What makes a good GUI toolkit boils down to two simple issues: how fast can you develop GUI applications, and how powerful are that GUIs that you can develop with the toolkit? Everything else is just a means to one of these ends.
By these metrics, Tk wins hands down. You can develop GUI applications 5-10x faster with Tk than with any other toolkit around (especially those based on C, C++, or Java). Check out http://www.scripti cs.com/people/john.ousterhout/scripting.html for data to back up this claim. Tk also contains canvas and text widgets that allow you to do surprisingly powerful things by associating scripts with graphical elements. I understand that GTK tries to emulate Tk's canvas widget, but without an interpreted scripting language you can't get the same powerful dynamic behaviors.
Tk also has other advantages such as portability between Windows, Unix, and Macintosh, but the big deal is that you can create powerful GUIs amazingly quickly.
I'd like to respond to a few of the comments in this thread.
First, several people have suggested that companies like Scriptics are leeches that profit from open source software without giving anything back. This isn't true for Scriptics or for any of the other open source companies I know of. We are continuing to develop the open source Tcl/Tk software at Scriptics and we will continue to release it freely, as has always been the case. For example, right now our *entire* engineering staff is working on open source projects such as the 8.1 releases and the new Tcl Extension Architecture. One of our missions at Scriptics is to ensure that we advance the open source Tcl/Tk core software faster than would have happened if Scriptics didn't exist. The open source nature of Tcl/Tk forces a certain degree of honesty on us: if we don't provide great stewardship of open source Tcl/Tk, the community can always start a separate development track and take control from us.
A second comment was that I started Scriptics just to make money. Actually, my reason for starting the company is that I believe it's the best way to advance Tcl. As the company becomes more and more successful, we will have more and more resources to pour into the open source software. I really believe that a properly executed hybrid model is the best way to enhance the usage and lifetime of open source software.
A third comment is that open source software doesn't need any proprietary tools or extensions built around it: everything can easily be done in an open source fashion. So far, history suggests that this isn't the case. Virtually every successful open source package has some commercial products build around it: if the open source packages were truly self-sufficient, there would be no need or demand for the commercial products. I'd be delighted for other people to create open source tools around Tcl, or even duplicate in open source form some of our products. We'll even feature them on our Web site! There's so much interesting stuff to do that I'm not worried that Scriptics will run out of ideas for things to sell.
The bottom line to me is that (a) the open source community is better off with Scriptics here and (b) a bunch of new commercial tools and extensions are available for those who want to pay for them. Is this really such a terrible thing?
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By these metrics, Tk wins hands down. You can develop GUI applications 5-10x faster with Tk than with any other toolkit around (especially those based on C, C++, or Java). Check out http://www.scripti cs.com/people/john.ousterhout/scripting.html for data to back up this claim. Tk also contains canvas and text widgets that allow you to do surprisingly powerful things by associating scripts with graphical elements. I understand that GTK tries to emulate Tk's canvas widget, but without an interpreted scripting language you can't get the same powerful dynamic behaviors.
Tk also has other advantages such as portability between Windows, Unix, and Macintosh, but the big deal is that you can create powerful GUIs amazingly quickly.
I'd like to respond to a few of the comments in this thread.
First, several people have suggested that companies like Scriptics are leeches that profit from open source software without giving anything back. This isn't true for Scriptics or for any of the other open source companies I know of. We are continuing to develop the open source Tcl/Tk software at Scriptics and we will continue to release it freely, as has always been the case. For example, right now our *entire* engineering staff is working on open source projects such as the 8.1 releases and the new Tcl Extension Architecture. One of our missions at Scriptics is to ensure that we advance the open source Tcl/Tk core software faster than would have happened if Scriptics didn't exist. The open source nature of Tcl/Tk forces a certain degree of honesty on us: if we don't provide great stewardship of open source Tcl/Tk, the community can always start a separate development track and take control from us.
A second comment was that I started Scriptics just to make money. Actually, my reason for starting the company is that I believe it's the best way to advance Tcl. As the company becomes more and more successful, we will have more and more resources to pour into the open source software. I really believe that a properly executed hybrid model is the best way to enhance the usage and lifetime of open source software.
A third comment is that open source software doesn't need any proprietary tools or extensions built around it: everything can
easily be done in an open source fashion. So far, history suggests that this isn't the case. Virtually every successful open source package has some commercial products build around it: if the open source packages were truly self-sufficient, there would be no need or demand for the commercial products. I'd be delighted for other people to create open source tools around Tcl, or even duplicate in open source form some of our products. We'll even feature them on our Web site! There's so much interesting stuff to do that I'm not worried that Scriptics will run out of ideas for things to sell.
The bottom line to me is that (a) the open source community is better off with Scriptics here and (b) a bunch of new commercial tools and extensions are available for those who want to pay for them. Is this really such a terrible thing?