Qt

Matthew Gillen me at mattgillen.net
Sat Aug 19 09:25:17 EDT 2006


Stephen Adler wrote:
> When looking at cross platform subversion clients, there are a lot
> written using Qt. I haven't found any written using GTK. Is this because
> Qt has a windows API and thus allowing you to write code for linux and
> windows?

GTK can run on windows too (see Gimp for Windows, Gaim, etc).  The main
difference is that Qt is a C++ framework (and a nice one at that), while GTK
is a C based one.  My wild guess is that most people today prefer to write
in C++ vs. C.  And C++ programmers will always prefer to use a toolkit that
is compatible with C++ idioms.

The other major difference between the toolkits is license: Qt is QPL/GPL,
GTK is LGPL.  That means you can write closed-source apps with GTK, while
you need to buy a license from TrollTech to write closed-source apps in Qt
(writing GPL apps in Qt requires no additional license).  But for little
front-end clients, the license issue probably doesn't come up.

Matt



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