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

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

On Thu, 26 Aug 2010, John Ralls wrote:

[ in response to
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gtk-devel-list/2010-August/msg00244.html
]

> Gtk-OSX is *not* part of Gtk+.

Well, perhaps that's the problem right there. I've got nothing
"personal" against Gtk-OSX but it seems that the main GTK site
should not be sending people who are interested in GTK on OS X
directly to http://gtk-osx.sourceforge.net/ . There should be a
link, obviously, but it should be subsidiary to a more general
account of GTK on OS X, which -- as things stand right now -- is
probably going to mean GTK-X11 for most uses.

> Building Gtk-Xll on OSX isn't Gtk-OSX's department.

OK, I understand that, but I think it should be GTK's department.

> Try http://www.macports.org/ and http://www.finkproject.org/ for
> that.

You can install GTK via Fink, but that's not what I'm talking
about. It's much too complicated for most users. I'm talking about
a pre-built GTK Framework bundle that you can install by simple
point-and-click. As I mentioned, the R project people have such an
installer, and IMO the same should be available from the main GTK
site.

> My experience with Gnucash is that there are few Mac users who
> even know what X11 is, and even fewer who want to deal with it.

Since Leopard, at least, Mac users don't have to know anything
about X11 to use it as a means of running GTK apps. They just
install two bundles, the GTK one and the app one (or they could
even be combined). The bundled app contains the "magic" for
starting X11 on demand. The only downside is that the GTK app is a
little "foreign" in some ways, but if the app is useful enough
people can get over that pretty quickly.

I've used my GTK statistical app with my students, both PC and Mac
users, and the Mac users don't seem to have any special difficulty
with using it.

Allin Cottrell