How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#11

Post by dubcanada » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:00 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #10

If you need GTK for something, really, don't bother. It's a bag of hurt. Qt, WxWidgets, or even something else. I'm so glad the Web and Modern Browsers reinvented "desktop applications".

I actually like writing GTK way more then Qt. I like the fact it is C and easily integrates with any language I wish to use.

Though I use Qt, the Mac support on GTK is terrible at best. Windows support is even worse (or non-existent) which makes me question their "cross platform gui" title.

If I was to suggest a method, I would suggest using each platforms GUI language and make a backend in something cross platform.

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#12

Post by jbk » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:01 PM UTC

This state of Gtk sad, but I'm really glad we (VLC) moved to Qt, a few years ago (2006), before many applications did the switch, and when it was an unpopular move.

Before that time, we were using WxWidgets and had many issues, notably with Unicode and Windows support. WxWidget APIs and behaviors were changing too much between releases (even minor ones).

When we moved, we were in the early Qt 4.1/4.2 days, and most VLC developers were using Gnome and pushed a lot for Gtk. But one developer started the new UI in Qt, and I picked up the work. We had an important backlash from users, notably with some people in the community recoding an interface in Gtk...

Afterwards, QGtkStyle was introduced, and people could have a native look, even with Gtk environments.

Finally, Qt moved to a community project, to LGPL and Gtk went down the road with Gtk 3.x, breaking themes, Windows, OSX, and API/behaviors at every release (and removing features).

Those days, every cross-platform application are moving to Qt (subsurface, LXDE, wireshark, audacity). It's funny that we made this decision, at that time, without knowing all that. I think we just got very lucky... :D

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#13

Post by oliwarner » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:06 PM UTC

There is a lot of truth in this but it does take a very lazy attitude to testing.

The simple truth is that if you need your application to support certain distributions, you need to be there on the development releases testing them and either submitting bug reports or improving your application.

And you can automate much of this with a pile of bootable ISOs and a scriptable virtual machine. Testing isn't new.

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#14

Post by jeorgun » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:06 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #5

This post was written by Morten Welinder, the author of Gnumeric and a popular GNOME blogger. I feel really bad for GTK developers. The GNOME guys have clearly taken the toolkit from a "general purpose" direction to a much more gnome-centric one. At the same time though, I can't help but be hopeful for the future. Qt is a wonderful project, with a bunch of wonderful licenses, developed in a wonderfully-open environme…

I feel really conflicted about Qt. On one hand, as a graphical toolkit/environment, it's great. It's well-structured and easy to use, and QML is basically everything web applications should have been.

On the other hand, as a C++ library it really couldn't be worse, with its flagrant reinvention of the standard library, pervasive UTF16, complex object hierarchies, raw pointers, extensive use of macros, etc., etc.

Maybe I'm just too choosy, but it'd be really nice to have a graphical toolkit that didn't have such an air of sausage factory to it.

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#15

Post by skriticos2 » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:16 PM UTC

I just watched this [1] video from Dirk Hohndel describing the migration motives and process from Gtk+ to Qt for subsurface (started by Linus).

TLDR:

* Qt has a community of people developing applications, has good documentation (precise, good coverage) and people who care

* Gtk+ has a bunch of Gnome developers, if you want to develop an application, you're out of luck

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#16

Post by SoftwareMaven » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:20 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #13

There is a lot of truth in this but it does take a very lazy attitude to testing. The simple truth is that if you need your application to support certain distributions, you need to be there on the development releases testing them and either submitting bug reports or improving your application. And you can automate much of this with a pile of bootable ISOs and a scriptable virtual machine. Testing isn't new.

Can you explain testing actually solves this problem? The problem is multifaceted: it involves the behavior changes of a Gnome, which testing will find, and the unwillingness of some distros (I would imagine Debian is in there) to release new software for reasons other than security fixes, which testing doesn't and cannot address.

The author makes it clear updating his code to fix the problems is not the problem.

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#17

Post by nawitus » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:24 PM UTC

It's unfortunate that Linux and/or Linux distributions have not yet solved the problem of supporting parallel versions of dependencies. Even Node's package manager supports that. The end result is that rolling release distros break stuff often, as applications can't be tested and executed in isolation of each other. The "solution" to this is releasing everything every 6 months, when you can actually test everything together, then stop providing new versions for months.

If Linux/Linux distributions did support it, rolling release would be a lot more common. One limitation that would remain is that if you have an application that requires a single instance (e.g. a Network Manager), you couldn't have multiple instances of it running at the same time.

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#18

Post by derefr » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:27 PM UTC

jeorgun wrote: post #14

scrollaway wrote: post #5

This post was written by Morten Welinder, the author of Gnumeric and a popular GNOME blogger. I feel really bad for GTK developers. The GNOME guys have clearly taken the toolkit from a "general purpose" direction to a much more gnome-centric one. At the same time though, I can't help but be hopeful for the future. Qt is a wonderful project, with a bunch of wonderful licenses, developed in a wonderfully-open environme…

I feel really conflicted about Qt. On one hand, as a graphical toolkit/environment, it's great. It's well-structured and easy to use, and QML is basically everything web applications should have been. On the other hand, as a C++ library it really couldn't be worse, with its flagrant reinvention of the standard library, pervasive UTF16, complex object hierarchies, raw pointers, extensive use of macros, etc., etc. Mayb…

How would people feel about a cleanup-focused API-compatible fork of Qt, in the style of LibReSSL?

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#19

Post by bagels » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:30 PM UTC

jeorgun wrote: post #14

scrollaway wrote: post #5

This post was written by Morten Welinder, the author of Gnumeric and a popular GNOME blogger. I feel really bad for GTK developers. The GNOME guys have clearly taken the toolkit from a "general purpose" direction to a much more gnome-centric one. At the same time though, I can't help but be hopeful for the future. Qt is a wonderful project, with a bunch of wonderful licenses, developed in a wonderfully-open environme…

I feel really conflicted about Qt. On one hand, as a graphical toolkit/environment, it's great. It's well-structured and easy to use, and QML is basically everything web applications should have been. On the other hand, as a C++ library it really couldn't be worse, with its flagrant reinvention of the standard library, pervasive UTF16, complex object hierarchies, raw pointers, extensive use of macros, etc., etc. Mayb…

pyqt is the answer

Re: How Does One Create A Gtk+ Application?

#20

Post by asgeir » Sat, Jul 05, 2014, 11:33 PM UTC

jeorgun wrote: post #14

scrollaway wrote: post #5

This post was written by Morten Welinder, the author of Gnumeric and a popular GNOME blogger. I feel really bad for GTK developers. The GNOME guys have clearly taken the toolkit from a "general purpose" direction to a much more gnome-centric one. At the same time though, I can't help but be hopeful for the future. Qt is a wonderful project, with a bunch of wonderful licenses, developed in a wonderfully-open environme…

I feel really conflicted about Qt. On one hand, as a graphical toolkit/environment, it's great. It's well-structured and easy to use, and QML is basically everything web applications should have been. On the other hand, as a C++ library it really couldn't be worse, with its flagrant reinvention of the standard library, pervasive UTF16, complex object hierarchies, raw pointers, extensive use of macros, etc., etc. Mayb…

I think that the reason for reimplementing stl functionality is that they want complex types such as QString as a part of their external interface and they want different minor versions to be binary compatible which can't be guaranteed for types like std::string unless everything is compiled with the same compiler and runtime. See https://qt-project.org/wiki/Dpointer

As for the raw pointer use you should always use QPointer smart pointers for objects whose lifetime you don't control. However they don't recommend passing QPointers as function parameters since they are easily/cheaply constructed and the reference count is embedded in the QObject instance itself in any case.