!)
-Josh
::Forgot his
Are there docs available on the web for Be's supposedly easy API?
MS's font smoothing is not that great when compared to the Apple implementation (which is schweet!!!), or the BeOS implementation (ditto), but it is down right *fantastic* when compared to the X implementation (since there isn't any). ; )
X fonts suck, but I love it anyway. (Using Microsoft's "true type fonts for the web" does make my X desktop a little nicer... those're damn good, highly legible fonts, actually! Andale and Verdana forever! ; ) -Josh
I prefer to make my own wrappers. Most C++ libraries take the kitchen sink approach, with about 90% more methods than I need. GTK+ is very easy to use in a C++ program, and I've been extremely happy with it.
The BeOS provides a number of "supposedly easy" APIs (InterfaceKit, ApplicationKit, StorageKit, etc). The docs are available online. Other useful information is in the developer library.
Enjoy.
Brian
BeOS _MUST_ OPEN THE SOURCE! Does it neeeeeed to be FREE?? Maybe----BUT MAYBE NOT!
OK OK. You know what you want. OK OK.
BUT ---- BEOS *COULD* be Open! Make it OOPPEENN but RESTRICT ... THE LICense. DUH! DUH!
Let the users contribute. Let the users contribute. Let the users contribute!!!
I AM A BEOS FAN!!!!
this should be a nice (lethal?) combination. BeOS's GUI was cool, but just think of all the great themes you can use. think people will download the beos theme? ;-)
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Uhhh. I have rarely seen anything "anit-OS/2" on Slashdot. Maybe because so few people care or use it anymore. I, for one, DO use it and plan to be at Warpstock Europa '99........and I also use Be.
Or...::gasp:: it's Hemos in disguise! :-)
Mycroft