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Add to SafariWhen comparing FLTK vs GTK+, the Slant community recommends GTK+ for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform GUI toolkits?” GTK+ is ranked 11th while FLTK is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose GTK+ is:
Supports a lot of languages like Java, Javascript, C++, Python, Pascal, FreeBasic and Haskell, but support for languages like C# and GO is only partial.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Simplicity
It's simple design and lack of more advanced C++ features makes it easy for beginners.
Pro Fast
Well-designed widgets, coded with careful attention to rendering/execution speed.
Pro Stable
FLTK code developed more than 10 years ago still compiles and runs perfectly, without changes.
Pro Lightweight
Uses a limited and lightweight design and restricts itself to solely GUI functionality. Because of this restriction, the FLTK hello world example is only about 100 KiB.
Pro GUI designer
Fast Light User-Interface Designer (FLUID) included.
Pro Language bindings
Supports a lot of languages like Java, Javascript, C++, Python, Pascal, FreeBasic and Haskell, but support for languages like C# and GO is only partial.
Pro Nicer user interface when using PyGi
Creating cross platform enterprise apps with PyGi and with the help of Gtk Themes makes them look great.
Pro Working with GTK focused Vala is great
Vala is made to make GTK easy [as well as for other things] and it really does, and makes it easier than working with C/C++, Python, or any other,
Cons
Con Can be too simple for some projects
FLTK offers far fewer widgets than most other toolkits.
Con Does not look like a native application
Because it uses non-native widgets, it doesn't look like a native application on any platform.
Con Sucks for traditional applications
GTK3 added CSD widgets and added a lot of paddings to make widgets bigger for touchscreen use, GTK4 also even removed Menubar and Toolbar widgets.
Con No menuicons or mnemonics
Gtk3 has removed the support of icons and mnemonics making navigating menus just terrible for the use with a keyboard. Sure there are some hacks to make them working again but they will never work as they did/do work in Windows, GTK2 or QT.
Con Terrible integration
Looks and feels like an alien on all other platforms than GNOME.
Con Promotes Wayland as the standard X11 server on Unix
Lets face it, Wayland is not a replacement for XORG since Wayland works currently only in GNOME and there are many issues. Some desktops and window managers will never get ported to Wayland and it is not available to all Unix and Unix-like systems. X11 on the other hand is available for almost everything, so it will be available for the next decade or even longer.
