Re: The Future?

[Kasper Peeters <kasper peeters phi-sci com>]

> 1. GTK is not so cross-platform anymore: on Windows and macOS, you
> are supposed to build your own library binaries (gvsbuild for Windows
> and jhbuild for macOS exist, but are not foolproof).

That's definitely not true; on Windows there's vcpkg and on macOS
there is Homebrew; both let you install reasonably up-to-date versions
of GTK3 with a single command line. What's difficult, however, is to
find information on this, and on how to use these. I maintain a large,
fully cross-platform GTK3 app (cadabra) and once we had vcpkg and
Homebrew figured out, we haven't had any GTK-related issues anymore.

So I personally think that what drives people away from GTK (or put more
friendly: what makes people less likely to choose GTK than QT or
something else), is that the information on GTK's web site is not
sufficiently newcomer-friendly. Good documentation is almost as critical
as good code, and while the GTK code is excellent, it lacks on the
documentation front. Not for the API documentation, that one's fine.
But for the 'big picture documentation', which includes up-to-date
instructions on how to get it up and running on all platforms. Why
gtk.org does not even seem to mention vpckg and Homebrew is a mystery
to me, and seems easy to fix. 

Cheers,
Kasper