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 2.18
31 ======================
33 * gtk_tooltip_set_custom now accept a NULL custom_widget to unset the
34 old custom_widget. Custom_widget does not get destroyed when the
37 * JPEG2000 support is no longer enabled by default. It must be
38 explicitly turned on, by passing --with-libjasper to configure.
40 * GDK has been reworked to implement 'client-side windows'. This offers
41 exciting new possibilities, such as transformed, offscreen rendering,
42 but it breaks some long-standing assumptions that applications may
43 have about GDK windows. Setting the environment variable
44 GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS makes GDK create a native X11 window for each
45 GDK window, which might make problematic applications work better.
48 Release notes for 2.16
49 ======================
51 * Password entries now display a caps-lock warning. This can be turned off
52 with the caps-lock-warning property.
54 * Various orientation-related functions have been deprecated in favour
55 of the new GtkOrientable interface: gtk_scale_button_get_orientation,
56 gtk_scale_button_set_orientation, gtk_toolbar_set_orientation.
58 * The action-proxy interaction has been changed. Widgets that operate as
59 proxies have to implement the GtkActivatable interface now. GtkActivatable
60 implementation are responsible for syncing their appearance with the
61 action and for activating the action. All GTK+ widgets that are commonly
62 used as proxies implement the GtkActivatable interface.
64 * The handling of keyboard shortcuts has been changed, to help with a
65 longstanding complaint about the way GTK+ handles multiple layouts. GTK+
66 now only uses keys from groups other than the current group if they are
67 not present in the current group.
69 Release notes for 2.14
70 ======================
72 * gtkitemfactory.h is now completely deprecated.
73 As gtkactiongroup.h and gtkstock.h no longer include the gtkitemfactory.h
74 header, this might break application using gtk_item_factory_* symbols
75 without including gtkitemfactory.h - even though this behaviour has never
76 been supported in the first place.
78 * The GtkFileSystem semi-private interface has been removed.
79 The GTK+ filechooser implementation now uses GIO directly, which has
80 rendered external filesystem implementations unnecessary. Consequently,
81 the GtkFileSystem interface is no longer available, nor the filechooser
82 will load any GtkFileSystem implementation.
84 * GtkComboBox now renders the popdown button insensitive when
85 the model is empty. Applications which want to populate the list
86 only before displaying it can set gtk_combo_box_set_button_sensitivity
87 to GTK_SENSITIVITY_ON, so that the button is always sensitive or
88 GTK_SENSITIVITY_OFF to make it insensitive respectively.
90 * In the early 2.14.x releases, GtkAdjustment was changed to enforce
91 that values are restricted to the range [lower, upper - page_size].
92 This has always been the documented behaviour, and the recommended
93 practice is to set page_size to 0 when using adjustments for simple
94 scalar values, like in a slider or spin button.
95 Due to the large number of applications that are affected by this
96 change, the behaviour has been reverted to the old behaviour in
97 2.14.3, with an explicit warning that this change will be
100 * gdk-pixbuf will use GIO for mime type detection if possible. For
101 this to work, shared-mime-info needs to be installed and XDG_DATA_DIRS
102 set accordingly at configure time. Otherwise, gdk-pixbuf falls
103 back to its built-in sniffing implementation.
105 Release notes for 2.12
106 ======================
108 * gtk_about_dialog_get/set_name() were deprecated in favour of
109 gtk_about_dialog_get/set_program_name(), the GtkAboutDialog now uses the
110 "program-name" property instead of the conflicting "name" property.
112 * The gdk-pixbuf tiff loader now requires libtiff 3.6.0 or later.
114 * Support for Windows 9x/ME has officially been removed. It hasn't worked
117 * The GtkTextBufferTargetInfo enumeration values have been changed from
118 G_MAXUINT-0, G_MAXUINT-1, G_MAXUINT-2, etc, to -1, -2, -3 to stay within
121 * A change in the handling of _NET_WM_USER_TIME properties on toplevel
122 windows can cause deadlock problems with window managers that are using
123 GDK for drawing decorations. In particular, metacity <= 2.18.0 is affected
124 by this. The problem has been fixed in metacity 2.18.1.
126 * Semi-private GtkTextLayout api has changed: new GtkTextLayout method
127 invalidate_cursors(), and new functions gtk_text_layout_invalidate_cursors()
128 and gtk_text_layout_cursors_changed(), which should be used in place of
129 gtk_text_layout_invalidate() and gtk_text_layout_changed() if invalidation
130 is due to marks moved or changed selection; new GtkTextLineDisplay structure
131 member. Source compatibility is preserved; binary compatibility may break
132 only if GtkTextLineDisplay structure was created on stack or as a part
133 of another structure (in particular GnomeCanvas and its clones do not need
136 * Another new signal has been added to GtkNotebook. The new signal
137 is called create-window, so this name can no longer be used for signals
138 in objects derived from GtkNotebook.
140 * The gtk_notebook_set/get_group_id() functions were found to be insufficient
141 and have been deprecated in favour of gtk_notebook_set/get_group().
143 * The move-focus signal has been moved to GtkWidget, to unify the
144 various implementations of this signal in specific widgets. Great care
145 has been taken to make sure that all code using this signal continues
148 * An unused and hardly visible GtkFrame has been removed from the menu
149 widget hierarchy when GtkComboBox::appears-as-list style property is
150 set. Any RC file applying a different style to any widget below the
151 widget path "gtk-combobox-popup-window.GtkFrame" should take into
152 account that the frame no longer exists.
154 * The external print preview application used by GtkPrintOperationPreview
155 is now passed the print settings on the command line with the
156 --print-settings parameter pointing to a temp file containing the
157 settings. The preview application assumes ownership of the file and
158 should delete it once it does not need it anymore. The --print-settings
159 commandline option is understood by Evince 0.9.0 and newer. To use a
160 different print preview application, change the gtk-print-preview-command
161 setting in your gtkrc file, e.g. gtk-print-preview-command = "ggv %f"
163 * GtkMenuShell is now defined as an abstract type. It was already
164 documented as an abstract class, and there is little reason to
167 * The GtkTooltips struct (this is the old tooltips API) is now considered
168 private. Code that used to access this struct, in particular the
169 tips_data_list field, will need to change. All of the old tooltips
170 API has been deprecated in favour of a new implementation and
171 API. This affects all of the gtk_tooltips_ functions, and functions
172 which take a GtkTooltips argument, such as gtk_tool_item_set_tooltip()
173 and gtk_menu_tool_button_set_arrow_tooltip().
175 * The memory management of the GtkRecentManager object has been changed,
176 as using the screen didn't guarantee that the singleton instance was
177 correctly destroyed. The screen-related functions have been deprecated,
178 and should not be used anymore; the GtkRecentManager instance returned by
179 the gtk_recent_manager_get_default() function is guaranteed to be valid
180 for the entire lifetime of an application.
182 * A number of interfaces that have been superseded by newer interfaces for
183 a long time have finally been deprecated. This includes
184 gtk_widget_ref/unref(), gtk_rc_style_ref/unref() and the old file selector.
186 * The various coordinate systems in use in GtkTreeView widgets have
187 been clarified in the documentation, and in the cause of doing so,
188 the functions gtk_tree_view_widget_to_tree_coords() and
189 gtk_tree_view_tree_to_widget_coords() have been deprecated in
190 favour of a new family of gtk_tree_view_convert_ functions.
192 * gtk_menu_item_remove_submenu() has been deprecated in favour of
193 gtk_menu_item_set_submenu (..., NULL).
195 * gtk_default_draw_check() has been fixed to really decrease the
196 indicator size by one pixel to ensure an odd size instead of
197 accidentially increasing it.
198 Consequently, gtk_cell_renderer_toggle_render() could be fixed to
199 not subtract 1 from the size passed to gtk_paint_option(), which
200 was just a workaround for above off-by-two for even sizes (theme
201 engines now get the real indicator size passed).
202 The default toggle size of GtkCheckMenuItem and GtkCellRendererToggle
203 has been changed to 13 to be consistent with GtkCheckButton.
204 The only visible change with default settings is that the indicator in
205 GtkCellRendererToggle has changed its size from 11 to 13 and is now
206 consistent with menus and toggle buttons.
208 * GTK+ has always required that gtk_init() (or a variant thereof) is
209 called before any other GTK+ function. Some applications call functions
210 like gtk_clipboard_get() to check if they need to call gtk_init(),
211 anyway. A change in GLib 2.14 has recently broken this unsupported
212 practise. It is worth pointing out that calling gtk_init() twice
216 Release notes for 2.10
217 ======================
219 * The hexadecimal Unicode input feature has been reworked. It no longer
220 blocks the use of the sixteen Ctrl-Shift-<hex digit> key sequences. Now
221 it only uses Ctrl-Shift-u.
223 * A memory leak in GtkStyle handling has been fixed. This may expose bugs
224 in third-party widgets which forget to call gtk_style_attach() in their
227 * Range widgets like GtkScrollbar now render their arrows insensitive
228 when the slider is at the end. Applications which react to arrow
229 clicks even if the slider is at the end may want to use the new
230 gtk_range_set_[upper/lower]_stepper_sensitivity() functions to
231 prevent the arrows from being rendered insensitive.
233 * GtkObject now uses the "floating reference" support in GObject.
234 GTK_OBJECT_IS_FLOATING() will still work, but direct checking
235 of the GTK_FLOATING flag will no longer detect the floating
236 reference. Details about floating references can be found in the docs:
237 http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref
239 * Accelerators like (_F) are now stripped from labels when they are
240 displayed in toolbars. If this is not wanted, the feature can be
241 suppressed by inserting a Unicode control character, e.g ZWNJ.
243 * The pixbuf theme engine can now customize expanders (in GtkTreeView
244 and GtkExpander) and resize grips, using the new EXPANDER and
245 RESIZE_GRIP function values.
247 * Dialogs created by gtk_about_dialog_new() no longer hide automatically
248 when the user clicks close. It is the applications responsibility to
249 hide or destroy the dialog.
251 * Several new signals have been added to GtkNotebook. Care has been taken
252 to choose signal names which do not collide with signals added by well-known
253 derived classes. The names which can no longer be used for signals in
254 objects derived from GtkNotebook are page-reordered, page-removed and
257 * Due to the interface changes in the file chooser backend interface,
258 the GTK+ ABI version has been bumped to 2.10.0. Third-party filesystem
259 backends have to be ported to the new interface, other modules, such as
260 theme engines, input method modules or pixbuf loaders have to be rebuilt
261 so that they are installed in the right place for GTK+ to find them.
264 Release notes for 2.8
265 =====================
267 * GTK+ 2.8 and Pango 1.10 require the cairo library.
269 * The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". Existing configurations
270 specifying the "Default" theme name should still work.
272 * The GtkTreeView::enable-search property has been changed to control
273 only typeahead search, not the C-f keybinding to start an interactive
274 search. To turn off interactive searching completely, you have to
275 set GtkTreeView::search-column to -1.
277 * The restriction on using the same cell renderer in multiple columns
278 of a GtkTreeView is now more strictly enforced.
280 * In GTK+ 2.8, GtkCalendar uses nl_langinfo() (if available) to determine
281 the first day of the week. Thus, it is possible to select the first day
282 of the week independently from the language, by setting LC_TIME.
284 * In GTK+ 2.8, the gtk-update-icon-cache utility includes image data
285 in the icon caches, which will make the icon cache files larger than
286 the one produced by GTK+ 2.6. This change will reduce the memory
287 overhead of icon themes at runtime, since all GTK+ applications can
288 share the image data in memory.
290 * In 2.8, GDK emits GdkEventGrabBroken events when a keyboard or pointer
291 grab is broken. On X11, this can happen if the same application grabs
292 again, or if the window used for the grab becomes unviewable. It happens
293 more often on Win32. Applications which use grabs should pay attention
294 to these events and do the necessary cleanups when the grab is lost.
295 * The GIOChannel code for sockets on win32 has been rewritten.
296 Applications who make non-trivial use of GIOChannels on win32 should
297 be watched for possible problems.
299 * GLib 2.8 uses atomic operations to implement reference counting, thus
300 g_object_ref/unref, g_closure_ref/sink/unref and g_iochannel_ref/unref
301 can be used without locking in multithreaded applications. Note that
302 other modifications, like concurrent setting of properties still require
305 * g_convert() and related character set conversion functions have been
306 fixed to emit pending shift states and to not cache iconv descriptors
307 across multiple calls, since that is problematic for some encodings.
308 Note that these functions are not suitable for streaming conversions;
309 use g_iconv() to do streaming conversion.
312 Release notes for 2.6
313 =====================
315 * GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
316 a clipboard manager following the specification at
317 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
318 must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
320 http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
321 Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence()
322 to find out if clipboard persistence is available.
324 * Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events
325 requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
326 gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
327 change notification is available.
329 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme
330 specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be
331 necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location
334 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
335 to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
336 gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
337 see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.
339 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled
340 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
341 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
342 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.
344 * The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
345 gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
346 gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled
348 * The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does
349 not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files.
350 Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
351 the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.
353 * The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
354 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
355 with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
356 from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
357 use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
358 symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
359 were never intended to be exported.
361 * The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory
362 and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
363 of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all.
364 No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
365 compatibility are provided.
367 * On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on
368 the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
369 the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
370 depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.
372 If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you
373 may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
375 G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
376 export G_FILENAME_ENCODING
378 (Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
379 setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this
380 is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
381 Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by
382 using a UTF-8 locale.
384 On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
385 in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
386 where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
387 stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
388 use entry points providing the old semantics.
390 When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
391 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
392 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
393 names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.
399 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
400 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
401 account for yourself.
403 In the bug report please include:
405 * Information about your system. For instance:
407 - What operating system and version
409 - For Linux, what version of the C library
411 And anything else you think is relevant.
413 * How to reproduce the bug.
415 If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+,
416 such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise,
417 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a
418 last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software
419 that can be downloaded.
421 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
424 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
425 necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
426 it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
427 program with the --sync command line option.
433 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
434 fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
437 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
438 the patch to that bug report.
440 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -up option to GNU diff.)