Re: gtk+ and MS Windows

["Timothy M. Shead" <tshead k-3d com>]

Paul Cornford wrote:

> Below is a quote from an article by Michael Tschater on "Platform
> Independent Software Development"
> [http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/October2004/article350.shtml] 
>
> On the subject of "GTK+ (with gtkmm)" he says the following:
>
> "The very unprofessional
> presentation of the 'GTK+ for Win32' components disqualify the software
> 'package' for any professional application."
>
> Can any of the list members confirm this? I was hoping to use Gtkmm to
> develop both Linux and Windows apps.

If you are willing to use MinGW/MSYS for your environment, gtkmm will 
work fine - some comparison screenshots of an extremely non-trivial 
project (K-3D) using gtkmm-2.4 are at

http://k3d.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki/ScreenShots

The K-3D build instructions for Win32 make a good starting-point for 
experimentation, and have links to all the various installers:

http://k3d.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/wiki/WindowsBuildNativeMinGW

Seems as if your man Michael Tschater makes the usual proprietary 
software mistake of conflating software development with software 
distribution.  I agree that Tol's Win32 GTK+ pages are pretty 
unprofessional, but he isn't distributing the software, he's a 
developer.  Guys like Cedric Gustin are doing a bang-up job of packaging 
gtk+ and gtkmm for distribution - you will find that their installers 
are as professional, straightforward, and easy to use as anything you're 
likely to find on Win32.

Cheers,
Tim