Re: Status of GTK+ on Mac OS X?

[Tobias Weber <towb celvina de>]

On 01.09.2009, at 06:53, John Pye wrote:

> I believe there is some way to build a native OSX 'variant' of GTK  
> using MacPorts.

http://www.flyn.org/apple/

First paragraph worked for me, except for occasional unpredictable  
"bus errors". Also threading always crashes.

> Should a developer include their own linked libraries for GTK when  
> packaging,

http://www.danplanet.com/home/82-codemonkeying/88-using-py2app-with-gtk

Seems viable when working in Python, like you. For C, see below.

> or should they rely on a package dependency system like Fink instead?

When told to bother with MacPorts to install your application, the  
average Mac user wil laugh heartily and go elsewhere...

> The problem with expecting "user pull" is that Mac users perhaps  
> aren't aware of GTK+,

I don't see why users would ever "pull" for a toolkit. Nor why they  
should. It's what you build with it that matters.

> or else might mistrust anything that's not totally made in the "Mac  
> Way".

That's not mistrust, but caution from experience: most cross-platform  
GUIs suck ;)

As for GTK looking out of place, maybe themes can help. I didn't try  
yet.

> I think that developers should be demanding a stable and complete  
> native implementation of GTK+ for Mac,

(demanding free software?)

http://www.gtk-osx.org/

Even without that framework Glade has official stand-alone binaries  
for the Mac, which work fine.

Your problem might be more with PyGTK.

> FWIW I note that Qt, Wx, Fox and FLTK all include support for Mac,  
> and are possibly better initial choices for cross-platform  
> development at this stage.

Personally, I disagree.

Apple ships with wxWidgets, and they work great, but the API is stuck  
in the 90s. For instance, even if you take 3rd party additions into  
account, there is nothing that comes close to GtkTreeView.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/guides/2009/03/how-to-deploying-pyqt-applications-on-windows-and-mac-os-x.ars/2

FLTK is named 'light'. Compared to the others you might miss a lot.  
PyFLTK doesn't really support Mac yet.

I'd never heard of FOX, but apparently it is limited to X11 on the  
Mac. Makes expanding your userbase much harder.