Re: Gtk-OSX

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On 27/08/10 17:48, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> As long as the people working on GTK-OSX do it with a us-vs-them
> attitude (like you display here by talking about the GTK developers
> in third person), things are not going to change. If you start
> considering yourself part of the team and actively engage, things
> can and will change.

After reading the thread, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

1. I agree with Matthias, I did get the feeling there is an us vs them 
in the thread.

2. Equally I agree, when something new comes along, Win32/OSX are often 
an after thought (that's just my perception). I have spent time building 
packages for proprietary apps to run on Windows in the past and I know 
how this can be disconcerting. BUT, GTK+ is targeted mostly with X11 in 
mind we should not forget that. X11 has the larger use base.

I think that people that maintain backends really need to get involved 
more in meetings, planning, designing, etc if they want to change either 
of the above issues.

About having ONE sanctioned package (for Windows or MAC) I think Yes, we 
should be doing that, as an app developer before I was more involved in 
the community, there was no "right this is the distributed package we 
should be using", I had to download it myself and build it myself. Why 
not channel the work used to make the Pidgin/GIMP downloads with GTK+ 
into a useful package hosted on gtk.org? Ultimately, having GTK+ 
packaged *with* each app also has its benefits, like stability on 
Windows when others GTK+ versions exist/get upgraded for 
GIMP/Pidgin/etc. Additionally, one of the MAJOR features we boasted when 
selling our apps was that we could guarantee it worked on ALL versions 
of Windows (though that later changed) without needing to download .NET 
for that version of Windows or because something got deprecated.

About having Mac on the gtk.org site, I think this does make sense. As a 
*user* of GTK+ porting my app to these operating systems, I don't have 
confidence in GTK+ when a port of it is hosted off site. I haven't 
checked, but I am pretty sure QT doesn't do this.

Generally, we should be presenting a more united front for application 
developers looking to invest time in GTK+.

Perhaps this is where we should be focusing some of the GNOME 
foundation's money if resources are short?

--
Regards,
Martyn