PHP-GTK or GTK+?

I have lost count on the times, over the last few days, that I have switched between PHP-GTK and GTK+ (in C) to program my GUI on. I started with PHP-GTK initially, thinking that I could program it easily with minimal glitches for my experience in PHP but I was wrong. Well, the basic GTK libraries are working fine on PHP-GTK, but when I wanted to embed mplayer onto my PHP-GTK app, I realised that GtkSocket isn’t working on the Windows PHP-GTK builds that are available from the official PHP-GTK site.

Spent the last few days getting help on #php-gtk, and finally got to meet the programmer who are devoting her (yes, it’s a she. And she is also a mother!) free time to build Callicore, a framework for PHP-GTK 2. Got her to help me to build a Windows PHP-GTK that she’s still working on but has the one of the features that I needed, GtkSocket , which at this time is still unavailable in the official stable release. Thanks to her help, now I have PHP-GTK working fine.

During the time when I was struggling to get PHP-GTK running fine, I had also explored GTK+ and also got it up and running on my Windows laptop. I could now write GTK+ applications in either PHP-GTK (the PHP API for GTK+) or the actual GTK+ (in C) and it’s quite a tough decision for me to pick one.

PHP-GTK (Pros):
- I am experienced in PHP.
- It doesn’t need compiling, thus saving a lot of development time.

PHP-GTK (Cons):
- PHP-GTK (with GTK+ 2.x) itself is still very unstable, I might end up spending a lot of time debugging my app which could in fact be the core’s fault.
- While PHP-GTK application could be cross-platform in nature, but due to unavailability of stable PHP-GTK 2 yet, I would have to compile my own PHP-GTK for other OSes, just like Elizabeth did for Windows.

GTK+ (Pros):
- It is stable.
- The stable libraries are easily obtainable for all major OSes.

GTK+ (Cons):
- Even though C/C++ is sort of like my second language, I am still much more efficient in PHP. I deal with PHP almost daily, it’s natural that I am the most efficient with it.
- I might take a longer time to develop a GTK+ app in C as compared to the time taken in developing it in PHP-GTK. Time is an important factor as I am running out of time soon. A lot of project deadlines coming up in these few weeks.

Still deciding which one to use…

Anyways, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to the open source community. I have picked up most of my skills and knowledge in CS with the help of the active and helpful members of the open source community. Active members in #cakephp, #ubuntu, #gtk+ and #php-gtk have helped me a lot so far. Amazingly, more often than not, the helpful people in these IRC channels are the chief developers of the respective projects. I would like to thank them for not just producing great softwares at totally no cost (both as in beer and as in speech), most of them do not hesitate at all to share their knowledge with those who seek them. They are truly the heroes of technology.