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Wasn't GTK originally the GIMP toolkit? It's kind of awkward to say you shouldn't have bet on the thing you created in-house… Of course it's gotten a life of i

by mook 2y ago

Wasn't GTK originally the GIMP toolkit? It's kind of awkward to say you shouldn't have bet on the thing you created in-house… Of course it's gotten a life of its own since, but that wasn't a thing when GIMP picked it.

cookiengineer 2y ago
GIMP got stuck in the 2.8 branch because of the GTK3 changes back then, which changed a lot in the display tree and structure of the "css graph" (not sure how to describe it properly). I think that was also when they introduced their variants of expandable boxes similar to flexbox, but maybe a dev finds this and can chime in with more details on that. I'd argue that GTK's goal of transforming into something more modern kind of lost GIMP because it was moving too fast. I'm not blaming GTK for that, I get it, and GNOME has its goals and everything. But they're changing technologies so fast that nobody can keep up with it outside their gitlab bubble. Just thinking of the Vala introduction and GIR, for example, makes me think of never wanting to bet on their ecosystem. They are kind of alienating themselves with the not-invented-here syndrom and too many experimental innovations that have similar already adopted counterparts in the language ecosystem.
- wruza 2y ago
  I was investing big in gtk as my main ui toolkit (writing complex widgets, containers and rendering via “engine” interfaces), but all this 3+ pissed me off quickly. Gnome was, and is, how you lose everyone around except for yourself and that abstract idiot you’re developing for, which is often the same person.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  Inkscape which in my opinion has an advanced UI like GIMP has adopted GTK3 for a while and is starting to transition to GTK4 ready.
  - cookiengineer 2y ago
    Note that inkscape has around 70-80 part time developers, and even a project this size is reluctant to keep up with GTK. My projects (written by a single part time dev) can never keep up with GTK. So I think you are actually arguing against GTK when it comes to resources necessary to use GTK, without realizing it. Inkscape is a huge development project and most open source projects are way smaller than that, maintained by less than 5 people. I'd also like to point out that GTK4 is older than 6 years by now, and the UI/input flow changes that come with it (breaking old program architectures again).
pkaye 2y ago
GIMP originally used the Motif widget library but it was not freely available so they later created GTK back in 1996 probably because there was not many other options. It was only a few years later did projects like Gnome came out.

by mook 2y ago

cookiengineer 2y ago

GIMP got stuck in the 2.8 branch because of the GTK3 changes back then, which changed a lot in the display tree and structure of the "css graph" (not sure how to describe it properly). I think that was also when they introduced their variants of expandable boxes similar to flexbox, but maybe a dev finds this and can chime in with more details on that. I'd argue that GTK's goal of transforming into something more modern kind of lost GIMP because it was moving too fast. I'm not blaming GTK for that, I get it, and GNOME has its goals and everything. But they're changing technologies so fast that nobody can keep up with it outside their gitlab bubble. Just thinking of the Vala introduction and GIR, for example, makes me think of never wanting to bet on their ecosystem. They are kind of alienating themselves with the not-invented-here syndrom and too many experimental innovations that have similar already adopted counterparts in the language ecosystem.

wruza 2y ago
I was investing big in gtk as my main ui toolkit (writing complex widgets, containers and rendering via “engine” interfaces), but all this 3+ pissed me off quickly. Gnome was, and is, how you lose everyone around except for yourself and that abstract idiot you’re developing for, which is often the same person.
ChocolateGod 2y ago
Inkscape which in my opinion has an advanced UI like GIMP has adopted GTK3 for a while and is starting to transition to GTK4 ready.
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  Note that inkscape has around 70-80 part time developers, and even a project this size is reluctant to keep up with GTK. My projects (written by a single part time dev) can never keep up with GTK. So I think you are actually arguing against GTK when it comes to resources necessary to use GTK, without realizing it. Inkscape is a huge development project and most open source projects are way smaller than that, maintained by less than 5 people. I'd also like to point out that GTK4 is older than 6 years by now, and the UI/input flow changes that come with it (breaking old program architectures again).

pkaye 2y ago

GIMP originally used the Motif widget library but it was not freely available so they later created GTK back in 1996 probably because there was not many other options. It was only a few years later did projects like Gnome came out.