[plug] Gdk errors

[Grahame Bowland]

On 03 Aug 2001 09:58:32 +0800, Russell Keith-Magee wrote:

> 4) The support for Xfree 4 extensions (like the render and font antialiasing
> extensions) is pretty abysmal. Whereas QT gets font antialiasing through a
> recompile of the QT library, you have to completely rewrite your GTK apps to
> use Pango, the new antialiased font system. This is an artifact of points 2
> and 3.

Quite a while (six months ago..) GTK 2.0 had been modified (I think by
eli) to support the render extension on all the standard widgets. I've
seen screenshots of it a long while ago.

Of course, GTK 2.0 isn't out yet.

> 5) The UI system isn't threaded at all (although many of the libraries are
> thread safe). Consequently, it is very easy to lock up your UI by having a
> processing routine that doesn't return quickly.

It is possible to write highly threaded GUI applications using the
Gnome/GTK libraries - eg. evolution.

> Summary:
> GTK+ is good and stable for finished applications that are written properly.
> However, it's not an effective prototyping tool, and it's easy to write an
> application that will look really sluggish if you are not fully aware of how
> to use the GTK event model. My experience with the Windows support is
> limited, but what I have seen is fairly impressive.

I've written only small things with GTK, I'd say the biggest impedence
to using it is the lack of documentation for the widgets and libraries.
The documentation is not even up to the level of simple pre-conditions
and post-conditions in some cases.

Have fun,
Grahame

--
Grahame Bowland, Network and Systems Administrator
University Communications Services, The University of Western Australia
Phone: +61 8 9380 1175