Re: Gtk-OSX (was: Website proposal for usability)

[Kristian Rietveld <kris gtk org>]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 6:35 AM, John Ralls <jralls ceridwen us> wrote:
>> I don't know how many people share these views, but if I'm not
>> totally out on a limb I would be willing to draft a page along the
>> lines I'm talking about (recruiting help from those who are more
>> knowledgeable). I'd also be willing to try making a runtime
>> package if I can get some time on OS X -- though I suspect others
>> are better qualified than I for that job. The R guys have
>> some packages at http://r.research.att.com/libs/ and maybe one
>> of them would be willing to do an "official" build.

For a GTK+ runtime package ("GTK+ Framework"), I think you should
check out what has been done in the past.  It is by no means an easy
task.  The latest code and instructions for this are at the GTK-OSX
website if I am not mistaken.

> You might not like the warnings about the quality of Gtk+ Quartz, but when I wrote them a year ago, no one had touched the quartz backend for 8 months. Since then, one developer (Kristian Reitveld) has fixed many of the outstanding bugs, and some of the other Gtk devs have become a lot more receptive to minor patches... but the general attitude remains that it's OK to implement (or rewrite) features in Linux, and if it breaks Win32 and Quartz, oh well. There's a list of features that aren't yet implemented, or aren't implemented completely, at http://live.gnome.org/GTK%2B/OSX/.

I would say the quality has been slowly increasing, though there's
enough left to do.  I do try to track the latest developments in GTK+
master and adapt the Quartz backend wherever necessary so it does not
break.  This is also pretty time consuming, but did result in a Quartz
backend that continued to work when the XI2 and rendering-cleanup
branches where merged into the master branch.  There's some more
backend work planned I think, that will hopefully affect the Quartz
backend to a lesser extent.  In the meantime I will continue with
reviewing patches/implementing missing features to end up with a
feature-complete backend some day :)


regards,

-kris.