Re: QT vs GTK 2006

[Michael Ekstrand <lists elehack net>]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006 16:03:08 +0100 (CET)
"Martin Olsson" <mnemo minimum se> wrote:
> 1. Is the win32 version of GTK really that unstable? It's homepage still
> (as of today) contain a rather scary warning sign.

I haven't had any problems using it (from an end-user perspective).
I've used Gimp for Windows fairly heavily from time to time, with no
snags.

> 2. Name some successful (in terms of many users, well-known) GTK-based
> projects outside of the GNOME sphere? For instance QT has Opera and Adobe
> Elements, in heavy use, outside of KDE.

Inkscape? Also Sylpheed... don't know how many users. Firefox &
Thunderbird also use GTK on Linux.

> 3. I guess there is a whole lot of people on list this that are using
> multiple toolkits, but for those who prefer GTK over other toolkits: What
> are your personal motivations for using GTK instead of something else?

GTK has by far-and-away the easiest widget layout model of any toolkit
I've used (VB, Java Swing, wxWidgets/wxPython). I've looked into Qt a
bit, and played around with the QtDesigner, and was disappointed by
what felt like a VB-ish layout tool (I did not look very hard; my
assessment probably doesn't do it justice, it's probably pretty good if
you take the time to actually try to learn it). Glade felt very
natural, PyGTK is a breeze to program with, so GTK has me hooked.

Skipped 4 due to lack of knowledge on my part.

> 5. If you where to start a cross-platform project today, with no prior
> knowledge of any toolkits or languages. In order to maximize code
> readability, programmer productivity and all that good stuff; what would
> you choose? QT or GTK or maybe Java or .NET?

Hrm. I'd evaluate QT more closely than I have, mostly because its Mac
support is (at the present) better than GTK's. Although, in recent days
and my thinking on planning for a project I may undertake later this
year, my thinking's tended to lean against cross-platform GUI toolkits.
I suspect that a much better end-user cross-platform experience may be
able to be obtained by abstracting the application's behavior and
features away from the GUI toolkit, so that multiple UI's can be
implemented on top of the same GUI logic. Then write a GTK native Linux
gui, maybe offer that as the Windows GUI also (since GTK/Linux programs
and Windows programs tend to have some of the same characteristics on a
large-scale UI thing, and Windows doesn't have a consistent user
experience to worry about breaking), and write a native Mac GUI. More
work, yes. But GTK/QT and Windows app UI paradigms are incredibly
different from Mac/NeXTstep, and a recompile usually looks out of place.

</rant>

> 6. Does GTK support per-application skins/themes?

Don't know - I think probably, somehow, with some interesting trickery.

- Michael

-- 
mouse, n: a device for pointing at the xterm in which you want to type.
                -- Fortune