Interview - PHP-GTK's Andrei Zmievski

Andrei and PHP-GTK

SP: How did you become principal developer of PHP-GTK? What was it like to work on this project, and how long did it take?

AZ: I guess I was the only one crazy enough to work on it. I started writing initial code in September of 2000 and the first release was made on March 1, 2001. Working on it was a lot of fun -- figuring out whether PHP could handle bindings to such a toolkit and discovering and fixing some deficiencies in PHP along the way. I firmly believe that PHP is a better project because of PHP-GTK.

SP: PHP-GTK allows developers to write cross-platform, windowed applications for users to run right on their desktops. What can PHP-GTK do for developers experienced in building Websites in PHP?

AZ: The main thing it gives them is yet another way to control the backend system, unencumbered by the interface limitations imposed by HTML and the browser. Such features as drag-n-drop, grids, tree views, etc. are much more powerful than their in-browser counteparts and can be a boon to productivity.

SP: How does PHP-GTK even the playing field with Perl, C, Tk, etc.?

AZ: I have received email from people who say they are really glad to have found PHP-GTK, because now they can use their favorite language to build solutions on the client side, and that otherwise they would have had to resort to Java or something similar. To me it means that PHP-GTK is filling a much needed niche.

SP: How would you describe the current state PHP-GTK project? What would you like to see added?

AZ: Currently there is not much development being done, mainly bugfixes. I am waiting for my schedule to clear up a bit so that I can start on PHP-GTK 2 which will support Gtk+ 2 and rely on the new version of Zend Engine which fixes a lot of annoyances.

But the documentation is still a work in progress. About half the classes are documented, and it's a bit slow going, probably because writing the documentation properly requires understanding of PHP, C, and Gtk+. Hopefully, there will be more people interested in helping with writing docs.

SP: Do you see any common ground between PHP-GTK and the .NET client side framework? Do you foresee PHP-GTK being the client side of a future PHP.NET language?

AZ: No, .NET already includes its own interface to GUI systems, called WinForms. On Windows, WinForms relies on GDI and other libraries, and on Linux it uses Gtk+ already (in the Mono project).

SP: With many thousands of experienced PHP Web developers out there, are there any plans to encourage them to make use of PHP-GTK? And will we see a PHP-GTK competition or Coding Contest (similar to this one for PHP) any time soon?

AZ: I would love for more people to know about PHP-GTK and to start using it, but I'm only one person and I would rather dedicate my available time to improving PHP-GTK technically. Besides I'm not a very good marketolog.

Open source projects have self-organizing communities, and hopefully the same thing is happening with this one. If you have any ideas on how to encourage developers to use PHP-GTK, let them be heard on the php-gtk-general mailing list.

Coding competition? By all means!

SP: You also developed PHP's WDDX extension. Is there a common theme between this and PHP-GTK? Are there plans for a standard interface between PHP-GTK applications and PHP-enabled Websites?

AZ: No, the extensions don't really have much in common, but I guess WDDX could be used as a data exchange protocol between client side PHP-GTK program and its counterpart on the server side. I would rather not tie PHP-GTK to any specific interface. The developers are already aware of a need for something like that (not just for PHP-GTK). SRM and sockets extension are probably partly due to this need.

SP: What use have you made of PHP-GTK yourself?

AZ: You mean other than speaking about it at the conferences? Oh, I've made a little app that manages my diary on advogato.org. That's about it.

SP: If one of SitePoint's members developed a "killer app", is PHP-GTK capable of putting it on every desktop?

AZ: Not literally, which is one of the shortcomings. Currently, there is no easy way to distribute applications -- for PHP-GTK apps there is nothing as easy as running setup.exe or installing an RPM package. Although I think Simon Wheeler has done some interesting work in this area.

That aside, I think PHP-GTK can provide a good platform for your "killer app", especially with the next version that I have in mind.