Comment by formerly_proven | Hacker News Reader

Comment by formerly_proven | Hacker News Reader

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formerly_proven

And Gtk isn't a good option for non-Linux use. wxWidgets is LGPL (sort-of, modified) as well. wxWidgets is much more reasonable than Gtk for cross-plattform use, though can't compete with Qt Widgets in terms of features, API design, ease of use, stability etc.

It seems really weird to me how "but teh licenz" is brought up every time with Qt, when Qt itself is available under the same licenses as all the other toolkits like Gtk, wxWidgets etc.

This doesn't quite apply for embedded development (as LGPL's Tivoization clause might start to bite), but 1.) neither Gtk nor wxWidgets are viable in that space anyway 2.) considering that other people here found that Tesla manages to ship their car firmware with LGPL Qt - well. Can't be that hard to comply with it. Also, 3.) while we're used to free tools and libraries for desktop development, it's much more common to pay for tools in embedded development.

Gtk isn't even a good option for Linux use. Outside of GNOME, it just does not even try to fit in and behave.

It there a good option nowadays?

FOX is really fast and looks OK, but I don't think it's very actively developed, and binding to C++ seems like a pain. And I'm not sure it supports CJK input methods.

I looked at EFL out of desperation, but that's pure style over substance and the complete opposite of what I'd want.

FOX is actively developed, but only by 1 person. Unfortunately it does not support CJK input methods.

I tried to use wxWidgets awhile back and gave up. It was a mess. Macros everywhere.

I've only ever used its Python bindings, and wxWidgets was pleasant to use for my use case.

The design of wxWidgets is very familiar to someone who started on MFC. There were reasons (perf, mostly) to write code that way back when MFC was a thing, but we certainly have better ways now.

I've used Qt for several projects in the past, but with this latest news I'm looking at GTK seriously now.

Why would you say GTK isn't a good option for non-Linux use? And would you say that it is a good option for Linux?

> Why would you say GTK isn't a good option for non-Linux use? And would you say that it is a good option for Linux?

You need something like MSYS2 to even use GTK on Windows, and I've looked at what it takes to package and distribute GTK applications to Windows users without MSYS2, and it's headache inducing.

When it comes to Linux, it's pretty good. Getting its GObject Introspection dependencies compiled is another story, though. I've always had to rely on my distribution's package manager to install them.

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