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

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, Tor Lillqvist wrote:

> > It has certainly been explained that that is the situation on
> > Windows, and I fully accept it. It's less clear that it should be
> > the situation on OS X, with its *nix-type substructure.
>
> You have it backwards. It was from the GTK-on-OS-X people (well, at
> least those that I have heard from) that this convention originated.
> Only a bit later did the GTK+-on-Windows people (well, many of us, not
> all) realize the same.

I was interested in the logic rather than the history, and I don't
think I had that backwards. But anyway, I'm OK with assuming that
a common user-runtime for GTK is not on.

> > I don't think that invalidates the idea that it would be very
> > useful for app developers to have a GTK runtime package
> > available, as we do for Windows.
>
> As usual, people seem to be constantly jumping between talking about
> "packages" for developers, and "packages" for end-users. There is no
> "officially sanctioned" GTK end-user runtime package for Windows
> available, in the sense that it would be something that could/should
> be installed as such on end-user systems. It's the developer and/or
> packager that is expected to pick out those files his application
> actually needs at run-time from the run-time zip archives on
> ftp.gnome.org (or from the "bundle" which just combines all the
> run-time and developer zip archives for the GTK+ stack). This is not
> the same set of files for all applications.

Maybe "runtime package" was the wrong choice of words, but I
didn't intend anything thst contradicts what you're saying. As an
app developer I'm happy to select what I need from the run-time
zip archives for Windows.  You have done us a major service by
making those archives available. I'd like to be able to do the
same for OS X (if a common runtime package for users is deemed
infeasible or undesirable).

Allin Cottrell