Re: Need help : Installing gtk+ on Windows 2000

[Michael Torrie <torriem chem byu edu>]

On Fri, 2006-05-05 at 10:04 +0300, Tor Lillqvist wrote:
> 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?

If I recall correctly the installer that the gimp-win uses was made
using nullsoft's installer which definitely *does* cope with localized
names for things like "Program Files" and "Common Files" And any windows
developer worth his salt knows that you don't ever refer to things with
english path names.  So when I write "C:\Program Files\Common Files" etc
I really just mean whatever the localized folder is.  So I will refer to
it using the NullSoft method, "[CommonFilesFolder]."

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

I am not sure what using a runtime installed to [CommonFilesFolder] has
anything to do with building or makefiles. In fact I build my gtk apps
on linux using a cross compiler, using your official tarballs installed
to my cross-compiler's tree (in my case /usr/local/i386-pc-mingw32
include/ lib/ etc).  The resulting exe works just fine against a runtime
(of at least 2.8 nowadays) installed to [CommonFilesFolder] with or
without spaces in the path names.

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

Yes this is a problem.  Perhaps always installing to
[CommonFilesFolder]\GTK\2.0 is not correct.  Maybe we need to start
versioning the install folder.  GTK\2.8, etc.  But was not the goal of
GTK+ (and GLIB) to be ABI compatible throughout the entire 2.x series?
In other words if an app once worked with 2.4 it should still work fine
with 2.8?  (but not the other way around obviously.)  If this is not the
case, then this is a bug in GTK, no?  

> 
> 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 I agree that this is often a good idea.

> 
> (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.

The gimp-win gtk installer does include localizations and so does the
gaim gtk installer.  Those are the two main ones most people use.
However they both give the option to not install localizations.

And of course any app installer should allow the user to install
localizations or optionally leave them out for the application itself.

Michael

> 
> --tml
>