Re: Need help : Installing gtk+ on Windows 2000

[Tor Lillqvist <tml iki fi>]

Michael Torrie writes:
 > In particular, you want:
 > http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gtk%2B-2.8.9-setup-1.zip?
 > download

Note that the current GTK+ version is 2.8.17, though. There has been
many bug fixes since 2.8.9.

 > It is preferred, I think, to look for GTK in the standard place (de
 > facto standard), C:\Program Files\Common files\GTK\2.0\bin.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a standard place. Many (most?)
Windows machines run a localized version of Windows and don't even
have any Program Files\Common Files folder. Does the GTK+ installer
cope with localized names for it?

Also, for developers who use "Unix" style tools, Makefiles, etc, using
paths with spaces in them just cause unnecessary pain.

 > This is what I personally do, as does the Gimp, and GAIM.  This way
 > all gtk apps can share a common runtime.

Except that it is well known that GAIM requires version 2.6 of GTK+
(actually of GLib) and doesn't work with 2.8.

In fact, I would say that the recommended practice is to bundle all of
GTK+ with each application as distributed to end-users. Only if one
knows very well what one is doing (builds the applications oneself,
understands how to manipulate PATH, etc) should one try to share the
same GTK+ runtime among separately distributed applications.

(Yes, this is very different from Linux. But then, Linux distributions
have intelligent package management systems that track package
versions and dependencies.)

When using unofficial GTK+ runtime distributions, one should check
whether they include the message catalogs (localizations). Some
distributions might leave them out to save space. The unaware might
then think that GTK+ isn't localized, when in fact the localization
effort to *many* languages is one of the things that GTK+ (and many
related Open Source software projects) can be very proud of. "Just use
English" is not an answer.

--tml