Hi all.
I hope this isn't a very stupid (or very common) question, but -- is it possible, at least theoretically, to develop Windows shareware using GTK+?
I feel I must explain my rationale :).
Programming was my hobby for many years. I'll graduate from the college next year, and then I will need to enter the university. But the education is expensive :(. So, I decided, maybe my skills can help here! I have *much* free time now; in fact, I can develop anytime I like until at least late August.
I'm working now at the shareware project. It will be a Stars!-like strategic game. Like Stars! (sorry, don't know its URL), it won't have much graphics -- just some prerendered images of planets and starships. Naturally I want to make it for Windows to be able to sell it. I started doing it with MSVC7+MFC, but I don't really like MFC (design flaws in most unexpected places), and soon I decided to rewrite it using just C and Win32 API. I'm doing that now, but, frankly, I think I won't be able to finish that application with just API. I shudder when I remember these lines of code which just fills some structures to do SendDlgItemMessage(). It isn't too late to change something -- it's complete just about 20-30% now, and all core logic is separated from UI. I used GTK+ in past, and I liked it, and it is LGPL so I can distribute this with my non-GPL'd app. It seems to be one of the best toolkits now (well, Qt is also good but I can't afford its Windows license -- it's expensive right? My Windows, MSVC7 etc. are pirated, and I think I'll need to build the release with Cygwin anyway :). And I just like its "free" feel.
So, my questions:
1). Is Win32-app with GTK+ going to be stable? My main 2-D graphics app for windows is GIMP 1.2.0. It works well but it crashes quite often. OTOH it is an old version, and my program is much less complex than GIMP.
2). How large will be the runtime? The code which uses just API is going to be just about 300k large; however, with all bitmap resources this will be more like 1.5M. I can do that more, of course, but I think that the download >7-8M for the game without 3-D graphics is unreasonable. Also, can I compile the runtime statically? And can I recompile it with Cygwin rather than MSVC runtime?
3). How will it look? For the game it is always going to be a big concern. In fact, that is one of reasons why I am looking for the toolkit. GTK can look quite unusual with themes, but -- can these themes be installed on Windows, and will they look alright, and will their authors allow me to use them?
As you see, I don't have much experience with GTK at Windows OSes...
That's all for now, hope I didn't bored anyone and I won't be flamed. Google didn't reveal anything useful, so I though I can ask here.
-- uav AT urmail DOT ru
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