Re: GTK+ on Mac OS X status

[Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Lothar Scholz <llothar web de> wrote:

> 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.

menu on top: yes
native file selection: mixed story
standard toolbar: no idea what you think this means
file icons: mixed story
dialog modal sheets: rarely
aqua look in dialogs: common but not universal

but then again, lets look at logic and final cut pro, apple's two
flagship "pro apps":

menu on top: yes
native file selection: yes
standard toolbar: no such concept
file icons: yes
dialog modal sheets: rarely
aqua look in dialogs: common but not universal

hmm. why i am getting confused? now lets look at gtk apps:

menu on top: yes
native file selection: no
standard toolbar: no idea what this means
file icons: no
dialog modal sheets: no
aqua look in dialogs: available if the developer wants it

wow. now i'm even more confused. and guess what, i think you're even
more confused than me!

> Icon sizes, tree display views, keyboard handling,

gtk does all these. cocoa has more than 3 ways of doing tree display
views, so its hardly something to point to.

> menu handling
> (menus have submenus in Windows, but need a configuration dialog on
> MacOSX)...

sorry, thanks for playing, this is not true. there some mumbling in
the apple HiG about it but its certainly not enforced by Cocoa.

> 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).

Here's the best selling, 800lb gorilla of pro-audio, ProTools, on OS
X, across several versions:

http://www.editorsguild.com/v2/magazine/Newsletter/MarApr04/MarApr04_images/osx_protools_fig2.jpg
http://www.kollewin.com/EX/09-16-04/digidesign_protools_7.1le.jpg
http://rekkerd.org/img/articles/digidesign_pt8.jpg

and ask yourself if you can tell that this is a native Mac app, and
then ask yourself whether or not its a business advantage (regardless
of your target market).

Here's the most popular current pro-audio/music creation app in the world:

http://www.beantownboogiedown.com/storage/ableton_live_arrange.gif?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=4673405

Yep, this small, incredibly successful company that today dominates
the laptops of electronic musicians and even DJs all across the world
certainly suffered from their disastrous decision not to use Cocoa!

> 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.

and yet you have no idea what market segment Gour was asking about and
you just pontificate about stuff regardless.

> 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.

you don't have to look it up, because i already did. you're wrong, its
not clearly marked as deprecated - there are conflicting "official"
apple documents that say different things. in december of 2010,
someone from within apple publically said that its future was still
under discussion, so you're just spreading FUD. it might turn out to
be true, and i don't necessarily disagree of your assessment of why
apple might take this route. but as of right now, what you're saying
is not true.

> 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.

you're digging yourself deeper into a hole with your ignorant
ramblings about stuff that you admit you don't know anything about.

> So you can have the same applications at the same quality on all
> platforms or at least very soon.

blah blah blah ... in which lothar subjects us to his devastatingly
well-informed, crystal-ball clear vision of the future, in which only
GUI toolkits that use native widgets can possibly play a role in
developing long-lived applications. wow, its good to finally get it
straight, live and direct from the future. thanks for clearing up the
future of software development for us Lothar. it was all so unclear
before you came along ...

> Again for a new developed application today that
> will live something like for 20 years you should think twice.

oh wait, what was that? the time machine from 1991 called and said
that Lothar was recommending that Carbon was the only viable
technology for developing long lived applications on the mac? and that
using silly open source libraries would never provide any long term
stability? oh, thanks time machine, you've cleared that up for us now.
and just think of all the other open source stuff that has vanished in
the last twenty years ... its so great that we've had these reliable
commercial products to use instead. <eyes-rolling>

>>> 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.

how much money do i have to make with ardour before you change your
mind? do i have to be able to pay back your Oh Lothar, That's Just So
Awesomely Real Capitalism loan of $100,000 to convince you?