[SOLVED] GTK-3 Issues as it relates to wxWidgets

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dcbdbis
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[SOLVED] GTK-3 Issues as it relates to wxWidgets

Post by dcbdbis »

Good Afternoon All,


The GTK toolkit has become more and more inconsistent and problematic since the Gnome devs threw their previous users overboard a few years back, then started modifying the GTK to their own preferences with a "to hell with downstream" attitude.

What was the "Gimp Tool Kit", has now become the "Gnome Tool Kit". And the Gnome devs aren't helping matters constantly revising the GTK toolkit and stripping out functionality to meet their one world view of a desktop. The GTK updates are causing issues with XFCE and Mate....The latest update of GTK was the proverbial "straw". It caused display issues in Code::Blocks and other apps. It also broke a bunch of my installed GTK themes. Yesterday I tried for the first time in 15 years, KDE's plasma based upon the QT framework. What a breath of fresh air! Not as heavy as it used to be, customization almost beyond comprehension, speedy and perky, and it has yet to crash on me - or loose the mouse focus outright when working with Code::Blocks. And of course - stable (for now).

I replaced all of my GTK apps with their KDE counterparts - except ShotCut....I'll try to work with KDenLive....but that may take a while to learn the workflow of that app. And again - I achieved stability - and frankly more flexibility to my desktop. I hadn't tried to use KDE since the 2->3.* days, when things became a mess.

You are right to assume that I am no Gnome 3+ fan. I can't teach my new windows "converts" with Gnome-3. Mate, XFCE, and Plasma - I can.

BUT....As the GTK kit becomes more and more problematic, with the Gnome devs breaking their own API's and violating their own documentation.....I can't help but wonder, what the future will be with wxWidgets based upon GTK?

Can wxWidgets be built without GTK at all? If so - how?

If not....would it make sense to at least consider rebasing wxWidgets on another toolset other than GTK?

I ask because I have two high-profile apps - one in use in medical, and another for construction electricians, all using wxWidgets...

Personally, I am worried about issues I am going to have moving forward maintaining these two commercial apps, especially as GTK continues to get updated (and even more broken). I fear their maintainability with the Gnome devs doing silly and seemingly arbitrary things to the GTK toolkit, without a care in the world on what their changes do, to non-gnome users downstream.

Thoughts?

Or perhaps some "comment, education, and/or banish my personal ignorance", on how wxWidgets insulates us devs from the GTK issues?


Dave
Last edited by dcbdbis on Thu May 20, 2021 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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doublemax
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Re: GTK-3 Issues as it relates to wxWidgets

Post by doublemax »

As you probably know, this is a user forum, the wx core devs usually don't read this. I suggest to post again on the wx-users Google group: https://groups.google.com/g/wx-users
Use the source, Luke!
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Re: GTK-3 Issues as it relates to wxWidgets

Post by DavidHart »

Hi,
Can wxWidgets be built without GTK at all? If so - how?
Nowadays you have two choices:
1) wxX11 is the longstanding 'generic' option, that doesn't rely on any toolkit. OTOH it's incomplete, little used and less maintained.
You can try it out (on Linux) by doing, in the wx source dir:

Code: Select all

(mkdir -p x11db && cd x11db &&  ../configure --prefix=$(pwd) --enable-debug --enable-cxx11 --with-x11  && make -j`nproc`)
2) wxQt is a newish Qt binding. It too is incomplete, but it had some fairly recent input from outside devs and is now useable enough for most of the wx3.1.5 'widgets' sample to work.

Code: Select all

(mkdir -p qtdb && cd qtdb && ../configure --prefix=$(pwd) --enable-debug --enable-cxx11 --with-qt && make -j`nproc`)
wxQt is the better of those two options.

Regards,

David
dcbdbis
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Re: [SOLVED] GTK-3 Issues as it relates to wxWidgets

Post by dcbdbis »

Perfect!

Thank you for the responses!


It's nice to know that wxWidgets has a QT option, that if GTK comes completely apart, with a little concentrative work....it could be rebased on QT.

I'm leaving well enough alone for now...but it's nice to know I have options.....That allays my fears!

THANK YOU!


Dave
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