For me, one of the most important GTK+ features is that it is implemented in plain C. This simplifies its usage from other languages (Lua, Go, C#, Rust, etc) as it is much more easy to have a C FFI than a C++ FFI. For those who want to program with GTK+ with a C++ interface, there is gtkmm already.
On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Marcus Karlsson <m...@acc.umu.se> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 10:06:28AM +0800, 黄羽众 wrote: >> Thank you for point out predecessors' question! >> >> I read the question and get some points, but I thinks the situtations change >> a lot and I am not ask the same question. >> >> 1. I am not ask for why GTK choose to implement in C, I know it have some >> historical reason. I want to make a proposal that gtk could be re-written >> with c++ just as GCC does. I want to discuss with you whether it is a good >> idea. > > It's of course possible from an academic perspective, even though as a > lot of people have already said it would not be very practical. My > suggestion is that anyone who wants to go forward with this makes a fork > and works on it, with no expectations that it would ever be merged back. > Take the opportunity to break the ABI and make a new great GTK+ inspired > toolkit. If it's good then people will adopt it. > >> 2. Situations change a lot. Back to the time GTK was born, C++ is also very >> primitive so the developers would rather implement an object-system by hand. >> But nowadays C++ is stable and have many cool features especially in C++11 >> and the in-coming C++14. C++'s object-system is becoming more and more >> complete and add many useful features in GUI development such as exception, >> multi-threads and so on. I think due to the same reason did GCC turn to C++. > > C is not updated as rapidly as C++ but it is modernized occasionally. > Support for multi threading is for example an optional part of C11. > This doesn't really matter too much for GTK+ though since it uses Glib. > >> 3. Now, from the view of app developers, who are very likely learned >> C/C++/Java in classes, and learn Python/JS/PHP/Nodejs after class. And very >> probably have experiences coding with QT, HTML5, Android. They can't be more >> familiar with OOP and C++. But when they turn to GTK, they have to expand >> one line in C++ into three or more lines in C. This will threaten many >> developers. Although there are gtkmm available, but gtkmm didn't gain enough >> official support and recommend as GTK, and much fewer reference, help, >> support available. The official recommand is gtk in c rather than gtkmm in >> c++, so many devlopers read some tutorials and feel threatened and leave. >> What's worse, gtkmm didn't wrapper all of the gtk featurese. In some complex >> cases, developers have to use the low level gobj pointer to get things done. > > If the impression that developers get is that they have to use C or that > they are strongly recommended to use C; then that sounds like a problem > with the documentation. > >> Now is in 2014, It can't be more normal to develop GUI application with OOP >> style. I think it's time to change. > > GTK+ is already object oriented, and good GTK+ applications are often > that as well even when they are written in C. You don't need support for > object orientation in the language in order to use object orientated > design. > >> GTK could be rewritten in C++, and what's more important, GTK should >> officially recommend to develop apps in C++, which can't be more familiar to >> GUI developers. > > The GTK+ project web site already says on its first page that while the > toolkit itself is written in C it also supports a wide range of other > languages. That's fairly official to me. > > Marcus > > [1] http://www.gtk.org/ > _______________________________________________ > gtk-list mailing list > gtk-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list -- http://oproj.tuxfamily.org _______________________________________________ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
