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 2.20
31 ======================
33 * GtkStatusbar now has a message area (see gtk_status_bar_get_message_area)
34 which makes it easy to place additional widgets inside the statusbar
35 frame or to replace the label widgets. Previously, this was only possible
36 by accessing the innards of the statusbar widget directly. Applications
37 which are doing so may need some adjustments, since the addition of the
38 message area changed the internal widget hierarchy.
40 * GtkBuilder no longer sets the "name" property of widgets to the ID
41 attribute of the <object>. Use gtk_buildable_get_name() instead of
42 gtk_widget_get_name() to obtain the ID.
44 Release notes for 2.18
45 ======================
47 * gtk_tooltip_set_custom now accept a NULL custom_widget to unset the
48 old custom_widget. Custom_widget does not get destroyed when the
51 * JPEG2000 support is no longer enabled by default. It must be
52 explicitly turned on, by passing --with-libjasper to configure.
54 * GDK has been reworked to implement 'client-side windows'. This offers
55 exciting new possibilities, such as transformed, offscreen rendering,
56 but it breaks some long-standing assumptions that applications may
57 have about GDK windows. Setting the environment variable
58 GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS makes GDK create a native X11 window for each
59 GDK window, which might make problematic applications work better.
61 * GTK+ calls signal (SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN) during initialization, to ignore
62 SIGPIPE signals, since these are almost never wanted in graphical
63 applications. If you do need to handle SIGPIPE for some reason, reset
64 the handler after gtk_init(), but notice that other libraries (e.g.
65 libdbus or gvfs) might do similar things.
67 Release notes for 2.16
68 ======================
70 * Password entries now display a caps-lock warning. This can be turned off
71 with the caps-lock-warning property.
73 * Various orientation-related functions have been deprecated in favour
74 of the new GtkOrientable interface: gtk_scale_button_get_orientation,
75 gtk_scale_button_set_orientation, gtk_toolbar_set_orientation.
77 * The action-proxy interaction has been changed. Widgets that operate as
78 proxies have to implement the GtkActivatable interface now. GtkActivatable
79 implementation are responsible for syncing their appearance with the
80 action and for activating the action. All GTK+ widgets that are commonly
81 used as proxies implement the GtkActivatable interface.
83 * The handling of keyboard shortcuts has been changed, to help with a
84 longstanding complaint about the way GTK+ handles multiple layouts. GTK+
85 now only uses keys from groups other than the current group if they are
86 not present in the current group.
88 Release notes for 2.14
89 ======================
91 * gtkitemfactory.h is now completely deprecated.
92 As gtkactiongroup.h and gtkstock.h no longer include the gtkitemfactory.h
93 header, this might break application using gtk_item_factory_* symbols
94 without including gtkitemfactory.h - even though this behaviour has never
95 been supported in the first place.
97 * The GtkFileSystem semi-private interface has been removed.
98 The GTK+ filechooser implementation now uses GIO directly, which has
99 rendered external filesystem implementations unnecessary. Consequently,
100 the GtkFileSystem interface is no longer available, nor the filechooser
101 will load any GtkFileSystem implementation.
103 * GtkComboBox now renders the popdown button insensitive when
104 the model is empty. Applications which want to populate the list
105 only before displaying it can set gtk_combo_box_set_button_sensitivity
106 to GTK_SENSITIVITY_ON, so that the button is always sensitive or
107 GTK_SENSITIVITY_OFF to make it insensitive respectively.
109 * In the early 2.14.x releases, GtkAdjustment was changed to enforce
110 that values are restricted to the range [lower, upper - page_size].
111 This has always been the documented behaviour, and the recommended
112 practice is to set page_size to 0 when using adjustments for simple
113 scalar values, like in a slider or spin button.
114 Due to the large number of applications that are affected by this
115 change, the behaviour has been reverted to the old behaviour in
116 2.14.3, with an explicit warning that this change will be
117 reintroduced in 2.90.
119 * gdk-pixbuf will use GIO for mime type detection if possible. For
120 this to work, shared-mime-info needs to be installed and XDG_DATA_DIRS
121 set accordingly at configure time. Otherwise, gdk-pixbuf falls
122 back to its built-in sniffing implementation.
124 Release notes for 2.12
125 ======================
127 * gtk_about_dialog_get/set_name() were deprecated in favour of
128 gtk_about_dialog_get/set_program_name(), the GtkAboutDialog now uses the
129 "program-name" property instead of the conflicting "name" property.
131 * The gdk-pixbuf tiff loader now requires libtiff 3.6.0 or later.
133 * Support for Windows 9x/ME has officially been removed. It hasn't worked
136 * The GtkTextBufferTargetInfo enumeration values have been changed from
137 G_MAXUINT-0, G_MAXUINT-1, G_MAXUINT-2, etc, to -1, -2, -3 to stay within
140 * A change in the handling of _NET_WM_USER_TIME properties on toplevel
141 windows can cause deadlock problems with window managers that are using
142 GDK for drawing decorations. In particular, metacity <= 2.18.0 is affected
143 by this. The problem has been fixed in metacity 2.18.1.
145 * Semi-private GtkTextLayout api has changed: new GtkTextLayout method
146 invalidate_cursors(), and new functions gtk_text_layout_invalidate_cursors()
147 and gtk_text_layout_cursors_changed(), which should be used in place of
148 gtk_text_layout_invalidate() and gtk_text_layout_changed() if invalidation
149 is due to marks moved or changed selection; new GtkTextLineDisplay structure
150 member. Source compatibility is preserved; binary compatibility may break
151 only if GtkTextLineDisplay structure was created on stack or as a part
152 of another structure (in particular GnomeCanvas and its clones do not need
155 * Another new signal has been added to GtkNotebook. The new signal
156 is called create-window, so this name can no longer be used for signals
157 in objects derived from GtkNotebook.
159 * The gtk_notebook_set/get_group_id() functions were found to be insufficient
160 and have been deprecated in favour of gtk_notebook_set/get_group().
162 * The move-focus signal has been moved to GtkWidget, to unify the
163 various implementations of this signal in specific widgets. Great care
164 has been taken to make sure that all code using this signal continues
167 * An unused and hardly visible GtkFrame has been removed from the menu
168 widget hierarchy when GtkComboBox::appears-as-list style property is
169 set. Any RC file applying a different style to any widget below the
170 widget path "gtk-combobox-popup-window.GtkFrame" should take into
171 account that the frame no longer exists.
173 * The external print preview application used by GtkPrintOperationPreview
174 is now passed the print settings on the command line with the
175 --print-settings parameter pointing to a temp file containing the
176 settings. The preview application assumes ownership of the file and
177 should delete it once it does not need it anymore. The --print-settings
178 commandline option is understood by Evince 0.9.0 and newer. To use a
179 different print preview application, change the gtk-print-preview-command
180 setting in your gtkrc file, e.g. gtk-print-preview-command = "ggv %f"
182 * GtkMenuShell is now defined as an abstract type. It was already
183 documented as an abstract class, and there is little reason to
186 * The GtkTooltips struct (this is the old tooltips API) is now considered
187 private. Code that used to access this struct, in particular the
188 tips_data_list field, will need to change. All of the old tooltips
189 API has been deprecated in favour of a new implementation and
190 API. This affects all of the gtk_tooltips_ functions, and functions
191 which take a GtkTooltips argument, such as gtk_tool_item_set_tooltip()
192 and gtk_menu_tool_button_set_arrow_tooltip().
194 * The memory management of the GtkRecentManager object has been changed,
195 as using the screen didn't guarantee that the singleton instance was
196 correctly destroyed. The screen-related functions have been deprecated,
197 and should not be used anymore; the GtkRecentManager instance returned by
198 the gtk_recent_manager_get_default() function is guaranteed to be valid
199 for the entire lifetime of an application.
201 * A number of interfaces that have been superseded by newer interfaces for
202 a long time have finally been deprecated. This includes
203 gtk_widget_ref/unref(), gtk_rc_style_ref/unref() and the old file selector.
205 * The various coordinate systems in use in GtkTreeView widgets have
206 been clarified in the documentation, and in the cause of doing so,
207 the functions gtk_tree_view_widget_to_tree_coords() and
208 gtk_tree_view_tree_to_widget_coords() have been deprecated in
209 favour of a new family of gtk_tree_view_convert_ functions.
211 * gtk_menu_item_remove_submenu() has been deprecated in favour of
212 gtk_menu_item_set_submenu (..., NULL).
214 * gtk_default_draw_check() has been fixed to really decrease the
215 indicator size by one pixel to ensure an odd size instead of
216 accidentially increasing it.
217 Consequently, gtk_cell_renderer_toggle_render() could be fixed to
218 not subtract 1 from the size passed to gtk_paint_option(), which
219 was just a workaround for above off-by-two for even sizes (theme
220 engines now get the real indicator size passed).
221 The default toggle size of GtkCheckMenuItem and GtkCellRendererToggle
222 has been changed to 13 to be consistent with GtkCheckButton.
223 The only visible change with default settings is that the indicator in
224 GtkCellRendererToggle has changed its size from 11 to 13 and is now
225 consistent with menus and toggle buttons.
227 * GTK+ has always required that gtk_init() (or a variant thereof) is
228 called before any other GTK+ function. Some applications call functions
229 like gtk_clipboard_get() to check if they need to call gtk_init(),
230 anyway. A change in GLib 2.14 has recently broken this unsupported
231 practise. It is worth pointing out that calling gtk_init() twice
235 Release notes for 2.10
236 ======================
238 * The hexadecimal Unicode input feature has been reworked. It no longer
239 blocks the use of the sixteen Ctrl-Shift-<hex digit> key sequences. Now
240 it only uses Ctrl-Shift-u.
242 * A memory leak in GtkStyle handling has been fixed. This may expose bugs
243 in third-party widgets which forget to call gtk_style_attach() in their
246 * Range widgets like GtkScrollbar now render their arrows insensitive
247 when the slider is at the end. Applications which react to arrow
248 clicks even if the slider is at the end may want to use the new
249 gtk_range_set_[upper/lower]_stepper_sensitivity() functions to
250 prevent the arrows from being rendered insensitive.
252 * GtkObject now uses the "floating reference" support in GObject.
253 GTK_OBJECT_IS_FLOATING() will still work, but direct checking
254 of the GTK_FLOATING flag will no longer detect the floating
255 reference. Details about floating references can be found in the docs:
256 http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gobject/gobject-The-Base-Object-Type.html#floating-ref
258 * Accelerators like (_F) are now stripped from labels when they are
259 displayed in toolbars. If this is not wanted, the feature can be
260 suppressed by inserting a Unicode control character, e.g ZWNJ.
262 * The pixbuf theme engine can now customize expanders (in GtkTreeView
263 and GtkExpander) and resize grips, using the new EXPANDER and
264 RESIZE_GRIP function values.
266 * Dialogs created by gtk_about_dialog_new() no longer hide automatically
267 when the user clicks close. It is the applications responsibility to
268 hide or destroy the dialog.
270 * Several new signals have been added to GtkNotebook. Care has been taken
271 to choose signal names which do not collide with signals added by well-known
272 derived classes. The names which can no longer be used for signals in
273 objects derived from GtkNotebook are page-reordered, page-removed and
276 * Due to the interface changes in the file chooser backend interface,
277 the GTK+ ABI version has been bumped to 2.10.0. Third-party filesystem
278 backends have to be ported to the new interface, other modules, such as
279 theme engines, input method modules or pixbuf loaders have to be rebuilt
280 so that they are installed in the right place for GTK+ to find them.
283 Release notes for 2.8
284 =====================
286 * GTK+ 2.8 and Pango 1.10 require the cairo library.
288 * The default theme has been renamed to "Raleigh". Existing configurations
289 specifying the "Default" theme name should still work.
291 * The GtkTreeView::enable-search property has been changed to control
292 only typeahead search, not the C-f keybinding to start an interactive
293 search. To turn off interactive searching completely, you have to
294 set GtkTreeView::search-column to -1.
296 * The restriction on using the same cell renderer in multiple columns
297 of a GtkTreeView is now more strictly enforced.
299 * In GTK+ 2.8, GtkCalendar uses nl_langinfo() (if available) to determine
300 the first day of the week. Thus, it is possible to select the first day
301 of the week independently from the language, by setting LC_TIME.
303 * In GTK+ 2.8, the gtk-update-icon-cache utility includes image data
304 in the icon caches, which will make the icon cache files larger than
305 the one produced by GTK+ 2.6. This change will reduce the memory
306 overhead of icon themes at runtime, since all GTK+ applications can
307 share the image data in memory.
309 * In 2.8, GDK emits GdkEventGrabBroken events when a keyboard or pointer
310 grab is broken. On X11, this can happen if the same application grabs
311 again, or if the window used for the grab becomes unviewable. It happens
312 more often on Win32. Applications which use grabs should pay attention
313 to these events and do the necessary cleanups when the grab is lost.
314 * The GIOChannel code for sockets on win32 has been rewritten.
315 Applications who make non-trivial use of GIOChannels on win32 should
316 be watched for possible problems.
318 * GLib 2.8 uses atomic operations to implement reference counting, thus
319 g_object_ref/unref, g_closure_ref/sink/unref and g_iochannel_ref/unref
320 can be used without locking in multithreaded applications. Note that
321 other modifications, like concurrent setting of properties still require
324 * g_convert() and related character set conversion functions have been
325 fixed to emit pending shift states and to not cache iconv descriptors
326 across multiple calls, since that is problematic for some encodings.
327 Note that these functions are not suitable for streaming conversions;
328 use g_iconv() to do streaming conversion.
331 Release notes for 2.6
332 =====================
334 * GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
335 a clipboard manager following the specification at
336 http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
337 must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
339 http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
340 Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence()
341 to find out if clipboard persistence is available.
343 * Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events
344 requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
345 gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
346 change notification is available.
348 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme
349 specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be
350 necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location
353 * The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
354 to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
355 gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
356 see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.
358 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled
359 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
360 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
361 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.
363 * The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
364 gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
365 gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled
367 * The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does
368 not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files.
369 Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
370 the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.
372 * The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
373 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
374 with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
375 from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
376 use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
377 symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
378 were never intended to be exported.
380 * The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory
381 and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
382 of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all.
383 No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
384 compatibility are provided.
386 * On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on
387 the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
388 the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
389 depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.
391 If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you
392 may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
394 G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
395 export G_FILENAME_ENCODING
397 (Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
398 setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this
399 is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
400 Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by
401 using a UTF-8 locale.
403 On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
404 in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
405 where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
406 stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
407 use entry points providing the old semantics.
409 When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
410 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
411 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
412 names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.
418 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
419 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
420 account for yourself.
422 In the bug report please include:
424 * Information about your system. For instance:
426 - What operating system and version
428 - For Linux, what version of the C library
430 And anything else you think is relevant.
432 * How to reproduce the bug.
434 If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+,
435 such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise,
436 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a
437 last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software
438 that can be downloaded.
440 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
443 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
444 necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
445 it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
446 program with the --sync command line option.
452 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
453 fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
456 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
457 the patch to that bug report.
459 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -up option to GNU diff.)