4 This is GTK+ version @GTK_VERSION@. 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 2.16
31 ======================
33 * Password entries now display a caps-lock warning. This can be turned off
34 with the caps-lock-warning property.
36 * Various orientation-related functions have been deprecated in favour
37 of the new GtkOrientable interface: gtk_scale_button_get_orientation,
38 gtk_scale_button_set_orientation, gtk_toolbar_set_orientation.
40 * The action-proxy interaction has been changed. Widgets that operate as
41 proxies have to implement the GtkActivatable interface now. GtkActivatable
42 implementation are responsible for syncing their appearance with the
43 action and for activating the action. All GTK+ widgets that are commonly
44 used as proxies implement the GtkActivatable interface.
46 * The handling of keyboard shortcuts has been changed, to help with a
47 longstanding complaint about the way GTK+ handles multiple layouts. GTK+
48 now only uses keys from groups other than the current group if they are
49 not present in the current group.
51 Release notes for 2.14
52 ======================
54 * gtkitemfactory.h is now completely deprecated.
55 As gtkactiongroup.h and gtkstock.h no longer include the gtkitemfactory.h
56 header, this might break application using gtk_item_factory_* symbols
57 without including gtkitemfactory.h - even though this behaviour has never
58 been supported in the first place.
60 * The GtkFileSystem semi-private interface has been removed.
61 The GTK+ filechooser implementation now uses GIO directly, which has
62 rendered external filesystem implementations unnecessary. Consequently,
63 the GtkFileSystem interface is no longer available, nor the filechooser
64 will load any GtkFileSystem implementation.
66 * GtkComboBox now renders the popdown button insensitive when
67 the model is empty. Applications which want to populate the list
68 only before displaying it can set gtk_combo_box_set_button_sensitivity
69 to GTK_SENSITIVITY_ON, so that the button is always sensitive or
70 GTK_SENSITIVITY_OFF to make it insensitive respectively.
72 * GtkAdjustment now enforces that values are restricted to the
73 range [lower, upper - page_size]. This has always been the documented
74 behaviour, and the recommended practice is to set page_size to 0
75 when using adjustments for simple scalar values, like in a slider
78 * gdk-pixbuf will use GIO for mime type detection if possible. For
79 this to work, shared-mime-info needs to be installed and XDG_DATA_DIRS
80 set accordingly at configure time. Otherwise, gdk-pixbuf falls
81 back to its built-in sniffing implementation.
83 Release notes for 2.12
84 ======================
86 * gtk_about_dialog_get/set_name() were deprecated in favour of
87 gtk_about_dialog_get/set_program_name(), the GtkAboutDialog now uses the
88 "program-name" property instead of the conflicting "name" property.
90 * The gdk-pixbuf tiff loader now requires libtiff 3.6.0 or later.
92 * Support for Windows 9x/ME has officially been removed. It hasn't worked
95 * The GtkTextBufferTargetInfo enumeration values have been changed from
96 G_MAXUINT-0, G_MAXUINT-1, G_MAXUINT-2, etc, to -1, -2, -3 to stay within
99 * A change in the handling of _NET_WM_USER_TIME properties on toplevel
100 windows can cause deadlock problems with window managers that are using
101 GDK for drawing decorations. In particular, metacity <= 2.18.0 is affected
102 by this. The problem has been fixed in metacity 2.18.1.
104 * Semi-private GtkTextLayout api has changed: new GtkTextLayout method
105 invalidate_cursors(), and new functions gtk_text_layout_invalidate_cursors()
106 and gtk_text_layout_cursors_changed(), which should be used in place of
107 gtk_text_layout_invalidate() and gtk_text_layout_changed() if invalidation
108 is due to marks moved or changed selection; new GtkTextLineDisplay structure
109 member. Source compatibility is preserved; binary compatibility may break
110 only if GtkTextLineDisplay structure was created on stack or as a part
111 of another structure (in particular GnomeCanvas and its clones do not need
114 * Another new signal has been added to GtkNotebook. The new signal
115 is called create-window, so this name can no longer be used for signals
116 in objects derived from GtkNotebook.
118 * The gtk_notebook_set/get_group_id() functions were found to be insufficient
119 and have been deprecated in favour of gtk_notebook_set/get_group().
121 * The move-focus signal has been moved to GtkWidget, to unify the
122 various implementations of this signal in specific widgets. Great care
123 has been taken to make sure that all code using this signal continues
126 * An unused and hardly visible GtkFrame has been removed from the menu
127 widget hierarchy when GtkComboBox::appears-as-list style property is
128 set. Any RC file applying a different style to any widget below the
129 widget path "gtk-combobox-popup-window.GtkFrame" should take into
130 account that the frame no longer exists.
132 * The external print preview application used by GtkPrintOperationPreview
133 is now passed the print settings on the command line with the
134 --print-settings parameter pointing to a temp file containing the
135 settings. The preview application assumes ownership of the file and
136 should delete it once it does not need it anymore. The --print-settings
137 commandline option is understood by Evince 0.9.0 and newer. To use a
138 different print preview application, change the gtk-print-preview-command
139 setting in your gtkrc file, e.g. gtk-print-preview-command = "ggv %f"
141 * GtkMenuShell is now defined as an abstract type. It was already
142 documented as an abstract class, and there is little reason to
145 * The GtkTooltips struct (this is the old tooltips API) is now considered
146 private. Code that used to access this struct, in particular the
147 tips_data_list field, will need to change. All of the old tooltips
148 API has been deprecated in favour of a new implementation and
149 API. This affects all of the gtk_tooltips_ functions, and functions
150 which take a GtkTooltips argument, such as gtk_tool_item_set_tooltip()
151 and gtk_menu_tool_button_set_arrow_tooltip().
153 * The memory management of the GtkRecentManager object has been changed,
154 as using the screen didn't guarantee that the singleton instance was
155 correctly destroyed. The screen-related functions have been deprecated,
156 and should not be used anymore; the GtkRecentManager instance returned by
157 the gtk_recent_manager_get_default() function is guaranteed to be valid
158 for the entire lifetime of an application.
160 * A number of interfaces that have been superseded by newer interfaces for
161 a long time have finally been deprecated. This includes
162 gtk_widget_ref/unref(), gtk_rc_style_ref/unref() and the old file selector.
164 * The various coordinate systems in use in GtkTreeView widgets have
165 been clarified in the documentation, and in the cause of doing so,
166 the functions gtk_tree_view_widget_to_tree_coords() and
167 gtk_tree_view_tree_to_widget_coords() have been deprecated in
168 favour of a new family of gtk_tree_view_convert_ functions.
170 * gtk_menu_item_remove_submenu() has been deprecated in favour of
171 gtk_menu_item_set_submenu (..., NULL).
173 * gtk_default_draw_check() has been fixed to really decrease the
174 indicator size by one pixel to ensure an odd size instead of
175 accidentially increasing it.
176 Consequently, gtk_cell_renderer_toggle_render() could be fixed to
177 not subtract 1 from the size passed to gtk_paint_option(), which
178 was just a workaround for above off-by-two for even sizes (theme
179 engines now get the real indicator size passed).
180 The default toggle size of GtkCheckMenuItem and GtkCellRendererToggle
181 has been changed to 13 to be consistent with GtkCheckButton.
182 The only visible change with default settings is that the indicator in
183 GtkCellRendererToggle has changed its size from 11 to 13 and is now
184 consistent with menus and toggle buttons.
186 * GTK+ has always required that gtk_init() (or a variant thereof) is
187 called before any other GTK+ function. Some applications call functions
188 like gtk_clipboard_get() to check if they need to call gtk_init(),
189 anyway. A change in GLib 2.14 has recently broken this unsupported
190 practise. It is worth pointing out that calling gtk_init() twice
194 Release notes for 2.10
195 ======================
197 * The hexadecimal Unicode input feature has been reworked. It no longer
198 blocks the use of the sixteen Ctrl-Shift-<hex digit> key sequences. Now
199 it only uses Ctrl-Shift-u.
201 * A memory leak in GtkStyle handling has been fixed. This may expose bugs
202 in third-party widgets which forget to call gtk_style_attach() in their
205 * Range widgets like GtkScrollbar now render their arrows insensitive
206 when the slider is at the end. Applications which react to arrow
207 clicks even if the slider is at the end may want to use the new
208 gtk_range_set_[upper/lower]_stepper_sensitivity() functions to
209 prevent the arrows from being rendered insensitive.
211 * GtkObject now uses the "floating reference" support in GObject.
212 GTK_OBJECT_IS_FLOATING() will still work, but direct checking
213 of the GTK_FLOATING flag will no longer detect the floating
214 reference. Details about floating references can be found in the docs:
215 http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref
217 * Accelerators like (_F) are now stripped from labels when they are
218 displayed in toolbars. If this is not wanted, the feature can be
219 suppressed by inserting a Unicode control character, e.g ZWNJ.
221 * The pixbuf theme engine can now customize expanders (in GtkTreeView
222 and GtkExpander) and resize grips, using the new EXPANDER and
223 RESIZE_GRIP function values.
225 * Dialogs created by gtk_about_dialog_new() no longer hide automatically
226 when the user clicks close. It is the applications responsibility to
227 hide or destroy the dialog.
229 * Several new signals have been added to GtkNotebook. Care has been taken
230 to choose signal names which do not collide with signals added by well-known
231 derived classes. The names which can no longer be used for signals in
232 objects derived from GtkNotebook are page-reordered, page-removed and
235 * Due to the interface changes in the file chooser backend interface,
236 the GTK+ ABI version has been bumped to 2.10.0. Third-party filesystem
237 backends have to be ported to the new interface, other modules, such as
238 theme engines, input method modules or pixbuf loaders have to be rebuilt
239 so that they are installed in the right place for GTK+ to find them.
242 Release notes for 2.8
243 =====================
245 * GTK+ 2.8 and Pango 1.10 require the cairo library.
247 * The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". Existing configurations
248 specifying the "Default" theme name should still work.
250 * The GtkTreeView::enable-search property has been changed to control
251 only typeahead search, not the C-f keybinding to start an interactive
252 search. To turn off interactive searching completely, you have to
253 set GtkTreeView::search-column to -1.
255 * The restriction on using the same cell renderer in multiple columns
256 of a GtkTreeView is now more strictly enforced.
258 * In GTK+ 2.8, GtkCalendar uses nl_langinfo() (if available) to determine
259 the first day of the week. Thus, it is possible to select the first day
260 of the week independently from the language, by setting LC_TIME.
262 * In GTK+ 2.8, the gtk-update-icon-cache utility includes image data
263 in the icon caches, which will make the icon cache files larger than
264 the one produced by GTK+ 2.6. This change will reduce the memory
265 overhead of icon themes at runtime, since all GTK+ applications can
266 share the image data in memory.
268 * In 2.8, GDK emits GdkEventGrabBroken events when a keyboard or pointer
269 grab is broken. On X11, this can happen if the same application grabs
270 again, or if the window used for the grab becomes unviewable. It happens
271 more often on Win32. Applications which use grabs should pay attention
272 to these events and do the necessary cleanups when the grab is lost.
273 * The GIOChannel code for sockets on win32 has been rewritten.
274 Applications who make non-trivial use of GIOChannels on win32 should
275 be watched for possible problems.
277 * GLib 2.8 uses atomic operations to implement reference counting, thus
278 g_object_ref/unref, g_closure_ref/sink/unref and g_iochannel_ref/unref
279 can be used without locking in multithreaded applications. Note that
280 other modifications, like concurrent setting of properties still require
283 * g_convert() and related character set conversion functions have been
284 fixed to emit pending shift states and to not cache iconv descriptors
285 across multiple calls, since that is problematic for some encodings.
286 Note that these functions are not suitable for streaming conversions;
287 use g_iconv() to do streaming conversion.
290 Release notes for 2.6
291 =====================
293 * GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
294 a clipboard manager following the specification at
295 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
296 must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
298 http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
299 Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence()
300 to find out if clipboard persistence is available.
302 * Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events
303 requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
304 gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
305 change notification is available.
307 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme
308 specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be
309 necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location
312 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
313 to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
314 gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
315 see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.
317 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled
318 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
319 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
320 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.
322 * The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
323 gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
324 gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled
326 * The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does
327 not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files.
328 Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
329 the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.
331 * The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
332 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
333 with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
334 from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
335 use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
336 symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
337 were never intended to be exported.
339 * The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory
340 and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
341 of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all.
342 No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
343 compatibility are provided.
345 * On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on
346 the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
347 the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
348 depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.
350 If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you
351 may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
353 G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
354 export G_FILENAME_ENCODING
356 (Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
357 setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this
358 is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
359 Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by
360 using a UTF-8 locale.
362 On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
363 in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
364 where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
365 stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
366 use entry points providing the old semantics.
368 When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
369 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
370 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
371 names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.
377 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
378 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
379 account for yourself.
381 In the bug report please include:
383 * Information about your system. For instance:
385 - What operating system and version
387 - For Linux, what version of the C library
389 And anything else you think is relevant.
391 * How to reproduce the bug.
393 If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+,
394 such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise,
395 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a
396 last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software
397 that can be downloaded.
399 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
402 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
403 necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
404 it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
405 program with the --sync command line option.
411 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
412 fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
415 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
416 the patch to that bug report.
418 Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword in their
419 keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GTK+ programming
420 interface, the API keyword should also be included.
422 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU diff.)