Re: gtk3(mm) under Os X

[Paul Davis <paul linuxaudiosystems com>]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 1:31 AM, C Gosch <ch gosch googlemail com> wrote:

Hi List,

I started using gtk3 (gtkmm-3.0) on OS X, coming from Linux.
I installed everything using homebrew. I noticed that the windows of a very old test program that I wrote are having the wrong spacings between widgets and that
some stock icons are missing. That program was last used with gtk2.4, so I am guessing it might be a mix of old code and maybe things being slightly different under OS X.
Does anyone on this list have experience with gtk3 in OS X and can give me some hints on how I can use it so that it blends well into the rest of the desktop?

Making a cross-platform toolkit look like something implemented with Apple's own Cocoa APIs is quite problematic. Doing it "right" relies on an API that Apple do provide but do not maintain much any more, and it has become rather stale. This means that implementing GTK drawing of widgets in ways that are consistent with Apple's "current" version (which changes quite a lot - compare El Capitan with older versions, for example) becomes something that has to be manually implemented pixel by pixel. There were some attempts to do this for GTK+2 but they were never completed AFAIK.

You also have issues like the fact that most applications use Apple's own Finder-like widget when presenting a dialog involving choosing files and folders; the GTK+ one will never look or feel like that.