Re: [gtk-list] To GTK, or not to GTK - that is the question

[Nils Philippsen <nils rhlx01 rz fht-esslingen de>]

On Wed, 4 Nov 1998 Chris.Bitmead@misys.com.au wrote:

> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just discovered that Netscape has decided to move from Motif to GTK. What
> is this GTK thing I wondered?

It is the GIMP toolkit. Back inthe gimp v0.60 days the gimp developers decided
to drop Motif because few people had it and to do a toolkit on their own.

> 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 ?

My guesses on this:

1) Read above
2) Xt programming is pretty complicated

> 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.

Ugh. No comment.

> 
> 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?

I evaluated Motif along with Gtk, Qt and Tcl/Tk for a project not long ago.
Well, "evaluated" is a bit exaggerated -- I simply gave myself a task to do
with those toolkits and looked how complicated it was, how much lines of code
I had to produce and of what quality the result was :-) As I had three times
the code for Motif than for the other toolkits (Gtk/Qt) and the job still was
not done, I stopped it and used Gtk. I came to the conclusion:

- Motif (Xt) is complicated like the German taxes system (or even more)
- I will have my fingers bleeding due to the expected code size when I use
  Motif

Nils
-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nils Philippsen                  @college: nils@fht-esslingen.de
Vogelsangstrasse 115             @home:    nils@wombat.dialup.fht-esslingen.de
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Maybe I should patent stupidity so every lawyer will owe me BIG !!
(mpare/at/cadvision/dot/com)