To GTK, or not to GTK - that is the question

[Chris Bitmead misys com au]

Hi,

I just discovered that Netscape has decided to move from Motif to GTK. What
is this GTK thing I wondered?
I'd seen the term here and there, but I'd always just assumed it was some
port of TK of TCL/TK fame. From
what I can see, it is nothing to do with that.

Ok, here come the ignorant newbie questions - (humour me :-).

So, why did we need yet another tool kit? Even more, why did we need one
that is not based on Xt ?
The Motif spec is open, and the Lesstif source is open. Furthermore, the Xt
spec allowed everyone's
widgets to work together. And Motif as well as Xt always seemed to me to be
quite well designed.

So what is the deal? The point is, I've got a Motif application which I was
planning to integrate with guile.
I had planned to make guile use Motif, but I've just realised that I've got
another alternative which
is to port my application to GTK instead. The Netscape move made me sit up
and take notice.
Why would I want use GTK instead of Motif? Why is everyone falling over
themselves to use GTK
when we used to have Motif as the standard?

Chris (who had just started to get excited about Lesstif's progress when he
realised the world had
changed around him :-)