Gtk1 and Gtk2 are currently put into the same ebuild/package, but they're in fact completely different packages. They have nothing in common, but some ideas behind and just the name, and they can exist peacefully. Gentoo's current approach declares these two different packages as one, where gtk2 an newer version of gtk1, which in fact is evrything but true. This probibits concurrent installations and brings a lot of ugly dependency problems. We should fix it soon. I'd volunteer to scan over the portage tree, look for ebuilds to fix and provide patches, if they're going to be accepted.
No, we shouldn't fix this. The ebuilds are slotted, have been for ages and it works just fine when the slots are installed side-by-side. doesn't work
