Documentation

[Alan Cox]

> they both have serious shortcomings, and bugs, which make
> target application either non-functional after routine API changes (nokia) 
> or bloated, buggy and slow (gtk).

Gtk is usually faster than the naïvely programmed Xlib apps because it
does actually have a modicum of sense about things like batching.

Some of the stuff built (or perhaps congealed is a better word) on top of
Gtk is a mess, but Gtk itself does the job rather well.

> coding either directly for X or using lighter toolkits (i.e. fltk)
> has some point, and saves royal withdrawal after royal painkillers.

Yes you can possibly write a finely tuned Xlib app that beats Gtk on some
cases, but you'll have to write your own handling for window manager
negotiation, client side fonts, resources, and so on. You could also no
doubt make it faster by rewriting the entire app in hand tuned assembler.
Neither is a smart idea if you want to get work done.

Apps don't get written in Xlib normally, and haven't for years. Even the
game people rarely touch Xlib because OpenGL is better for that job
nowdays.

Alan