Re: what's the difference and superior between gtk+ and gecko?
On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Kelly Clowers <kelly.clowers@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 01:04, Star Liu <minxinjianxin@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I want to develop a cross-platform desktop software by open source
>> platform and develop tools. I'm also a web developer so I'm interested
>> in gecko, and know that gecko is also able to build desktop
>> applications by XUL, not only display html files. But it seems gtk+ is
>> the more normal way to develop desktop applications, then what's the
>> superior of the two methods? thanks.
>
> This is off topic for this list, but since I am replying anyway...
>
>
> GTK and QT are traditional toolkits that are use for building apps.
> They are comparable to WinForms (.NET), MFC (Win), or AppKit
> (OS X).
>
> Gecko is technically the rendering engine at the heart of XULRunner,
> otherwise known as the Mozilla Platform. XUL is Mozilla's XML
> User interface Language, which is used for Firefox's "Chrome" -
> all the UI elements around the web page. XUL is rendered with
> Gecko, just like HTML, and the UI is driven with Javascript.
>
> XULRunner's use of XML and Javascript might make it easier
> for a Web dev to write an app, but I suspect you would have to
> write some amount of C++. In any case, you would have to learn
> how the JS wraps the C++ interface, which is rather different
> from the DOM.
>
> QT is written in C++ and GTK is C with GLib/GObject. I know
> you can write the bulk of a GTK program in Python; QT has
> QTScript (ecmascript) and some support for Python and
> Ruby, although I don't know if the majority of a QT program
> can be written with any of those.
>
> A XULRunner program will be larger (on disk and in memory)
> and slower than a GTK or QT program. A large, complex
> program will suffer less from this than a small or trivial
> program.
>
> XULRunner make the most sense if you are going to be
> rendering html or doing networking with your program anyway.
>
> It is worth noting that QT is a very complete framework, more
> so even than XULRunner, and it includes QTWebkit. In the
> just released QT 4.5, the Webkit is close to the version used
> in the new Safari 4 betas.
>
> GTK is more loosely joined, with many parts run as separate
> but allied projects (e.g. Pango, the text engine), and in some
> cases there are several projects that might fill a need, with
> none really official.
>
> All three are now available under the LGPL, and QT and
> Moz have some other license options.
>
>
> I suggest you check out the sites and maybe ask some
> specific questions (not "which is better") on the appropriate
> forums/mailing lists and decide which is better for you.
>
> http://developer.mozilla.org/En/XULRunner
> http://www.gtk.org/
> http://www.qtsoftware.com/
>
>
> Cheers,
> Kelly Clowers
>
thank you. My task is to make a "Optical Freedom Surfaces Design
Tool", for example, given a math expression for a surface, I will
display the 2D/3D picture of the surface, and do some other operation
around the surface.
I want to make this tool by fully free software, I think gecko is not
proper for my task, but I don't know how to choose between qt and
gtk+.
> --
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
> with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
>
>
Reply to: