Re: "Lightweight GTK+"?

[Sven Neumann <sven convergence de>]

Hi Simon,

Simon Budig <Simon Budig unix-ag org> writes:

> I am currently evaluating different Toolkits for an embedded application.
> I'd like to ask if some people here have made some experiences with
> GTK+ (on Framebuffer or on X11) in an embedded device.

we (http://www.convergence.de/) use GTK+-1.3 ported to DirectFB 
(http://www.directfb.org/) to avoid the overhead of X and to make use 
of some advanced features of modern gfx cards like hardware accelerated 
alpha transparency.

> Is it possible to reduce the size of the GTK Library (we don't have
> unlimited resources) e.g. by removing some unused widgets?

yes, but it's quite a lot of work. It would be nice if we could strip 
GTK+ down to its basics and provide an easy way to add only the widgets 
the application really needs. Static linking could be a solution but it
does not help if you want to run more than one GTK+ app.

Actually we need something like GTK+-Embedded but at the moment I don't
see anyone pushing it and we are lacking the resources to do a general
solution at the moment.

> Would you recommend to use GTK+ in it's current state?

it depends on what exactly you are up to.

Unfortunately GTK+-1.3 and GLib-1.3 are considerably slower than
GTK+-1.2. The major problem here seems to be the bad performance of
signal emissions in GObject that has already been pointed out here.
Hopefully this will become better before 2.0 is released.


Salut, Sven