gtk2/README
Matthias Clasen c246a4e7b0 2.13.6
svn path=/trunk/; revision=21015
2008-08-05 18:20:35 +00:00

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General Information
===================
This is GTK+ version 2.13.6. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for
creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets,
GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to
complete application suites.
GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However, the
licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all
developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any
license fees or royalties.
The official ftp site is:
ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk
The official web site is:
http://www.gtk.org/
Information about mailing lists can be found at
http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html
Installation
============
See the file 'INSTALL'
Release notes for 2.14
======================
* gtkitemfactory.h is now completely deprecated.
As gtkactiongroup.h and gtkstock.h no longer include the gtkitemfactory.h
header, this might break application using gtk_item_factory_* symbols
without including gtkitemfactory.h - even though this behaviour has never
been supported in the first place.
* The GtkFileSystem semi-private interface has been removed.
The GTK+ filechooser implementation now uses GIO directly, which has
rendered external filesystem implementations unnecessary. Consequently,
the GtkFileSystem interface is no longer available, nor the filechooser
will load any GtkFileSystem implementation.
* GtkComboBox now renders the popdown button insensitive when
the model is empty. Applications which want to populate the list
only before displaying it can set gtk_combo_box_set_button_sensitivity
to GTK_SENSITIVITY_ON, so that the button is always sensitive or
GTK_SENSITIVITY_OFF to make it insensitive respectively.
Release notes for 2.12
======================
* gtk_about_dialog_get/set_name() were deprecated in favour of
gtk_about_dialog_get/set_program_name(), the GtkAboutDialog now uses the
"program-name" property instead of the conflicting "name" property.
* The gdk-pixbuf tiff loader now requires libtiff 3.6.0 or later.
* Support for Windows 9x/ME has officially been removed. It hasn't worked
since 2.6 anyway.
* The GtkTextBufferTargetInfo enumeration values have been changed from
G_MAXUINT-0, G_MAXUINT-1, G_MAXUINT-2, etc, to -1, -2, -3 to stay within
ANSI C limits.
* A change in the handling of _NET_WM_USER_TIME properties on toplevel
windows can cause deadlock problems with window managers that are using
GDK for drawing decorations. In particular, metacity <= 2.18.0 is affected
by this. The problem has been fixed in metacity 2.18.1.
* Semi-private GtkTextLayout api has changed: new GtkTextLayout method
invalidate_cursors(), and new functions gtk_text_layout_invalidate_cursors()
and gtk_text_layout_cursors_changed(), which should be used in place of
gtk_text_layout_invalidate() and gtk_text_layout_changed() if invalidation
is due to marks moved or changed selection; new GtkTextLineDisplay structure
member. Source compatibility is preserved; binary compatibility may break
only if GtkTextLineDisplay structure was created on stack or as a part
of another structure (in particular GnomeCanvas and its clones do not need
recompiling).
* Another new signal has been added to GtkNotebook. The new signal
is called create-window, so this name can no longer be used for signals
in objects derived from GtkNotebook.
* The gtk_notebook_set/get_group_id() functions were found to be insufficient
and have been deprecated in favour of gtk_notebook_set/get_group().
* The move-focus signal has been moved to GtkWidget, to unify the
various implementations of this signal in specific widgets. Great care
has been taken to make sure that all code using this signal continues
to work.
* An unused and hardly visible GtkFrame has been removed from the menu
widget hierarchy when GtkComboBox::appears-as-list style property is
set. Any RC file applying a different style to any widget below the
widget path "gtk-combobox-popup-window.GtkFrame" should take into
account that the frame no longer exists.
* The external print preview application used by GtkPrintOperationPreview
is now passed the print settings on the command line with the
--print-settings parameter pointing to a temp file containing the
settings. The preview application assumes ownership of the file and
should delete it once it does not need it anymore. The --print-settings
commandline option is understood by Evince 0.9.0 and newer. To use a
different print preview application, change the gtk-print-preview-command
setting in your gtkrc file, e.g. gtk-print-preview-command = "ggv %f"
* GtkMenuShell is now defined as an abstract type. It was already
documented as an abstract class, and there is little reason to
instantiate it.
* The GtkTooltips struct (this is the old tooltips API) is now considered
private. Code that used to access this struct, in particular the
tips_data_list field, will need to change. All of the old tooltips
API has been deprecated in favour of a new implementation and
API. This affects all of the gtk_tooltips_ functions, and functions
which take a GtkTooltips argument, such as gtk_tool_item_set_tooltip()
and gtk_menu_tool_button_set_arrow_tooltip().
* The memory management of the GtkRecentManager object has been changed,
as using the screen didn't guarantee that the singleton instance was
correctly destroyed. The screen-related functions have been deprecated,
and should not be used anymore; the GtkRecentManager instance returned by
the gtk_recent_manager_get_default() function is guaranteed to be valid
for the entire lifetime of an application.
* A number of interfaces that have been superseded by newer interfaces for
a long time have finally been deprecated. This includes
gtk_widget_ref/unref(), gtk_rc_style_ref/unref() and the old file selector.
* The various coordinate systems in use in GtkTreeView widgets have
been clarified in the documentation, and in the cause of doing so,
the functions gtk_tree_view_widget_to_tree_coords() and
gtk_tree_view_tree_to_widget_coords() have been deprecated in
favour of a new family of gtk_tree_view_convert_ functions.
* gtk_menu_item_remove_submenu() has been deprecated in favour of
gtk_menu_item_set_submenu (..., NULL).
* gtk_default_draw_check() has been fixed to really decrease the
indicator size by one pixel to ensure an odd size instead of
accidentially increasing it.
Consequently, gtk_cell_renderer_toggle_render() could be fixed to
not subtract 1 from the size passed to gtk_paint_option(), which
was just a workaround for above off-by-two for even sizes (theme
engines now get the real indicator size passed).
The default toggle size of GtkCheckMenuItem and GtkCellRendererToggle
has been changed to 13 to be consistent with GtkCheckButton.
The only visible change with default settings is that the indicator in
GtkCellRendererToggle has changed its size from 11 to 13 and is now
consistent with menus and toggle buttons.
* GTK+ has always required that gtk_init() (or a variant thereof) is
called before any other GTK+ function. Some applications call functions
like gtk_clipboard_get() to check if they need to call gtk_init(),
anyway. A change in GLib 2.14 has recently broken this unsupported
practise. It is worth pointing out that calling gtk_init() twice
does no harm.
Release notes for 2.10
======================
* The hexadecimal Unicode input feature has been reworked. It no longer
blocks the use of the sixteen Ctrl-Shift-<hex digit> key sequences. Now
it only uses Ctrl-Shift-u.
* A memory leak in GtkStyle handling has been fixed. This may expose bugs
in third-party widgets which forget to call gtk_style_attach() in their
realize functions.
* Range widgets like GtkScrollbar now render their arrows insensitive
when the slider is at the end. Applications which react to arrow
clicks even if the slider is at the end may want to use the new
gtk_range_set_[upper/lower]_stepper_sensitivity() functions to
prevent the arrows from being rendered insensitive.
* GtkObject now uses the "floating reference" support in GObject.
GTK_OBJECT_IS_FLOATING() will still work, but direct checking
of the GTK_FLOATING flag will no longer detect the floating
reference. Details about floating references can be found in the docs:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref
* Accelerators like (_F) are now stripped from labels when they are
displayed in toolbars. If this is not wanted, the feature can be
suppressed by inserting a Unicode control character, e.g ZWNJ.
* The pixbuf theme engine can now customize expanders (in GtkTreeView
and GtkExpander) and resize grips, using the new EXPANDER and
RESIZE_GRIP function values.
* Dialogs created by gtk_about_dialog_new() no longer hide automatically
when the user clicks close. It is the applications responsibility to
hide or destroy the dialog.
* Several new signals have been added to GtkNotebook. Care has been taken
to choose signal names which do not collide with signals added by well-known
derived classes. The names which can no longer be used for signals in
objects derived from GtkNotebook are page-reordered, page-removed and
page-added.
* Due to the interface changes in the file chooser backend interface,
the GTK+ ABI version has been bumped to 2.10.0. Third-party filesystem
backends have to be ported to the new interface, other modules, such as
theme engines, input method modules or pixbuf loaders have to be rebuilt
so that they are installed in the right place for GTK+ to find them.
Release notes for 2.8
=====================
* GTK+ 2.8 and Pango 1.10 require the cairo library.
* The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". Existing configurations
specifying the "Default" theme name should still work.
* The GtkTreeView::enable-search property has been changed to control
only typeahead search, not the C-f keybinding to start an interactive
search. To turn off interactive searching completely, you have to
set GtkTreeView::search-column to -1.
* The restriction on using the same cell renderer in multiple columns
of a GtkTreeView is now more strictly enforced.
* In GTK+ 2.8, GtkCalendar uses nl_langinfo() (if available) to determine
the first day of the week. Thus, it is possible to select the first day
of the week independently from the language, by setting LC_TIME.
* In GTK+ 2.8, the gtk-update-icon-cache utility includes image data
in the icon caches, which will make the icon cache files larger than
the one produced by GTK+ 2.6. This change will reduce the memory
overhead of icon themes at runtime, since all GTK+ applications can
share the image data in memory.
* In 2.8, GDK emits GdkEventGrabBroken events when a keyboard or pointer
grab is broken. On X11, this can happen if the same application grabs
again, or if the window used for the grab becomes unviewable. It happens
more often on Win32. Applications which use grabs should pay attention
to these events and do the necessary cleanups when the grab is lost.
* The GIOChannel code for sockets on win32 has been rewritten.
Applications who make non-trivial use of GIOChannels on win32 should
be watched for possible problems.
* GLib 2.8 uses atomic operations to implement reference counting, thus
g_object_ref/unref, g_closure_ref/sink/unref and g_iochannel_ref/unref
can be used without locking in multithreaded applications. Note that
other modifications, like concurrent setting of properties still require
locking.
* g_convert() and related character set conversion functions have been
fixed to emit pending shift states and to not cache iconv descriptors
across multiple calls, since that is problematic for some encodings.
Note that these functions are not suitable for streaming conversions;
use g_iconv() to do streaming conversion.
Release notes for 2.6
=====================
* GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
a clipboard manager following the specification at
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
is available at
http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence()
to find out if clipboard persistence is available.
* Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events
requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
change notification is available.
* The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme
specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be
necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location
/usr/share/icons.
* The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.
* To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled
with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.
* The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled
* The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does
not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files.
Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.
* The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
were never intended to be exported.
* The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory
and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all.
No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
compatibility are provided.
* On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on
the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.
If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you
may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
export G_FILENAME_ENCODING
(Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this
is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by
using a UTF-8 locale.
On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
use entry points providing the old semantics.
When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.
How to report bugs
==================
Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
account for yourself.
In the bug report please include:
* Information about your system. For instance:
- What operating system and version
- What version of X
- For Linux, what version of the C library
And anything else you think is relevant.
* How to reproduce the bug.
If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+,
such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise,
please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a
last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software
that can be downloaded.
* If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
crash occured.
* Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
program with the --sync command line option.
Patches
=======
Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
report.
Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
the patch to that bug report.
Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword in their
keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GTK+ programming
interface, the API keyword should also be included.
Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU diff.)