GTK+ 2.9.0 has been released. This is the first development release leading up to GTK+ 2.10. For completeness: “GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.”
Personally I prefer the QT toolkit, but I don’t mind GTK; it does seem more strongly developed than QT. Does anyone know why Firefox decided to use GTK over QT?
Does anyone know why Firefox decided to use GTK over QT?
Firefox doesn’t use GTK.
I was referring to running it under FreeBSD (or Linux).
Firefox uses GTK+ because Mozilla used GTK+. In the early days of Mozilla, there were versions for GTK+, Qt, and Xlib, but Qt wasn’t free at that point and development stalled.
I think there is a plugin under development to allow Gecko to run in Konqueror, but as far as a full Seamonkey or Firefox under Qt goes, I think those have been dropped.
QT is GPL’d, so Mozilla would have to GPL any of their software that uses QT.
GTK+ is LGPL’d, which means as long as GTK+ is not statically linked into Mozilla, Mozilla can use whatever license it wants.
This is the same reason why Eclipse/SWT doesn’t have a QT-port, why there’s not official WxWidgets/QT port, etc.
GPL is bad for windowing tool kits.
QT is GPL’d, so Mozilla would have to GPL any of their software that uses QT.
Absolutely, 100% incorrect; The licence for which Qt is licenced under is this; you either pay Trolltech for a commercial licence OR you release your application under GPL.
Also, when Mozilla was first released, it wasn’t released under the GPL until later on; IIRC, its released under three licences.
As for their choice of GTK – It probably had to do more to do with the fact that the programmers are Netscape were familar with Motif, and wanted somethign that was easier to migrate to rather than something radically different.
As for Qt and Gecko, IMHO ultimately KDE programmers aren’t to worried as eventually you’ll see a split between Firefox/Thunderbird and the underlying ‘core’ so that you can download the ‘core’ seperately, and embed it easily rather than the situation now, where, for example, if on were to compile Epiphany, one needs to download the whole source etc. which is a long process, rather than simply just downloading the core components, and work up from there.
In the end, personally, KDE is far better off sticking with their own KHTML/KJS implementation, which is a lot cleaner, compact and efficient that the Mozilla core is right now – hopefully once Objective-C++ is accepted into the mainline of GNU-GCC, we’ll see alot more code sharing between webcore and KHTML, as the need to translate between Objective-C++ and regular C++ would be non-existant.
Edited 2006-05-06 02:28
The licence for which Qt is licenced under is this; you either pay Trolltech for a commercial licence OR you release your application under GPL.
Which would mean either GPL everything or anyone wanting to work on Mozilla would need to buy a commercial Qt license (and they’re not cheap).
But then, it’s not true. You have a third option: the QPL, which permits you to use Qt with any open-source license.
Then again, AFAIK, Qt wasn’t open source at all at the time the Netscape source code was first released, so the whole point is moot.
Which would mean either GPL everything or anyone wanting to work on Mozilla would need to buy a commercial Qt license (and they’re not cheap).
No. Read above.
Qt wasn’t open source at all at the time the Netscape source code was first released, so the whole point is moot.
Which matters how? Motif got used for quite some time as I remember, a GTK port happened but even today it’s not that great (which is why many people say Epiphany should be Gnome’s browser). The Windows port is many, many times better.
Qt was open sourced, but it just didn’t meet some peoples’ definition.
I find all this totally pointless though because KDE already has a browser in Konqueror, a great engine in KHTML and it will be a great fully fledged web browser in KDE 4.
Firefox? What’s that? Oh, that alternative browser for Windows…
Edited 2006-05-06 14:43
Absolutely, 100% incorrect; The licence for which Qt is licenced under is this; you either pay Trolltech for a commercial licence OR you release your application under GPL.
Actually, you can also use Qt under the QPL
So that’s wrong too 
Also, when Mozilla was first released, it wasn’t released under the GPL until later on; IIRC, its released under three licences.
The source code to Mozilla may be released under the GPL, but official binary builds from Mozilla.org are not. Read the EULA that accompanies it
I don’t know who modded you up, but that’s pretty uninformed:
QT is GPL’d, so Mozilla would have to GPL any of their software that uses QT.
Wrong. In order to use GPLed software you need to be using a GPL compatible license (LGPL etc.), but you’re still wrong about Mozilla even then. It uses a MPL/GPL/LGPL triple licensing scheme.
If you’re going to try and comment on stuff like this, please, do some Googling. It’s amazing what you can turn up.
This is the same reason why Eclipse/SWT doesn’t have a QT-port
If Eclipse used a GPL compatible license then they could, and there is no reason in the whole wide world why they can’t. The reason why there is always talk of a Qt Eclipse port, and many people within Eclipse are actually motivated to do it, is because GTK Eclipse sucks like a Hoover. Eclipse, despite talk of it being used for cross platform development, is still very much geared to running on Windows.
However, if you have enough money to spend on Webshpere then you will see that a Qt port of Eclipse actually exists – it’s just that IBM pays a fair bit of money for it. It must be good for something…
why there’s not official WxWidgets
Don’t see a problem with a wxWidgets port. There’s just no interest.
GPL is bad for windowing tool kits.
On the other hand it’s good for open source projects and for creating all that free software we all know and love, ensuring that code goes back in.
It’s also good for companies who want to dual license and to keep on improving their toolkits so people can actually create software that works. With a healthy respect for GPL compatibility you can actually do anything you want if you wanted to. Even porting GTK to KDE in a full manner, and using GTK, is totally possible.
I know people always want to dredge up lots of licensing problems for their own agendas, but honestly, they just don’t exist.
Picky picky. XUL on X11 uses GTK.
I imagine they picked it because it’s got less license baggage accompanied with it than QT does, especially for non-free projects.
And the desktop project supporting it has less services baggage accompanied with its apps.
Also it’s written in C where QT is c++. IIRC firefox, xul, and mozilla are all in C?
firefox/mozilla are written in C++ – that’s why GTK-dependent parts in Mozilla’s code look quite strange sometimes.
So what do you prefer about it? I think the firefox GTK connection is probably because of long standing licensing issues. Qt is commercial product developed and owned by a single entity, not an idea i like, even if there are safeguards in place. Pure Qt applications are generally unpleasant in X, just look at skype, KDE applications often behave strangely under other desktop environments, maybe that’s another reason why GTK was chosen?
Fair comment. It’s from a <personal_opinion> *cosmetic* point of view I prefer QT </personal_opinion>. That’s interesting about the licensing though. So no chance for a version of Firefox built with QT?
If you’re interested about the Firefox thing it’s Firefox’s (save/load) dialogues that bug me; they’re always to small, hard to use etc. But thats running it under FreeBSD, I’m sure you Linux folk have that sorted
Do you actually prefer Qt, or the KDE themed version of it? I.E, the poor imitation of various other L&Fs or KDE’s one?
The Firefox save/load dialogues on Ubuntu 5.10 are fine for me, but i am using GNOME and firefox has the GNOME integration switched on.
# ldd /usr/lib64/mozilla-firefox/firefox-bin | grep -i gtk
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0x00002aaaab5d3000)
This release represents the biggest release of GTK in ages. A lot of cruft has been removed and a lot of things have been bought into GTK fron the egg* libs including
* GtkStatusIcon, a cross-platform “tray icon” API
* GtkAssistant, a widget for creating multi-step wizards
* GtkLinkButton, a widget that displays a clickable hyperlink
* GtkRecentChooser, widgets to display and select recently used files
* and more.
There has also been at least 2 new large features;
* GtkPrintOperation (cross platform print)
* Async file chooser backend
I dont want to sound like a salesman, but there is going to be some seriously cool stuff in the 2.10 release!
Nice to see it’s 2006 and NeXT had it back in 1989; and one that actually worked, system-wide.
Who uses NeXT today?
Mac users
Why was this modded down?
It’s absolutely correct in a technical sense.
I modded oftopic because this article is not about NexT
No, it’s about GTK+ 2.9.0 — and one “new” feature in GTK+ 2.9.0 is something that NeXT had in the 80’s.
So not entirely off-topic.
Which new feature in 2.9.0 is that?
The framework for d’n’d has been there since gtk 1.x; the framework for d’n’d of the notebook widget’s tabs has been introduced with 2.9.0.
actually, applications implemented that framework by themselves – it has been integrated back by gtk.
He’s replying to someone… This guy shouldn’t have votes, seriously…
This forum is getting to be ridiculous, if people can’t be slightly off topic inside a thread…
If you want to mod something off-topic, you should mod the original poster down. Modding me down for responding is a bit excessive, especially as the information was correct and to some degree interesting.
After all, some degree of topic drift should be allowed in the thread to make the resulting conversation a bit interesting. There’s a difference between talking about the history of certain features (it’s interesting how ahead of its time NeXT was), and just bringing up off-topic comments for inflammatory effect (e.g. KDE).
I’m a bit annoyed, to be frank, in over 200 comments this is only the fifth time I’ve been modded down.
Again, I’d love to know which GTK+ 2.9.0 feature you’re talking about.
Look at the title of your own post. Or else read the article, which includes among the list of changes: “A framework for rich text copy and paste and DND”.
This is something Linux really lacks at the moment: you can’t copy rich text from Abiword to Evolution, or to KWord, or from Firefox to Abiword, or almost any application. The only one that works is Firefox to OpenOffice, and that’s because of a a concerted effort by both applications which is non-standard.
It’s a really big flaw for the Linux desktop, as it dramatically reduces the extent to which applications can be made to inter-operate. NeXT pioneered all this (especially the uses of DND as a surrogate for copy and paste), it was taken up in a big way by Mac OS in the early nineties, and then with Windows in 1995. It’s actually shocking that with all the work done by freedesktop.org, there still isn’t a decent clipboard implementation for the Linux desktop.
Nice to see it’s 2006 and NeXT had it back in 1989; and one that actually worked, system-wide.
It hurts, but true. If I had some points I’d mod you back up, but trusty OSNews has completely wiped my points down to 0 for some reason…
That happened to me as well. Went from 20 to 0 votes a few weeks ago. I asked about it, but I still haven’t heard anything about why.
I know this is off topic, but when there’s no help to get from emailing, I thought I might as well just confirm that you are not alone in having this problem. Maybe others have experienced the same lately.
Actually, you can also use Qt under the QPL
So that’s wrong too 
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Which includes another clause in it – ultimately, I think the decision by Mozilla developers came down to technical and pragmatic reasons rather than it being an issue of licences; if they really wanted to use Qt, there was nothing stopping them from paying for a special licence from Trolltech as to allow them to use it – think about it; Mozilla, small company called Trolltech; software title with a high profile, I don’t know about you, but it would have been cheap publicity for their product.
The source code to Mozilla may be released under the GPL, but official binary builds from Mozilla.org are not. Read the EULA that accompanies it
Who said anything about the EULA? we’re talking about source code, not final product.
However, getting back on topic (we always have this Qt/GTK thing for some reason, and it’s pointless in this case) GTK is a pretty good piece of work all things considered.
For a toolkit that a company does not make any money directly out of as a development framework (and therefore doesn’t focus everything it has at it), and people at Red Hat and elsewhere have to work on it on an ad hoc basis, you can get more than a fair bit done with it. It’s variety and quality has increased markedly over the years.
Yes, I’ve criticised it in the past but that’s only in cases and projects where really it just doesn’t fit. How many people ten years ago would have thought that there could possibly be a Unix toolkit that they could use free of charge (and given away free of charge for every purpose no less) that does what it does? No one I’m betting, and they’d probably think you were mad. I think GTK has pulled the wool over some peoples’ eyes that creating a toolkit, of any description, is an easy business. It isn’t. It’s damn hard.
actually, applications implemented that framework by themselves – it has been integrated back by gtk.
True, I think they use that as a benchmark as to whether they include a particular feature in the GTK kit itself – if there are enough applications using the functionality, to reduce duplication, throw it into the gtk library – you could say it is a rather democratic/freemarket way of doing things, let the majority speak as to the usefulness of something.
Although I’m a big KDE fan (using since 1.0), GTK is a great tool kit, what I think lets it down is the incompleteness of GNOME in terms of its infrastructure – which always seems to appear to look like half-completed projects, cobbled together with hype surround features that *might* appear in the future; HAL and DBUS being examples of this phenominon.
Edited 2006-05-07 00:52
I think the real headline here is “GTK developers remove heads from asses.”
Did you notice the part that said the Location box (CTRL+L) would be integrated into the main window? Yes, that’s right, after this flirtation with making the Open dialog ‘easier’ by removing the field in which to type the file name, sanity has struck and they’re puting it back.
This represents what I see as a slow, but promising trend emerging in GNOME-space: People questioning the heretofore enthusiastically unquestioned usability amputations. Granted, this is only GTK and not GNOME proper, but I think it’s still a move in the right direction and gives me hope that one day GNOME will be useful again.
ah, once again stuck in a discussion about “how terrible the filechooser is”… deja vù all over again, but I’ll bite.
Did you notice the part that said the Location box (CTRL+L) would be integrated into the main window?
only if you press ctrl+l or a button on the top right corner; the real plus is that the gtkfilechooser can remember its setting (without using gconf), now.
sanity has struck and they’re puting it back
What struck me was that after two effing years the bug (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136541) about this stupid issue was still open without a patch or a single line of code! only whining, rambling on mock ups and general usability discussion without a single trace of clue about usability or the intended target audience on the entire span of the comments.
For me personally, this is the biggest change:
* GDK changes:
– OS X backend
Does this mean what I think it does? If I remember correctly GTK+ uses GDK for all rendering, which means that GTK+ 2.10 will run on Mac OS X without X11! Hooray for that. And correct me if I’m wrong
When are they planning to release version 3 of the GTK+ toolkit? I was just wondering because QT 4 has been released so I assumed that GTK+ 3 would at least be in the planning phases by now. It’s cool if they feel that it is the wrong time for a new version but I figure they would at least be thinking about the framework for both GTK+ 3 and GNOME 3 seeing as how KDE 4 will be out some time within the next year.