On Fri, 30 Nov 2012 21:08:19 -0700 Michael Torrie <torriem@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: [snip] > If, for example, a > light-weight rescue distro wants to have a widget toolkit on which to > make apps, what do you recommend? Part of what made GTK2 so wonderful > is that it was easy to use PyGTK and hack together a light-weight, > standalone app that did something useful. > > I'm only a casual developer, and I love using GTK (2), because it is > just portable enough for my needs. Much of what I would do in the > future I could see targeting small pseudo-embedded computers. Say ARM > with a touch screen (no I don't want to run android), perhaps running > only an X server, with no udev, no systemd, and a single app. GTK3, > with support for touch and multitouch would seem to be a good > candidate for targeting a GUI to such an environment, if it were > light and platform-independent like GTK2 (read: not tied to Gnome). > I don't need or wnt Gnome's many layers. And if GTK3 can't fill my > needs, that's okay; there are options, though none as nice as GTK's > api. It is quite unusual for a gtk+/gnome developer to read this news group and so acquaint himself with the views of users, so kudos to Benjamin for that. Having said that, I think part of the problem is that this thread (and the bug number to which it refers) is about theming, not about gtk+ as such. The part of Benjamin's post which sums up the current discomforture is his extending this to gtk+ itself, with his remarks that "It means [application developers] can't rely on things staying the same or having a stable base to build on. Things keep changing. You can't just write something for 3.0 (be it an application, a shell plugin or a GTK theme) and expect it stay working that way forever." This is kite flying. It has always been understood that gtk+3 theming and the gnome shell API (and to that you can also add introspection) are not stable and still under heavy development, with a view to eventually becoming stable but (like Saint Augustine) not yet. To the application developer this doesn't usually matter. The shell is irrelevant to gtk+ application development. And theming is normally for the environment, not the application. A gtk+3 application written for gtk+3.0 and run in an environment (such as gnome) with a standard theme such as Adwaita will look pretty much the same in gtk+3.0 as in gtk+3.6. If an application developer does happen to use theming to create an individual application "look" for her particular application then she is stuck with gtk+2 at present, but (i) such applications are in the vast minority, and (ii) that is not really what theming is about. Note also that gtk+2 is still maintained, and given its use by the not-really-gtk+-application behemoths such as firefox and libreoffice, going to remain so for some time. The main case where what I have said is not true is the one not previously mentioned, namely introspection. pygobject is pretty good about working with gobject-introspection, but gjs less so. Anyone writing a javascript application using gjs with the introspection bindings available with gtk+-3.0.0/gjs-0.7 has probably had to carry out work on it if now using it with the latest bindings with gtk+-3.6/gjs-1.34. I could be wrong, but I do not think that (excluding themes) there is any real chance of gtk+ ceasing to retain API and ABI compatibility at the C level within major versions. It would be contrary to the currently stated mission and policy and I do not think the gtk+ maintainers would accept it. And the fact remains that the number of gtk+ applications out there which are not formally part of the gnome stack, or do not use any specific gnome components, far exceeds (probably by a number of orders of magnitude) the number of identifiably "gnome" applications (those, say, in the 'core' and 'apps' directory of the gnome ftp site). If such breakage were to happen, the gtk+ maintainers would have failed their users and I and many others would be highly disappointed. Chris _______________________________________________ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@xxxxxxxxx https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
