Hong Kong — (press release excerpt) — NanoGTK is an open source project for the Linux community initiated by Hong Kong based Emsoft, an innovator of Linux based software solutions for consumer electronic manufacturers in Asia.

NanoGTK is a port of GTK+ to Nano-X. The release consists of a complete environment for developing and running GTK+ applications in Nano-X on top of X Windows. It is hoped that this release may inspire Linux application developers to port their applications to embedded devices, with the eventual goal of building a vast library of GTK+ embedded applications.

Microwindows is gaining popularity as the windowing system of choice for embedded projects. Its Nano-X API provides an interface similar to the Linux X windowing system, but at a fraction of its size. To build GUI applications, a GUI toolkit is required.

Currently, the two major Linux X GUI toolkits are Qt and GTK+. Both toolkits enjoy wide support in the Linux community with many applications available. GTK+ has advantages over Qt in terms of performance and memory usage, which are both important considerations for the new generation of Information Appliance devices. To reduce memory usage further, Emsoft has ported GTK+ from X to Nano-X. The result is the availability of a mature GUI toolkit: GTK+, for embedded devices.

GTK+ is well suited for low power hand held devices typically using sub 100Mhz CPUs. In this category, the performance of Qt/Embedded and WinCE is not well matched. This performance advantage has allowed Emsoft to win several projects high profile projects in both China and Korea.

Emsoft, short for embedded software, has developed a suite of Linux OS / ARM architecture based software solutions that are ideally suited for low power hand held devices that have unique size, power consumption, and memory requirements. The Emsoft engineering team has in-depth capability in embedded software implementation, particularly in configuration and optimization of the operating system environment, device drivers, and GUI technologies.

NanoGTK is licensed under LGPL.

 
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