welcome! We hope you enjoy as much as we do :)
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Sorry but personally I do not completely agree with you. Just from my point of view, Gtg is not HIGLY portable. Ok, in Linux maybe easier, but whenever you move to Windows, or Mac you may need to compile, etc...Even if that works, that's not being HIGLY portable. I want to tell you this because of what tell you next:

The default "UI" of Pharo is Morphic. Morphic is completely implemented in Smalltalk. You don't need anymore than just Pharo running. That's why you can easily run Pharo applications (even with UI) in ANY OS, in robots, iPhone, or whereever you want. You just need Pharo running there. And that's even simpler than other languages and even different than other Smalltalk dialects, because the Pharo virtual machine is written in itself. I mean, the VM is ALSO written in Smalltalk. Actually, it is subset of Smalltalk (with certain limitations), called Slang. Then, there is a translator that converts from that, to C. And then you just compile. For more details, you can see the VMMaker package. So...that's being portable :)

But.....there are always trade-offs. Morphic is slower than using direct graphic libraries, maybe it looks ugly for you, etc.

There are some tools build on top of Morphic that ca help you buld UI applications. This include a set of gadgets, buttons, panels, etc. It is called Polymorph. For example, evaluate this for some examples:

UITheme exampleBasicControls.
UITheme exampleColorControls.
UITheme exampleDialogs.
UITheme exampleGroups.
UITheme exampleOtherControls.
UITheme exampleWindowWithToolbars.

In addition, there is a UIBuilder in progress. You can see a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbc1t83fEI

Finally, if you think Morhpic is ugly, you can just create your own theme. For example, right click on the world -> "System" -> "Preferences" -> In the form type "theme" and press enter� -> look where it says "UI Theme".

Try each of them and you will see the difference. You can create your own and customize them.

And finally, yes, there is a binding to gtk :)� but I wanted to let it to the end hahahaha.
Actually, the binding was being developed with Squeak and the project is called SqueakGtk. Unfortunately I think the project stopped and it is not continue anymore, but maybe I am wrong. Here is the link: http://squeakgtk.pbworks.com/

There are similar projects.

Finally, Esteban Lorenzano is building Mars, an attemp to create a new World that uses the Cocoa (Mac OS library) to render everything. It is in development but I heard that Cocoa is being ported to Windows a Linux so it may be cool. Link: http://www.smallworks.com.ar/productos/Mars
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Good luck.

Mariano