Re: Some basic questions about gtk/gtk+ in embedded system

[Florian Boor <florian boor kernelconcepts de>]

Hello,

Li Weichen wrote:
> 1. Does the gtk+ can be used as an embedded gui?

It depends on the complexity of the application and on the amount of storage
space and RAM you have on your device. But basically i'd say yes. There are some
projects for user interfaces on mobile devices using GTK. (e.g. GPE -
http://gpe.handhelds.org and Maemo - http://maemo.org).

> 2. What is based on?  Or what lib does it require?

The whole UI framework is split into several libraries, you need
pango, atk, glib, X (use kdrive!) and libraries for graphic types you need to
support (e.g. libjpeg). Depending on what you intend to do it might be a good
idea to check out OpenEmbedded (http://www.openembedded.org) which is very
powerful if you want to create complete filesystem images (or crosstoolchains)
for embedded and mobile devices. It includes pretty good support for GTK and has
definitions for various devices.

> 3. Can it be compared to Qt/E or MiniGUI?  What are the advantages and
> disadvantages?

GTK might be a little bit bigger than these two, but it is very powerful and
there are bindings for many languages available. I personally like GTK because
its native language is C instead of C++ and its good support for powerful
themes. It is easy to develop applications on a desktop PC using the same API
like on your embedded device and if necessary you can port applications to run
on that one easily. In addition to this GTK is LGPL licensed which is much
easier to deal with compared to the dual licensing crap for Qt/E.

> 4. Is it easy to develop with since I have not much experience in embedded
> development?

Yes, mostly - you only need to get used to the constraints you have using an
object framework in C. It is a very good idea to have an API reference, witout
htis you are lost in a compley toolkit like GTK. Devhelp e.g. is very useful.

> 5. What hardware does it support?  Does it support omap5912?

It should be able to run on almost everything you can compile it for.
OpenEmbedded already has support for this CPU, so i guess you can build GTK for
it easily. I use it on an omap1710, Strongarm and Xscale CPUs frequently.

> 6. What is the steps of building gtk+ for embedded system?

Basically you just need a crosstoolchain for your platform and compile all the
libraries in the correct order. Thats a little bit tricky because you need to
find out whch one depends on what. You would compile and install them with the
prefix of your toolchain first and then with the correct prefix and settings for
your target filesystem again. If there is a particular reason not to let a tool
(like OpenEmbedded or T2) do this for you could try Scratchbox (scratchbox.org)
which creates a sandbox environment for cross development.

I hope these hints are useful :-)

Greetings

Florian

-- 
The dream of yesterday                  Florian Boor
is the hope of today                    Tel: 0271-771091-14
and the reality of tomorrow.            Fax: 0271-771091-19
[Robert Hutchings Goddard, 1904]        florian boor kernelconcepts de

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