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