RE: Why GTK+ vs. GNOME?

[Sri Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

> I think the major problem of all this is that GTK is cross platform, while
> gnome is not: it runs on only one type of OS: Unix and Unix like.

GNOME's original intent is to provide a desktop environment for Unix
systems using the GTK toolkit as it's base.  In order to provide that you
need to apply policy and consistency to the gtk toolkit.  Thats primarily
what the gnomeui library does. (if memory serves)

> I like when I develop to use the Gnome bells and whistle, but I have the
> feeling that most of it should be inside GTK rather than in GNOME.

How far will you go until GTK becomes Gnome?  Most people object to GNOME
because of the dependencies.  You need a million libraries to compile
it.  These are primarily developers not users.  Users will be provided a
complete desktop environment either by a distro or by companies like
Helixcode.

Until the gnome libraries stabilize and their interfaces are well defined
and not changing, objections to using these extra libraries will be a lot
less.  Right now, it's an endless cycle of downloading a new library and
re-compiling GNOME to take advantage of it.  Only the most committed GNOME
application developer will use it at this stage.

However, people are frustrated over the fact that they want to use the
more prominent features of GNOME without getting involved with the endless
cycle of compiling.  This is a big hurdle for European developers who have
to take the time to download these libraries.  Hence, you see people
wanting to port them to GTK+.  However, I think this won't solve the
problem either.  Dependencies to get these GNOME widgets working will
carry over to GTK.  And the process will start again.  It'll only be a
matter of time before GTK+ also starts getting complaints of too much
dependencies.


> For instance the Gnome icon set used for menus or toolbars should rather be
> inside GTK, so when you port to windows, standard windows icons appears.

No.  GTK should be using the standard widgets/icons provided by
windows.  Using non-standard widgets will only confuse windows users
because they don't see what they are used to seeing in other windows
application.  In order to port GNOME over to win32, it must follow the
standards set in by Win32.

> Gnome is a desktop interface, and should stay that, while GTK is in charge
> of displaying anything on the screen in a standard manner..

Please define what a desktop interface to you means.  It could mean any
number of things to different people.

> So everything will be levelled between KDE and GNOME, the day a
> Windows/Mac/BeOS port of GNOME is started.

GNOME shouldn't be on other platforms.  They already have a standard
desktop interface. I would use those.  Using things like Bonobo on these
OSes makes no sense.  They already have their own standard
technologies.  Would you use Bonobo on win32?  You'd use COM otherwise you
wouldn't be able to communicate with other win32 apps.  Perhaps a
competing desktop technology would be good for win32.  I don't know, but
if you dilute standards we are no better than microsoft.

	sri