4 This is GTK+ version 2.13.4. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for
5 creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets,
6 GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to
7 complete application suites.
9 GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However, the
10 licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all
11 developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any
12 license fees or royalties.
14 The official ftp site is:
15 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk
17 The official web site is:
20 Information about mailing lists can be found at
21 http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html
27 See the file 'INSTALL'
30 Release notes for 2.14
31 ======================
33 * gtkitemfactory.h is now completely deprecated.
34 As gtkactiongroup.h and gtkstock.h no longer include the gtkitemfactory.h
35 header, this might break application using gtk_item_factory_* symbols
36 without including gtkitemfactory.h - even though this behaviour has never
37 been supported in the first place.
39 * The GtkFileSystem semi-private interface has been removed.
40 The GTK+ filechooser implementation now uses GIO directly, which has
41 rendered external filesystem implementations unnecessary. Consequently,
42 the GtkFileSystem interface is no longer available, nor the filechooser
43 will load any GtkFileSystem implementation.
45 Release notes for 2.12
46 ======================
48 * gtk_about_dialog_get/set_name() were deprecated in favour of
49 gtk_about_dialog_get/set_program_name(), the GtkAboutDialog now uses the
50 "program-name" property instead of the conflicting "name" property.
52 * The gdk-pixbuf tiff loader now requires libtiff 3.6.0 or later.
54 * Support for Windows 9x/ME has officially been removed. It hasn't worked
57 * The GtkTextBufferTargetInfo enumeration values have been changed from
58 G_MAXUINT-0, G_MAXUINT-1, G_MAXUINT-2, etc, to -1, -2, -3 to stay within
61 * A change in the handling of _NET_WM_USER_TIME properties on toplevel
62 windows can cause deadlock problems with window managers that are using
63 GDK for drawing decorations. In particular, metacity <= 2.18.0 is affected
64 by this. The problem has been fixed in metacity 2.18.1.
66 * Semi-private GtkTextLayout api has changed: new GtkTextLayout method
67 invalidate_cursors(), and new functions gtk_text_layout_invalidate_cursors()
68 and gtk_text_layout_cursors_changed(), which should be used in place of
69 gtk_text_layout_invalidate() and gtk_text_layout_changed() if invalidation
70 is due to marks moved or changed selection; new GtkTextLineDisplay structure
71 member. Source compatibility is preserved; binary compatibility may break
72 only if GtkTextLineDisplay structure was created on stack or as a part
73 of another structure (in particular GnomeCanvas and its clones do not need
76 * Another new signal has been added to GtkNotebook. The new signal
77 is called create-window, so this name can no longer be used for signals
78 in objects derived from GtkNotebook.
80 * The gtk_notebook_set/get_group_id() functions were found to be insufficient
81 and have been deprecated in favour of gtk_notebook_set/get_group().
83 * The move-focus signal has been moved to GtkWidget, to unify the
84 various implementations of this signal in specific widgets. Great care
85 has been taken to make sure that all code using this signal continues
88 * An unused and hardly visible GtkFrame has been removed from the menu
89 widget hierarchy when GtkComboBox::appears-as-list style property is
90 set. Any RC file applying a different style to any widget below the
91 widget path "gtk-combobox-popup-window.GtkFrame" should take into
92 account that the frame no longer exists.
94 * The external print preview application used by GtkPrintOperationPreview
95 is now passed the print settings on the command line with the
96 --print-settings parameter pointing to a temp file containing the
97 settings. The preview application assumes ownership of the file and
98 should delete it once it does not need it anymore. The --print-settings
99 commandline option is understood by Evince 0.9.0 and newer. To use a
100 different print preview application, change the gtk-print-preview-command
101 setting in your gtkrc file, e.g. gtk-print-preview-command = "ggv %f"
103 * GtkMenuShell is now defined as an abstract type. It was already
104 documented as an abstract class, and there is little reason to
107 * The GtkTooltips struct (this is the old tooltips API) is now considered
108 private. Code that used to access this struct, in particular the
109 tips_data_list field, will need to change. All of the old tooltips
110 API has been deprecated in favour of a new implementation and
111 API. This affects all of the gtk_tooltips_ functions, and functions
112 which take a GtkTooltips argument, such as gtk_tool_item_set_tooltip()
113 and gtk_menu_tool_button_set_arrow_tooltip().
115 * The memory management of the GtkRecentManager object has been changed,
116 as using the screen didn't guarantee that the singleton instance was
117 correctly destroyed. The screen-related functions have been deprecated,
118 and should not be used anymore; the GtkRecentManager instance returned by
119 the gtk_recent_manager_get_default() function is guaranteed to be valid
120 for the entire lifetime of an application.
122 * A number of interfaces that have been superseded by newer interfaces for
123 a long time have finally been deprecated. This includes
124 gtk_widget_ref/unref(), gtk_rc_style_ref/unref() and the old file selector.
126 * The various coordinate systems in use in GtkTreeView widgets have
127 been clarified in the documentation, and in the cause of doing so,
128 the functions gtk_tree_view_widget_to_tree_coords() and
129 gtk_tree_view_tree_to_widget_coords() have been deprecated in
130 favour of a new family of gtk_tree_view_convert_ functions.
132 * gtk_menu_item_remove_submenu() has been deprecated in favour of
133 gtk_menu_item_set_submenu (..., NULL).
135 * gtk_default_draw_check() has been fixed to really decrease the
136 indicator size by one pixel to ensure an odd size instead of
137 accidentially increasing it.
138 Consequently, gtk_cell_renderer_toggle_render() could be fixed to
139 not subtract 1 from the size passed to gtk_paint_option(), which
140 was just a workaround for above off-by-two for even sizes (theme
141 engines now get the real indicator size passed).
142 The default toggle size of GtkCheckMenuItem and GtkCellRendererToggle
143 has been changed to 13 to be consistent with GtkCheckButton.
144 The only visible change with default settings is that the indicator in
145 GtkCellRendererToggle has changed its size from 11 to 13 and is now
146 consistent with menus and toggle buttons.
148 * GTK+ has always required that gtk_init() (or a variant thereof) is
149 called before any other GTK+ function. Some applications call functions
150 like gtk_clipboard_get() to check if they need to call gtk_init(),
151 anyway. A change in GLib 2.14 has recently broken this unsupported
152 practise. It is worth pointing out that calling gtk_init() twice
156 Release notes for 2.10
157 ======================
159 * The hexadecimal Unicode input feature has been reworked. It no longer
160 blocks the use of the sixteen Ctrl-Shift-<hex digit> key sequences. Now
161 it only uses Ctrl-Shift-u.
163 * A memory leak in GtkStyle handling has been fixed. This may expose bugs
164 in third-party widgets which forget to call gtk_style_attach() in their
167 * Range widgets like GtkScrollbar now render their arrows insensitive
168 when the slider is at the end. Applications which react to arrow
169 clicks even if the slider is at the end may want to use the new
170 gtk_range_set_[upper/lower]_stepper_sensitivity() functions to
171 prevent the arrows from being rendered insensitive.
173 * GtkObject now uses the "floating reference" support in GObject.
174 GTK_OBJECT_IS_FLOATING() will still work, but direct checking
175 of the GTK_FLOATING flag will no longer detect the floating
176 reference. Details about floating references can be found in the docs:
177 http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref
179 * Accelerators like (_F) are now stripped from labels when they are
180 displayed in toolbars. If this is not wanted, the feature can be
181 suppressed by inserting a Unicode control character, e.g ZWNJ.
183 * The pixbuf theme engine can now customize expanders (in GtkTreeView
184 and GtkExpander) and resize grips, using the new EXPANDER and
185 RESIZE_GRIP function values.
187 * Dialogs created by gtk_about_dialog_new() no longer hide automatically
188 when the user clicks close. It is the applications responsibility to
189 hide or destroy the dialog.
191 * Several new signals have been added to GtkNotebook. Care has been taken
192 to choose signal names which do not collide with signals added by well-known
193 derived classes. The names which can no longer be used for signals in
194 objects derived from GtkNotebook are page-reordered, page-removed and
197 * Due to the interface changes in the file chooser backend interface,
198 the GTK+ ABI version has been bumped to 2.10.0. Third-party filesystem
199 backends have to be ported to the new interface, other modules, such as
200 theme engines, input method modules or pixbuf loaders have to be rebuilt
201 so that they are installed in the right place for GTK+ to find them.
204 Release notes for 2.8
205 =====================
207 * GTK+ 2.8 and Pango 1.10 require the cairo library.
209 * The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". Existing configurations
210 specifying the "Default" theme name should still work.
212 * The GtkTreeView::enable-search property has been changed to control
213 only typeahead search, not the C-f keybinding to start an interactive
214 search. To turn off interactive searching completely, you have to
215 set GtkTreeView::search-column to -1.
217 * The restriction on using the same cell renderer in multiple columns
218 of a GtkTreeView is now more strictly enforced.
220 * In GTK+ 2.8, GtkCalendar uses nl_langinfo() (if available) to determine
221 the first day of the week. Thus, it is possible to select the first day
222 of the week independently from the language, by setting LC_TIME.
224 * In GTK+ 2.8, the gtk-update-icon-cache utility includes image data
225 in the icon caches, which will make the icon cache files larger than
226 the one produced by GTK+ 2.6. This change will reduce the memory
227 overhead of icon themes at runtime, since all GTK+ applications can
228 share the image data in memory.
230 * In 2.8, GDK emits GdkEventGrabBroken events when a keyboard or pointer
231 grab is broken. On X11, this can happen if the same application grabs
232 again, or if the window used for the grab becomes unviewable. It happens
233 more often on Win32. Applications which use grabs should pay attention
234 to these events and do the necessary cleanups when the grab is lost.
235 * The GIOChannel code for sockets on win32 has been rewritten.
236 Applications who make non-trivial use of GIOChannels on win32 should
237 be watched for possible problems.
239 * GLib 2.8 uses atomic operations to implement reference counting, thus
240 g_object_ref/unref, g_closure_ref/sink/unref and g_iochannel_ref/unref
241 can be used without locking in multithreaded applications. Note that
242 other modifications, like concurrent setting of properties still require
245 * g_convert() and related character set conversion functions have been
246 fixed to emit pending shift states and to not cache iconv descriptors
247 across multiple calls, since that is problematic for some encodings.
248 Note that these functions are not suitable for streaming conversions;
249 use g_iconv() to do streaming conversion.
252 Release notes for 2.6
253 =====================
255 * GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
256 a clipboard manager following the specification at
257 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
258 must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
260 http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
261 Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence()
262 to find out if clipboard persistence is available.
264 * Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events
265 requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
266 gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
267 change notification is available.
269 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme
270 specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be
271 necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location
274 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
275 to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
276 gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
277 see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.
279 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled
280 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
281 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
282 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.
284 * The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
285 gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
286 gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled
288 * The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does
289 not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files.
290 Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
291 the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.
293 * The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
294 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
295 with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
296 from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
297 use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
298 symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
299 were never intended to be exported.
301 * The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory
302 and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
303 of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all.
304 No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
305 compatibility are provided.
307 * On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on
308 the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
309 the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
310 depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.
312 If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you
313 may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
315 G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
316 export G_FILENAME_ENCODING
318 (Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
319 setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this
320 is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
321 Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by
322 using a UTF-8 locale.
324 On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
325 in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
326 where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
327 stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
328 use entry points providing the old semantics.
330 When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
331 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
332 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
333 names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.
339 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
340 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
341 account for yourself.
343 In the bug report please include:
345 * Information about your system. For instance:
347 - What operating system and version
349 - For Linux, what version of the C library
351 And anything else you think is relevant.
353 * How to reproduce the bug.
355 If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+,
356 such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise,
357 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a
358 last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software
359 that can be downloaded.
361 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
364 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
365 necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
366 it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
367 program with the --sync command line option.
373 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
374 fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
377 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
378 the patch to that bug report.
380 Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword in their
381 keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GTK+ programming
382 interface, the API keyword should also be included.
384 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU diff.)