RE: Gtk-OSX



1) "The code does contain a fair amount of "FIXME" comments. Note that a couple of those are for either deprecated functionality (that will be removed in the future and is only really needed by legacy applications) or for things that are very X11-specific and will not work natively on the Mac." -- http://live.gnome.org/GTK%2B/OSX

Now that statement IMVHO, the following statement is misleading at best :
Originally GTK+ was developed for X Windows but it has grown over the years to include backend support for other well known windowing systems. Today you can use GTK+ on:
--http://www.gtk.org/features.html

In the fullness of truth you would put an little asterisk next to the Mac OS X in that list, IN RED, telling people to read the caveat in the first part. Why? Simple, we started on Linux, and migrated to OS X with the idea that we could, the number of issues that I have run into, are far greater than what I would consider a complete product on OS X (or toolkit, if we are playing semantic games). There was a time when the website clearly stated that this was RAW and in Development, but most of those warnings have gone the way of the ghost, and chiding John R for warning people that there are serious issues, and a really task to get this all going on OS X should NOT be considered a us vs. them attitude. It is a we would like to counted too attitude.

If there is funding being put into developing GTK, and that funding is with the idea that this is NOT just a Linux GUI, but a fully crossplatformable one, that those resourses spending time on coding, should be held accountable for breaking things, or pushing forward the development of a single platform, at the cost of others.

Unfortunately, there is a BIG difference between a toolkit that works, in the most minimum sense of the world, and a toolkit that provide a complete set of widgets to get a job done.

2) Writing that table, agreed. I should stop talking about it and do it. I wish I knew how. As re-focus on the GTK part of our app I'll see if I can put something together.


as a point:

bash-3.2$ pwd
/Users/shawn/gtk/source/gtk+-2.18.2/gdk
bash-3.2$ cd win32/
bash-3.2$ grep -R FIXME * | wc -l
      16
bash-3.2$ cd ../x11/
bash-3.2$ grep -R FIXME * | wc -l
      15
bash-3.2$ cd ../quartz/
bash-3.2$ grep -R FIXME * | wc -l
     125


We have 10 times more fixes to make to the just the gdk backend compared to windows or X11, So when you ask "Is anything of what I said false at all? If that's the case, how is it untrue?" No non of it is false, but it is also not the truth, the full truth. Which seems to be the way of things these days, as long is it is not false, than it must be true, and that simply is not the case, unless you are a computer. The website gives a false impression, that it does.


> Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2010 18:17:07 +0100
> Subject: Re: Gtk-OSX
> From: aruiz gnome org
> To: shashaness hotmail com
> CC: gtk-devel-list gnome org
>
> Hello Shawn,
>
> 2010/9/1 Shawn Bakhtiar <shashaness hotmail com>:
> > You tell'm John....
> >
> > I think the key point here is: "The reason that this thread (and similar
> > ones in the past) get going is largely because of false advertising: Gtk+
> > claims to be a cross-platform toolkit."
> >
> > The GTK+ site clearly advertises the product as a cross-platform toolkit.
> > http://www.gtk.org/features.html
>
> Product? This is a project not a product. And it is cross platform.
>
> You _can_ run it on Windows, you can run it on Mac OS X, you can run
> it on Intel hardware, ARM hardware, SPARC, you can run it on Linux,
> Solaris, FreeBSD.
>
> Is anything of what I said false at all? If that's the case, how is it untrue?
>
> > OS X is listed as one of three platforms.
> >
> > I have said this before and I will say it again, every time a thread like
> > this comes up. There should be a table with (fully supported, % complete, or
> > not function) per platform, right on the features page. So saps like me
> > don't go believing Santa Claus is going to shoot down my chimney with a Red
> > Ryder BB Gun. :)
>
> Maybe, instead of saying it again and again, you should come up with
> that table, you should actually write that web page?
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> From: jralls ceridwen us
> >> Subject: Re: Gtk-OSX
> >> Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:56:12 -0700
> >> To: martyn lanedo com
> >> CC: gtk-devel-list gnome org
> >>
> >>
> >> On Aug 31, 2010, at 6:56 AM, Martyn Russell wrote:
> >>
> >> > 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?
> >>
> >> Qt is a bit of a strawman: Its sole reason for existing is to provide a
> >> cross-platform toolkit. It's also a commercial product, maintained by a huge
> >> corporation; it would indeed be strange if some of its functionality were
> >> developed "outside". WxWidgets might be a better comparison, except that it,
> >> too, is solely a cross-platform toolkit. AFAIK, Qt doesn't ship a feature
> >> until it's working on all supported OSes. OTOH, they also don't let
> >> outsiders see their VCS repos. Wx strives for the same ploicy, but being a
> >> volunteer project doesn't always make the goal. They've been struggling for
> >> a couple of years with switching their primary Mac port from Carbon to
> >> Cocoa.
> >>
> >> None of which has much of anything to do with Gtk+: As is abundantly clear
> >> from this thread, Gtk+ is primarily a backend for the Gnome desktop on
> >> Linux, which happens to support most of its basic features on Win32 and
> >> Quartz. The reason that this thread (and similar ones in the past) get going
> >> is largely because of false advertising: Gtk+ claims to be a cross-platform
> >> toolkit. The warnings on the Gtk-OSX website that have sparked this long and
> >> vituperative thread merely point out to developers that if they want to
> >> write an application that they can distribute to the majority platforms
> >> (sorry, that most certainly does *not* include X11) should look elsewhere.
> >>
> >> I don't know why Gtk-OSX isn't on Gnome.org. (Gtk.org is just a PR
> >> website; all of the development resources are provided by Gnome.org.) The
> >> project was originated by Richard Hult, who had AFAICT full privs on Gnome
> >> for project creation both in VCS and on Bugzilla, but he chose to use Github
> >> for VCS and to provide PR, documentation, and support on his former
> >> company's (Imendio.AB) website, and downloads at a private domain
> >> (www.gtk-macosx.org).
> >>
> >> It's now on Sourceforge because when Richard decided with his partner wind
> >> up Imendio and to withdraw from Gtk+, he asked on his forum for someone to
> >> take over maintaining the build system. I bit, and after some probing
> >> discovered that he'd not been successful in getting anyone to take over
> >> *any* of the components; he had some hope that one or more of his former
> >> Imendio employees who were still involved with Gtk+ would take over
> >> maintaining the Gtk+ parts. I quickly discovered that it would take some
> >> time and a lot of work to get a project started at Gnome.org. It took a week
> >> at Sourceforge, and only that long because I did a hostile takeover of a
> >> moribund project that was a fork of Gtk 1 whose name I wanted.
> >>
> >> Pidgin doesn't support quartz; the OSX download link on their website is
> >> for Fink. GIMP doesn't have their own OSX port; rather, they recommend
> >> either MacPorts or http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimponosx/. It's probably
> >> buildable with quartz on MacPorts -- which also provides Gtk-OSX's
> >> ige-mac-integration package. Gimponosx simply wraps up a Macports build into
> >> a Mac-friendly dmg. (There's also a GIMP module in Gtk-OSX which works fine,
> >> though it won't build 64-bit because they incorporate a copy of the old
> >> Carbon ige-mac-menu code in their source tree. I should fix that and send
> >> them a patch.) What work from either is supposed to form the basis of a
> >> "sanctioned" Gtk+ distribution on OSX?
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> John Ralls
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> gtk-devel-list mailing list
> >> gtk-devel-list gnome org
> >> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-devel-list
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > gtk-devel-list mailing list
> > gtk-devel-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-devel-list
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Un saludo,
> Alberto Ruiz


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