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Why SWT on Gnome? [message #506342]

Thu, 07 January 2010 08:10

Luca Ferrari

Messages: 159
Registered: November 2009

Senior Member

Hi all,
I'm curious to know why the SWT toolkit has been developed on top of Gnome/GTK+ libraries on *nix platforms. I mean, there was a license issue or a technical one that has driven this choice?

Thanks,
Luca

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #506857 is a reply to message #506342]

Mon, 11 January 2010 07:33

Praveen

Messages: 86
Registered: July 2009

Member

Luca Ferrari wrote:
> I'm curious to know why the SWT toolkit has been developed on top of
> Gnome/GTK+ libraries on *nix platforms. I mean, there was a license

On Linux platforms, there are 2 major/popular UI toolkits - GTK+ and
Motif. Depending upon the desktop environment (GNOME/KDE), one of these
toolkits are used for development. According to my knowledge, the main
reason to choose these toolkits as they are very stable and provide rich
features, and supported on almost all *nix platforms.
Are you intended to suggest any other toolkit ?

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #506871 is a reply to message #506857]

Mon, 11 January 2010 08:55

Luca Ferrari

Messages: 159
Registered: November 2009

Senior Member

No, I was not trying to suggest any other toolkit, but I was only curious to know if there was any technical reason behind the choice between GTK+ and QT. As far as I know Qt was enough stable as GTK+, so I was wondering if there was any other reason (like licensing or technical issues).

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #506884 is a reply to message #506871]

Mon, 11 January 2010 04:20

Thomas Schindl

Messages: 6651
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

No technical but but Qt was released under GPL (by then). This has
changed since then and a Qt port would be possible if only someone would
pay for it.

There is a company named ComPeople underway to write a prototype Qt-WT
port (IIRC it uses the QtJambi-Bridge).

Tom

Am 11.01.10 09:56, schrieb Luca Ferrari:
> No, I was not trying to suggest any other toolkit, but I was only
> curious to know if there was any technical reason behind the choice
> between GTK+ and QT. As far as I know Qt was enough stable as GTK+, so I
> was wondering if there was any other reason (like licensing or technical
> issues).

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #506904 is a reply to message #506884]

Mon, 11 January 2010 05:12

Christian Campo

Messages: 597
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Right. Qt was GPL back when SWT was choosen a Linux toolkit and as you may know EPL and GPL do not work together which
means you can not bundle them in one piece of software (since EPL must stay EPL and GPL requires calling code to be GPL).

This has changed and now Qt is GPL, LGPL (and also a commercial license). Now we (compeople) have started a SWT/Qt
implementation which is not finished yet. SWT/Qt is not planned to be hosted at Eclipse.org but will be available for
download with sourcecode. Our main target is the windows platform (it will also run on Mac and Linux but that is not our
main goal).

I am coming to the EclipsCon to talk about it and show a number of running demos.
https://www.eclipsecon.org/submissions/2010/view_talk.php?id =1142

There is still some time before anybody can get their hands on the implementation though. Building a new SWT platform is
a non-trivial task.

If you have any questions regarding this, let me know.

christian campo
project lead Eclipse Riena

Am 11.01.10 10:18, schrieb Tom Schindl:
> No technical but but Qt was released under GPL (by then). This has
> changed since then and a Qt port would be possible if only someone would
> pay for it.
>
> There is a company named ComPeople underway to write a prototype Qt-WT
> port (IIRC it uses the QtJambi-Bridge).
>
> Tom
>
> Am 11.01.10 09:56, schrieb Luca Ferrari:
>> No, I was not trying to suggest any other toolkit, but I was only
>> curious to know if there was any technical reason behind the choice
>> between GTK+ and QT. As far as I know Qt was enough stable as GTK+, so I
>> was wondering if there was any other reason (like licensing or technical
>> issues).
>

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #511586 is a reply to message #506904]

Tue, 02 February 2010 08:02

Luca Ferrari

Messages: 159
Registered: November 2009

Senior Member

Are you going to make publicly available your presentation? I'm really interested.

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #558429 is a reply to message #511586]

Sun, 12 September 2010 19:07

Luca Ferrari

Messages: 159
Registered: November 2009

Senior Member

I think that nowdays, with the gtk+ 3 changing the API/ABI, the SWT/Qt port can be even more interesting for the future of the Eclipse IDE.

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Re: Why SWT on Gnome? [message #559466 is a reply to message #558429]

Thu, 16 September 2010 18:00

Jacek Furmankiewicz

Messages: 13
Registered: July 2009

Junior Member

Depends. Most Linux folks still prefer GNOME over KDE. And all the other Linux desktop environments (Xfce, LXDE) are GTK+ based.

So doing SWT on top of GTK+ actually serves a much larger portion of Linux users.

Despite all the hoopla over KDE 4 I have yet to hear of any major conversions from GNOME to KDE.

[Updated on: Thu, 16 September 2010 18:00]

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