Re: GTK+ on Mac OS X status

[Lothar Scholz <llothar web de>]

Hello Paul,


PD> On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 4:34 AM, Lothar Scholz <llothar web de> wrote:

>> Come on and stop talking bullshit. You now exactly that this is not
>> true. A 1st class citizen toolkit has to use the Cocoa widgets and
>> this will never happen for GTK.

PD> you have some very specific definition of "1st class citizen".

PD> the pro-audio application world is dominated by applications that do
PD> NOT use apple toolkits for their GUIs. other than Logic, which apple
PD> owns, most of them create a single GL area (some actually just use
PD> NSView), and then use their own toolkit (or one they've licensed from
PD> a 3rd party) to do the drawing. this includes protools, live, digital
PD> performer and more. so are these apps not "1st class citizens"? the
PD> thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands?) of creative
PD> professional and amateur users of them would be suprised to hear this.

If they adapt the look and feel and functions of MacOSX GUI's they
are. The menu on top, native file selection, standard toolbar,
file icons, dialog modal sheets instead of application modal,
aqua look in dialogs... using things like the tool window handling
MS VS style vs GDL vs a non existing sidebar only feature on Mac.
Icon sizes, tree display views, keyboard handling, menu handling
(menus have submenus in Windows, but need a configuration dialog on
MacOSX)...

Look at http://versionsapp.com/  and ask yourself if you can doubt a
single second that this looks native and then tell me this is not a
business advantage (whatever your business modell is for open source
or closed source).

I agree that Application for productive purposes, this means
applications that you use permanent 6 hours in your 8 hours working
day, like IDEs, CAD systems, Professional Video systems and maybe
Audio are different - there infact the Apple GUI guidelines are a pain
in the ass.

>> NSWindow. And remember that since 10.5 most Apperance Manager
>> functions are declared obsolete (by the way the same this is also true
>> for Vista/Windows7).

PD> actually, this is not the case. apple have not issued a clear
PD> statement on the future of a significant part of the HI* library that
PD> remains non-Carbon. As of late last year, they told people at a
PD> developer conference that its future was not decided.

I'm to lazy to look it up, but they are marked as deprecated in the
documentation, that is how i found out and what is relevant for me.

>>The new business model is to lock the people
>> into their look and feel because on the technical level the OS systems
>> are almost the same.

PD> This is utterly laughable. If you knew anything about the way that
PD> time, audio and video are handled on OS X, Windows and Linux, you
PD> couldn't possibly make this comment.

I'm not doing multimedia, and i know what a problem linux is or maybe
was in the past with everthing realtime based. But they all are with
more or less work on the programmer side useable. Nobody cares what a
pain in the ass it was to develop the application on one platform. For
customers only the end result counts.

So you can have the same applications at the same quality on all
platforms or at least very soon. Then what obvious strategy do you
think OS venders can go to sell there desktop operating system in the
future. And this will not primarily be based on technology but
useability, corporate identity and simply vendor lock-in (perfect
example is Apple).


>> And for any commerical application you will see that soon there is no
>> way to use GTK+ anymore on this systems. Apples App Store will became
>> so important that you have to obey the rules that you must use the

PD> I have no doubt that any App Store for OS X will become hugely
PD> important. But that doesn't mean it will be only way people install
PD> apps. Apple took some very smart steps to make installation extremely
PD> easy because of their "bundle" implementation, so there is really no
PD> equivalent required to the kind of install wizard that dominated
PD> windows for so long. You just fetch a DMG (or even  a .bz2) in the
PD> browser, it unpacks in the browser, the user puts it somewhere. Done.

PD> Or is that just too geeky for you?

First Apple is a Nazi company. They dictate everything for the user and if
they say they will only allow certified applications to access
something and this certification requires for example App Shops then
i would predict that bundles became less interesting for forbidden.
Apple will do everything on user bondage to increase their profits.

Second even if it is, again depending on your application. But the 90%
of programs that make up the ISV market are more casual applications
their the most important thing is to find the application. And
therefore to be successful you will have to use the App Stores or most
customers will only see your competitiors. It's a must.

Again for a new developed application today that
will live something like for 20 years you should think twice. And why
therefore take risks that are not necessary and might cost you as much
as your family house.

>> It very much depends on your competition, customer base and
>> application domain. But it's stupid from a business/money making point
>> to use GTK+ on anything else then Linux. And no i don't count Pauls
>> donation ware project as GTK.

PD> WTF? So what do you think it is then?

Sorry there is a "commerical" missing before GTK.

>> So for Gour i stay with my advise to use WxWidget and select a

PD> WxWidgets has some distinct advantages, and some very distinct
PD> disadvantages. Which ones are more important depends a lot on the
PD> needs of the application.

Here i finally agree.

-- 
Best regards,
 Lothar                            mailto:llothar web de