GUI Toolkits for the X Window System 353
TeachingMachines writes "Leslie Polzer has written a nice summary of the current state of GUI Toolkits for the X Windows System (article title of the same name). Those of you who are planning to spend hours and hours scouring the Internet for a mature cross-platform GUI toolkit may save some time and trouble by reading this summary. Leslie's review covers the pros and cons of using GTK+, Trolltech QT, FLTK, wxWindows, and the FOX Toolkit."
what no TK? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what no TK? (Score:5, Informative)
2) So now you want to do a complex, involved gui? You can do that too. Don't like stuff that was thrown together quickly by people who don't know anything about GUI design fool you. It's hard work, and it takes a different set of skills. Just because Tk made GUI programming available to just about everyone, don't judge it on the results of everyone trying to do GUI's!
3) Tk has been around for a while, is well tested, well known, and well built. It is the toolkit of choice for Tcl, Python, and lots of other languages.
4) Of course, it is open source, and lots of people use it and know it. If you want to improve it, you can.
Re:what no TK? (Score:2, Interesting)
Looking at the review FLTK has apparently grown up some perl bindings. This may be quite interesting...
Re:what no TK? (Score:5, Informative)
Yup, sure have [lunenburg.org]. I've been working with this app for going on three years, producing useful releases every 4-5 months or so, and haven't run across a "moving target" in Perl/Tk. Aside from bugfixes, I haven't had to go back and change any of my code or work around any brokenness in new Perl/Tk releases.
Granted, my app doesn't tax the outer limits of the Tk bindings, but for what I do, I've found Perl/Tk to be a stable and adequate cross-platform toolkit.
annoying perl (Score:3, Flamebait)
Just try Tcl/Tk or Python/Tkinter and enjoy.
Re:what no TK? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:what no TK? (Score:4, Informative)
It's amazing how much GNUstep [gnustep.org] is overlooked given that it is the only toolkit whose featureset can compete with qt. Just like qt, GNUstep is a full framework covering much more than simply building a GUI, and can thus be the foundation of an entire application/environment. The OpenStep frameworks (of which GNUstep is an open-source rewrite) address everything from low-level primitives (collection classes, advanced memory management with garbage collection) to networking, file operations, GUI operations (with a graphical IDE and GUI builder modeled after NeXT, now Apple's Project Builder/Interface Builder) and more.
If more attention were paid to GNUstep, it would get the usage that it deserves. I find it superior to almost every toolkit except for qt (with which it competes neck-to-neck in terms of featureset and consistency), and any Mac OS X or OpenStep/NeXTStep programmer will give a glowing recommendation. Plus, it uses Objective-C
One thing missed (Score:5, Insightful)
I've tried to compile and install programs before and spent a lot of time trying to track down the toolkit libraries.
This is not a good reason to abondon using toolkits, but it is one negative aspect to take into consideration.
Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
Our customers would not like it if I told them to find and install version 1.2 of GTK and stuff like that, because in all honestly, on any platform other than Linux most of these toolkit libraries have no simple install mechanism and tend to be buggy.
So Xlib all the way... Simple and it runs on even a 10 year old version of Linux.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
Luckily, I don't have to use Xlib, although the display system for X11 probably uses Xlib. I use Squeak Smalltalk [squeak.org], and can distribute my application with the virtual machine for the specific platform, or as Unix source for somebody to compile if they're on a more obscure platform. This can be easily included with my tarball- no need to download stuff seperately. It is also a small addition to my own code, so it's not like you're adding a big download or hassle.
GTK+, Qt and the desktop libraries that accompany them, on the otherhand, *are* a big hassle. Most Linux systems have a version (or two!) of one or both of those libraries, but often enough when deploying, you still have to have them install the version you wrote your app against- and you better believe it's not quick and easy!
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Include GTK 1.2 and then have your instal check if it is needed, if it is install it.
Like when I buy a game I get DirectX with it. I guess installing that library is gonna kill me.
There is no reason you can't include GTK 1.2 since it is Open source.
Of course the bugginess is another issue, and obviously if that is the case you cannot use it, but I see no reason you can't make it easy to install by modifying your make script.
Even the Gimp was an eas
Re:One thing missed (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you need the toolkit library if source code uses it.
Re:One thing missed (Score:2)
Seems like less of a problem nowadays, despite all the people complaining, "Now we have TWO toolsets to deal with!" Most Linux users have the KDE and GNOME (or GTK, at least) libraries available, and Windows and Mac users typically aren't in a position to compile anything anyway. It's tracking
Re:One thing missed (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course this approach is only usually worth it when most of the hard work is done in the guts, and when the UI itself isn't that much work to redo in a different toolkit. Nor does it work when you need a feature than is only available in a specific toolkit. But in many instances, it works fine.
So often there's no need to choose between toolkits... just choose them all!
When wxWindows gets decent support for toolkits other than Gtk+, it will make this even more trivial.
Re:One thing missed (Score:3, Interesting)
This requires that the application logic be converted into an event-driven state-machine model. Some CLI apps just can't make the transition without a rewrite.
Once the transition is done, though, you are right...you ca
Re:One thing missed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:One thing missed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One thing missed (Score:2, Informative)
Before you misunderstand me: apart from the X server, my own box was built by me from the source and nothing but the source. Which is to say: I fully understand how libraries work and I don't mind looking for a bit of extra source if it looks like it might be useful. But for the very same reason, I also know from experience that some
X Programming In C (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pconline.com/~erc/xwind2nd.htm
http
Unfortunately, I've lost the URLs for the X API docs and containing really good example documentation on X Windows programming in C. If anybody has these URLs, I'd appreciate it, since it took me several days of searching to dig them up and I can't find them anymore (harddrive crashes suck).
Re:X Programming In C (Score:3, Informative)
volume 1 does contain some documentation about writing a window manager, but it is really insufficient. if you're looking for appropriate documentation on what it should do, you can find the icccm documentation online somewhere (most modern window managers are NOT icccm compliant however)
Re:X Programming In C (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly. If you're doing Xlib programming (Vol 1), then you'll also want Vol 2 (Xlib Reference Manual). Granted, Vol 3 (X Users Guide) probably won't tell X programmers much they don't know, and if you're using one of the non- Xt-derived toolkits (GTK, Qt, etc) then the later volumes (4 & 5, Xt Programming and Reference Manuals respectively, and 6, Motif) aren't necessary -- unless you ever hope to figure out how some of the older code out there works.
Nobody uses XView (Vol 7) any more (do they?) and the X Window SysAdmin's Guide (Vol 8) is useful only to sysadmins of large X-based thin client installations (such as Largo City FL, perhaps?), but I wouldn't exactly call them "fluff".
(And yeah, I've got the whole set, including both "regular" and "Motif" editions of some, plus the R6 supplement, and the "Nutshell" volume -- which is actually pretty handy as a desk reference over the thicker volumes. But then I've been doing X Windows programming since late X10 days circa 1987.)
Re:X Programming In C (Score:2)
Re:X Programming In C (Score:2)
Re:X Programming In C (Score:4, Informative)
has a good X api reference
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Re:X Programming In C (Score:4, Informative)
I hope these are the ones you lost:
http://www.xfree86.org//4.3.0/manindex3.html
h
http://tronche.com
http://x.holovko.ru/Xlib/contents.ht
Hope someone finds them usefull...
Creating a window manager, is actually quiet fun, as long as you have others code to look at...
Why would you want to use anything but Swing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Todays Java is not at all what old Java was. It's far faster, and only getting faster with each release, than in the past, far more reliable, far more complete, etc.
Re:Why would you want to use anything but Swing? (Score:2)
Short Answer is: S.W.T.
Long Answer is: here [google.com].
Re:Why would you want to use anything but Swing? (Score:5, Insightful)
- can distribute a statically linked 2 meg executable - quick to install
- typically only 2 megs of resident RAM used by running program
- virtually zero startup time
- much more responsive GUI
- still runs well on hardware more than 4 years old
Why not Swing?
- don't want the 40 meg downloadable JRE footprint
- don't want Java version hell for your users/customers
- don't want the 40 Meg of resident RAM required by the smallest running Swing program
- requires the latest hardware for decent speed.
Fonts! (Score:3, Insightful)
(Well, maybe it is the fonts that are not as good as Windows fonts... But if you want to work with international text, even Window's unantialiased non-bitmap Chinese fonts look VERY ugly.)
Re:Fonts! (Score:2)
I think that must depend on whose VM you are using. I found that to be true of the Blackdown, but Sun's VM does antialias truetype fonts with no trouble at all. This isn't a great example, but look at the captions of this [ntlworld.com].
For Pure Sadism - (Score:2, Insightful)
yippeee!!!! wheeelah....
yeh baby!!!
Re:For Pure Sadism - (Score:2)
This Guy is heavily biased against QT (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This Guy is heavily biased against QT (Score:2)
That's a pretty lame reason for bias, when the stated title of the article is "GUI Toolkits for The X Window System".
Yeh, I like QT, but I like wxWindows, GTK+, Java, and lots of others too.
-1 Troll(tech) (Score:5, Insightful)
This article reads like a Qt flamefest.
I don't see how Qt's "business like homepage" should have anything to do with how good a toolkit Qt is. The "free for linux not for w32" is of course a valid point, but it's the only one.
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:5, Insightful)
This article reads like a Qt flamefest.
Certainly does. He also dislikes C, yet he programs using GTK+. I guess he must be a fan of gtkmm. Frankly, I get the impression that the articles author is a little bit inexperienced, and would be better off learning Java and its Swing API. That will give him a decent grounding in MVC architecture, while keeping him otherwise occupied so that he doesn't write any more articles :)
Chris
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:5, Insightful)
"Commercial" and "proprietary" are not at all the same thing, but the author believes you need to pay to sell Qt applications. Wrong - you are permitted to sell GPL-licenced software.
The fact that the toolkit is large and takes a long time to compile (a few hours on a moderate-spec PC) is irrelevant. You don't need to recompile your toolkit every day, and you get binary Qt packages with most Linux distributions anyway.
"Business-oriented main website" is a non-argument, as you say.
"Main branch depending on one company" is a non-argument, since even if Trolltech folded tomorrow, a GPL-licenced Qt can be picked up by volunteers, just like any other free toolkit.
The namespace concern is the only minus point with any merit - on the other hand, I don't see Gtk+ using namespaces either, and that wasn't mentioned as a minus point, was it? (Yes, I know Gtk+ is written in C - but that doesn't alter the fact that it too does not use namespaces)
This article wasn't a summary, it was a soapbox rant.
Qt compile times (Score:2)
also takes a while. A lot of the Qt classes use
shared data. They are often used by value in
parameters and class members.
Therefore Qt header files tend to include lots of
other Qt headers. Since there currently is no PCH
support, compile times go up quite a bit.
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, I have written an emulator which I havent open sourced yet, and 95% of the code is ANSI C++. Why should i need to open source the whole thing? I found them very accomidating in the fact that I would only have to open source the the parts that actually used the QT classes.
All in all QT is the best object oriented toolkit out there, they are a very professional company and a previsouly noted this should be a moot point when anylizing the toolkit itself.
proxy
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that Trolltech is a business, I think it does reflect the quality of Qt. If Trolltech was a business, and their website looked like half the other OSS projects out there, nobody would take them seriously.
The "free for linux not for w32" is of course a valid point, but it's the only one.
That isn't even a valid point. Qt 2.3 for Win32, free. [trolltech.com]
Re:Why another QT license? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's their lifeblood. They are trying very hard to create
Agreed. And that's not all... (rant) (Score:5, Insightful)
So, let's see.
First of all, isn't it funny how the author omits to mention how a clean and thoroughly engineered class hierarchy can help you design more modular software that will be much easier to maintain and refactor? Or do people really think that the KDE project has been improving at the pace it has by mere luck?
> Very business-oriented main Web site
That's a problem how? Do you really MIND that the site provides info for people other than geeks, along with, you know, a completely up to date documentation for each version?
> Main branch depending on one company
This is either pure ignorance or a lie. Typical underhanded FUD. The main branch is GPL'ed, and the KDE Foundation was established to keep the main branch GPL'ed no matter what happens to Trolltech.
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeq
> Commercial developers and people wanting portability have to pay
Commercial developpers *ARE* allowed to sell GPL apps, dammit. THIS is the way of Free Software business.
And Qt 2 is available under for GPL on all the main platforms. That's for portability. Only Qt 3 for Windows requires a commercial license (this wasn't always the case, but according to interviews I read some Windows developpers would routinely use the GPL version in closed source apps, so Trolltech had to discontinue the GPL license on Windows. Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.)
> Huge sources and binaries, library itself takes ages to compile
That's C++ for you, dude. Install a binary package next time.
Additionally, and just because I'm pissed and am most willing to nitpick the bullshit out of existence, 1) Qt ships will ALL the major distribs, and a majority of minor ones -- no need to recompile it, and 2) You don't need to recompile it either for use with older software, as the API is backwards compatible -- which is not the case of all the APIs out there, which he blissfully omitted.
> Objects not referred by namespace but simple literal prefix "Q"
And that's a problem how?
> Dominant Microsoft Windows look
This is either pure ignorance or a lie. I won't even enumerate the number of looks Qt comes with *natively*.
In fact, this is so close to the usual Qt FUD you can hear from certain people that I strongly suspect that the whole purpose of the article was a clumsy attempt at slowing the growing popularity of Qt. Well, sorry, but such retarded FUD won't last three minutes on Slashdot. We may be a bunch of bickering nerds at times, but we know our shit.
If you don't like Qt and are concerned about its growing supremacy, which is your absolute right, then contribute to competing projects to help them improve. Trying to smear shit on competitors will only make your side look desperate. Is this what you want?
Rant other. Let the moderation begin, I have karma to burn.
Totally missed the point of Qt (Score:3, Insightful)
- The ease of code integration into Designer by OO derivation is fantastic.
- The speed at which GUI apps can be developed, using TT's Designer is great!
- The qmake program, while not as capable as automake etc..., is still simple and easy to use. Plus, it takes care of his whi
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:2)
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:3, Informative)
KDE MYTHS [urbanlizard.com]
Re:-1 Troll(tech) (Score:2)
writing graphics software (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:writing graphics software (Score:3, Informative)
Either that or build on top of Mozilla and use XUL.
Why the Qt bashing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I personally think Qt is made irrelevant by both of the others because they are not missing anything Qt offers. The tools that come with Qt may not be bundled with them, but comparable tools do exist and can be used free of charge, and most often as Free Software. Qt's biggest weaknesses are its relic called "MOC" and its business orientation. Yes, it's GPL, but not for MS Windows, so you're not really free. FOX and (especially) wxWindows offer similarly advanced sets of widgets and techniques, so you might as well throw Qt away. In terms of portability, it's the same, and wxWindows even adds OS/2 portability. Believe me, I don't want to be unfair to Trolltech or upset dedicated Qt developers. I tried to be objective, and that's my objective conclusion. Maybe we can discuss this point in the comments for this article.
There is a disturbing trend of recent articles that engage in Qt/KDE bashing. Can't help wondering whether it is really a coincidence or not. For instance, here's another freshmeat editorial [freshmeat.net] from a few months back.
Re:Why the Qt bashing? (Score:2)
Re:Why the Qt bashing? (Score:2)
Huh? Qt lets you use C preprocessor macros in header include files.
Re:Why the Qt bashing? (Score:2)
Re:Why the Qt bashing? (Score:2)
wxwindows - wxpython (Score:4, Informative)
Combined with python it is very simple and easy.
I wouldn't make commercial apps, but for small development, it's my choice.
Re:wxwindows - wxpython (Score:2)
Toolkits do sacrifice flexibility (Score:3, Interesting)
However, for those developing low-level X programs such as window managers and XIM servers that need to meddle with (say) ICCCM details, you are probably better off just using Xlib --- just like programs doing low-level I/O are better off using low-level functions instead of stdio.
Note that even in some cross-platform applications some non-portable stuff is needed in order to tune user experience, for example you may find a cool new feature of recent window managers accessible via ICCCM beneficial (albeit not essential) to your application, but toolkits haven't integrated such things yet. Therefore, it is very important that toolkits give access to low-level things like Window/Atom/Pixmap IDs so that bypassing it occasionally is possible. I don't know about others, but GTK does well in this regard.
Need monolithic executables (Score:2, Insightful)
one giant executable. I hate having the
incompatible libraries problem. It's like
DLL hell in windows. It'd be nice to have
a full featured GUI library (and other tools)
that can create one big executable file.
GTK programs require a DLL in windows.
WxWindows programs require GTK libraries on
Linux.
Re:Need monolithic executables (Score:2)
Re:Need monolithic executables (Score:2)
$ gcc -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2/ -static -o hewx ../source/he.o ../source/hebuffer.o ../source/heexpr.o ../source/hemisc.o ../source/heobject.o ../source/heparse.o ../source/heres.o ../source/herun.o ../source/heset.o ../source/stringfn.o hewx.o hewxwin.o hejpeg.o hepath.o hesound.o hevideo.o -lwx_gtk-2.4 -lgtk -lgdk -lpthread -lmikmod -lstdc++
-lsupc++ -lglib -lgthread -lX11 -lm -ljp
Re:Need monolithic executables (Score:2, Informative)
See http://www.equi4.com/starkit/
Documentation (Score:5, Insightful)
The big advantage with picking up Perl/Tk was that the O'Reilly books [oreilly.com] were extremely informative - good examples on each widget, how they interoperate, how to use them, and larger program examples. The documentation for the other toolkits I considered basically consisted of "look at the arguments this C++ function takes, and use it," which didn't make for an easy time picking things up (wxPerl was the worst in that regard). While an experienced C++ programmer might not have a hard time with that, it was way over my head.
As a result, though, I have a decent app that runs on X11 and Win32. With the great PAR [perl.org] archiver, I can even package the app up in a nice bundle.
Good times.
Re:Documentation (Score:5, Informative)
x-language) compatible it is, much easier and more stable than other
toolkits mentioned.
A common complaint has been the default Motif look and feel on unix
(this is easy to change, but many don't bother changing the
defaults). This is about to change. Tk 8.5, currently in development,
is going to represent a major revamp of Tk. Basic things like updated
default look and feel as well as enhancing the core widget base (there
are 100s of widgets for Tk, but only 15 in the "core").
This is also meant to target all Tk users (not just Tcl users). There
are lots of widgets out there only available to Tcl/Tk users that
could be made available to Perl/Python/Ruby/R/Lua/etc if a better
framework were used so widget authors understood the basics of having
their widgets used by multiple languages. Numerous other enhancements
are planned, all to be done on a tight schedule (we don't like waiting
for software). You can see the a wiki for this work being built at
http://tcl.projectforum.com/tk/
Missed the best (Score:5, Informative)
GNUStep uses Objective-C and is a clone of the OpenStep API's and is pretty stable.
To write a simple Application you do not have to write that much code any more.
Re:Missed the best (Score:5, Informative)
GNUstep is a true object oriented framework, running on Linux and other Unices, and there is even a port for Windows in early stage. It's an OpenStep implementation, as MacOS X's Cocoa, thus you could port GNUstep applications on MacOS X and MacOS X application on GNUstep very easily. GNUstep also has great RAD tools like Gorm, modeled after NeXT's InterfaceBuilder.
GNUstep supports distributed objects out of the box, has a great database library (you just deal with objects, define a link between thoses objects and your database's model, and hop, no need to SQL), support scripting very easily, uses the PostScript imaging model (no need to maintain two versions of your code for display and printing), etc.
A good example of a GNUstep application compiling both on MacOSX and GNUstep is GNUMail, available on http://www.collaboration-world.com/gnumail
I urge people to check http://www.gnustep.org website
You could find informations and articles about GNUstep on http://www.roard.com/docs , there is also the gnustep's wiki (http://wiki.gnustep.org), a good GNUstep's site for news on http://www.gnustep.us and a great guide for installing GNUstep (http://gnustep.made-it.com)
It's really a shame that so few people contribute to this great project...
Re:Missed the best (Score:3, Informative)
If Sun choose to release some of theses apps, it would be possible to port them on GNUst
Re:Missed the best (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only is GNUstep concise and simple, but because Apple's Cocoa is also an implementation of the OPENSTEP standard, one can use Cocoa docs in GNUstep programming. This allows the programmer to tap into abundant resources online and in print.
If you're interested in what's going on in the GNUstep world, my favourite resource is www.gnustep.us, which lists the latest news and updates. I hope I don't sound like a karma whore, I'm just super-enthused about a fantastic API that doesn't get the attention it deserves.
FLTK licensing is *incorrect* (Score:5, Informative)
FLTK comes with complete free source code. FLTK is available under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License.
We have ammended the LGPL to explicitly allow static linking of FLTK (or any modified version of FLTK) to your software. The LGPL is not clear on this and we definately want to allow it.
Re:FLTK licensing is *incorrect* (Score:2)
Bzzt. The author claims that the predecessor to FLTK, XForms, isn't free software - and it isn't [gskorea.or.kr].
--
Program in what you like (Score:5, Interesting)
Although programming in QT won't get it included into gnome and programming in GTK won't get it included in KDE.
A lot of apps people develop never see the light of day... I've programmed hundreds of little apps for the various companies I've worked for.. I programmed in what I liked.. and what I was used to...
Just because you need to create a little app with a textbox and a button doesn't mean you need to include the HEAVY libraries of gtk/qt/gnome/kde.
Just my thought.
ChiefArcher
What, no {Mo,Less}tif? (Score:4, Insightful)
But anybody who thinks Xt is "too hard" probably is out of their depth programming GUIs anyway. (Now, if you think it's ugly, that's a whole 'nother discussion...) And nothing else gives you that level of flexibility and control. (Well, nothing else sane -- if you want to code direct to the X protocol, go right ahead...)
Re:What, no {Mo,Less}tif? (Score:3, Insightful)
Xlib still has a lot going for it, espcially in terms of availability on the various UNIX variants out there and one of it's often overlooked features, especially by younger less experienced
Missed the most promising one: Java/SWT (Score:4, Informative)
It's the toolkit used to create the Eclipse IDE from IBM, similar in approach to wxWindows...i.e. renders using native widgets on each platfrom (win32 APIs on Windows, GTK+ 2.0 on Linux, Aqua on Mac OS X), but with the same common API on all platforms.
Did I mention coding in Java is much easier than fighting with ancient macros in C or C++?
Plus, SWT apps start up real fast and consume much less resources than the infamous default Java SWING toolkit. Just look at the difference in responsiveness between Eclipse and NetBeans (I call it the Molasses IDE in tribute to its speed).
SWT is the future of Java GUI and because it renders with native widgets it's the way to go for the future.
Did I mention it's open-source and 100% free on all platforms, including windows (unlike Qt).
Plus...you get access to all the standard Java libs (db access, xml processing, web services, threasing, etc...)
Re:Missed the most promising one: Java/SWT (Score:5, Informative)
Just look at JBuilder, it load as fast and is as responseive as Eclipse. JBuilder is using Swing.
You should never compare two different toolkit by just comparing just one application for each toolkit.
Also SWT as some portability problems. They get addressed pretty fast, but is not as portable as Swing is.
Re:Missed the most promising one: Java/SWT (Score:2)
Making Money == Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)
Making Money == Good for Free Software (Score:2, Interesting)
Thi
Re:Making Money == Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I write some neat program for myself and friends in Linux, it'd be nice to do it with a GUI library that'd let me, with a minimum of porting hassles, release it for friends in Windows as well. Not worth the $1500 dev kit, but still handy.
Or perhaps if I was starting as a shareware developer. $1500 isn't much when the money starts coming in, but it's a lot up front.
Being that portability to Windows is a handy thing, I think the issue of QT being a business and charging for that ability is directly on topic.
Yes, we know, for the trillionth time, that the job of a company is to make money, yada, yada, yada... That doesn't mean that our job is to supply a company with money.
Re:Making Money == Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Qt was around years before KDE. And Trolltech was a smaller, but still successful, company back then. I was programming Qt back in 1997? 98? It was rock-solid even then. GTK+, which, I might add, was being developed for political reasons, was kind of a permanent, bloody migrane to work in. And let's focus in on the reasons again. Qt was there. Then KDE happened. Then Miguel and co pitched a fit that this well-designed app was becoming a new Linux standard, and screamed bloody hell that it was based on a non-GPLed toolkit. Qt was free on Linux, but That Wasn't Good Enough. They borrowed the toolkit from GIMP, called GTK internally, renamed it as GTK+, decided to keep it in C, and started work on it and GNOME in order to preserve GPL sanctity on the Linux desktop. Scroll forward two years. You find that KDE has continued lightyears ahead of GNOME, and that in response to the GNOMEitistas, Trolltech has first created the QPL, which the OSI rated as open-source, but since That Wasn't Good Enough, Trolltech then released Qt under the GPL, but somehow that STILL Wasn't Good Enough for the GNOMEitistas, and so the silly war continued...
I don't know if you've been around that long. But there's the background on the FUD. There's a bit of a tendency in the slashdot crowd to just accept the years old FUD and not think about it too much.
"The community at large" I guess kind of means whatever you want it to mean. If you mean "GUI developers", then, no, C is not the standard, C++ has been the standard for years. Passing C++ references and calling object methods is the way most GUI programming is done, not writing preprocessor macros to magically objectify sickeninly complex C structs and chasing function pointers around the app. If you mean, "open source programmers", then no, C is still not the standard, C++ and Java compete with all the scripting toolkits out there now. If you mean "slashdot bigots with poor grasp of history", then yes, you could say that C is the standard.
One tool kit left out of the article (Score:2)
URLS: http://vdkbuilder.sourceforge.net/ and
http://www.programmers.net/artic/Motta/vdkbu
(OT) Good online GUI standard documentation? (Score:2)
Some developers on my team are absolutely abysmal at GUI development and, whenever we question them, they always say that what they're doing "follows the standard", which is total bulls--t. (They're just lazy and don't want to take the time to do it right.) Among other atrocities, they convinced our f
Re:(OT) Good online GUI standard documentation? (Score:3, Informative)
Never let programmers design GUI's (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, it won't really matter what kind of information you show those guys. They'll heel drag even if Bill Gates walks into their office and tells them they're completely wrong.
What you need to do first is design the UI at the start of the project, before any code is written. Once major code is written, most programmers are going to be obstinant as
Re:(OT) Good online GUI standard documentation? (Score:3, Informative)
"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from"...
Important oversigt (Score:2)
My US$0.02
Re:Important oversigt (Score:2)
Ximian have just been taken over by Novell, for starters.
Or do you really think that they're more interested in Mono than Exchange Connector?
PHP-GTK (Score:3, Interesting)
I've written a 20,000 line software package in PHP-GTK and I can say that while GTK 1.2 is a bit funky, it's quite powerful and very stable.
Binding Gtk with the power and rapid development speed of PHP, using an IDE such as Dev-PHP results in an environment that's blissful, stable, and cross-platform.
The aforementioned application is currently in the midst of a very successful Beta on Windows, and once released, will be shortly released for Linux and Macintosh. To "compile" the software we used the Ioncube Encoder.
Gotta love it, eh?
Been there, done that... (Score:2, Informative)
QT != evil (Score:4, Interesting)
The author probably doesn't understand the GPL. All of the other tool kits distributed under the GPL can be used in commerical applications and SO CAN THE GPL'ed version of QT. You just have to accept the terms of the GPL to do so, IE: your application must be open sourced! In this sense QT has an avantage! If you buy their commerical license you may then close source your application. What they have done is allow you to pay extra to by-pass the GPL. How is this an evil thing? The other kits do NOT give you a choice, it's the GPL or nothing! Choice is good. QED.
QT != evil.
Xlib API still K&R (Score:2)
all toolkits are built on Xlib wouldn't it benefit
everyone if somebody (eg one of the toolkit makers)
fixed this horrible state of affairs.
In fact *any* improvement to Xlib be great for everyone. This suggest it would be a great area for somebody like IBM to fund.
Tcl/Tk (Score:2)
Downside: The widgets aren't pretty.
Upside: I can whip out a GUI in a day!
My 2 cents (Score:5, Informative)
- most polished GUI of the bunch, great documentation, great portability, looks great.
- typesafe callbacks
- smallest learning curve - very easy to use.
- downside: price, MOC preprocessor, very long compiles.
- recommendation: if you have the money - go buy it.
FLTK:
- perhaps the fastest and has the smallest memory footprint of the bunch.
- small size comes with a price - the look and feel is noticably "off" and often you get non-standard widget behavior.
- void* based event callbacks
- fastest compiles
FOX:
- programs look quite professional
- non typesafe events void* pointers that are a royal pain in the butt to use, and are very poorly documented.
- lack of virtual functions for most GUI classes - must use table dispatch for each new class to override behavior.
- only supports UNIX (X11) and Windows
- only has Windows 2000 look on any platform, but looks quite good nonetheless with minimal flicker
- small user base
- no CVS access - maintained by one individual
WxWindows:
- supports the most platforms, has native look.
- large community of support
- many interpreted language bindings
- different behavior on different platforms
- widgets flicker like crazy
- not very stable in my experience
What about XVT? (Score:3, Informative)
Xentax
Namespaces vs. name munging (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, the interface to namespaces can be a liability in terms of complexity and hurdles to learning.
In either case I'd like to see more analysis.
The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page (Score:3, Informative)
The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page [atai.org]
at http://www.atai.org/guitool/
ZooLib Cross_Platform Application Toolkit (Score:3, Informative)
It's just not very well known yet because it's only been in open source since the fall of 2000. Prior to that it was a proprietary API for the use of Andy Green and his clients Learning in Motion [motion.com], who used it for such products as the client-server educational database Knowledge Forum [knowledgeforum.com].
ZooLib is written in C++, and can produce native executables for Linux/X11, Windows, BeOS, and Mac OS (classic and carbon) with very little need for platform-specific client code.
It makes only very basic use of platform-specific code internally, which is kept encapsulated, so it wouldn't be very hard to port it to a completely new platform. Porting to a new Unix platform that uses X11 shouldn't be more than a day's work, for example. Porting to a platform that had a completely alien GUI API would be a few weeks of work for someone familiar with both the platform and ZooLib.
ZooLib's website has a piece I wrote about why cross-platform frameworks are good for developers:
Re:Canopy Group Owns Trolltech/SCO (Score:2)
-1.0000 FUD.
Re:Kylix (Score:2)
I agree
The Kylix Delphi (object Pascal) seems very good to me as well. It has the same benefits as Kylix BCB, and (like BCB) you can easily develop for Windows and Linux at the same time by sticking with the Kylix components.
Re:Please avoid GTK (Score:3, Informative)