The Win32 port of GTk+ is a work in progress, and not as stable or correct as the Unix/X11 version. For more information about the Win32 port, see http://www.gimp.org/win32/ or http://www.iki.fi/tml/gimp/win32/ . This current (CVS) version of the Win32 backend does *not* necessarily even compile properly. A zipfile with an older snapshot (from before the merge of the no-flicker branch, and the other recent additions), is available from http://www.gimp.org/win32/. That should be used by "production" code until this CVS version is useable. (But note, the Win32 backend has never been claimed to be "production quality", although it works OK for the GIMP.) To build GTk+ on Win32, you need either gcc-2.95 or later, or the Microsoft compiler and tools. The mingw setup of gcc is preferred, but you can run gcc also under cygwin-b20.1 or later. Compile in gdk\win32, gdk and gtk with `make -f makefile.mingw` (gcc) or `nmake -f makefile.msc` (MSVC). The name makefile.mingw needs an explanation: It refers to the target, not the build environment. As build envíronment, only cygwin is tested. GNU Make is definitely needed. See the README.win32 file in the GLib distribution for instructions how to build with gcc. To use GTk+ on Win32, you also need either one of the above mentioned compilers. Other compilers might work, but don't count on it. The same instructions on how to set up a correct version of gcc should also be followed if you want to build applications that use GTk+ with gcc. The tablet support uses the Wintab API. The Wintab development kit can be downloaded from http://www.pointing.com. If you don't care for that, undefine HAVE_WINTAB in config.h.win32 and remove references to the wntab32x library from the makefile before building. GTk+ wants to be built with the GNU "intl" library for internationalisation (i18n). Get the version ported to Win32 (not a very big deal) from tml's web site mentioned above. We build the "intl" library as a DLL called gnu-intl.dll (the "gnu" prefix is used to reduce name clash risks). If you don't want any i18n stuff, undefine ENABLE_NLS, HAVE_GETTEXT and HAVE_LIBINTL in the config.h.win32 file, and remove references to the gnu-intl library from the makefiles. Note that while the GNU gettext package is under the GPL license, the "intl" part of it is also distributed as part of the GNU C library (glibc) where it is under the LGPL license (as is GTk+ or GLib). We want the LGPL licensed version. The code is more or less the same.