24-494: The GTK-Qt Theme Engine is a project allowing GTK to use Qt widget styles. Aimed primarily at KDE users, it uses Qt to draw the widget into an offscreen buffer, then draws a copy of the contents of this buffer onscreen. This computer-library -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+ ) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It
48-443: A GUI designer, which is then loaded at runtime and the objects created automatically. The description of the user interface is independent from the programming language being used. Language bindings are available for using GTK from languages other than C, including C++ , Genie, JavaScript , Perl , Python , Vala , and others . GTK supports various backends, which provides different ways to display GTK applications depending on
72-575: A new theme engine, improved accessibility using the Accessibility Toolkit , transition to Unicode using UTF-8 strings, and a more flexible API. Starting with version 2.8, GTK 2 depends on the Cairo graphics library for rendering vector graphics. GTK version 3.0.0 included revised input device handling, support for themes written with CSS -like syntax, and the ability to receive information about other opened GTK applications. The '+'
96-724: A post on the GTK development blog denoted, among other things, the future numbering scheme of GTK. GTK version 3.22, released in Autumn 2016, was planned to be the last 3.x release, although version 3.24 followed in Fall 2018 with the delay of GTK 4. The development of GTK 4 used version names 3.90, 3.92, etc. until the first GTK 4.0 stable release was launched in December 2020. Despite the first stable GTK 4 release, some applications using GTK still rely on GTK 2. For example, as of January 2022, GIMP
120-477: A set of graphical control elements ( widgets ); version 3.22.16 contains 186 active and 36 deprecated widgets. GTK is an object-oriented widget toolkit written in the programming language C ; it uses GObject , that is the GLib object system, for the object orientation. While GTK is mainly for windowing systems based on X11 and Wayland , it works on other platforms, including Microsoft Windows (interfaced with
144-494: A widget toolkit include: GTK programs can be run on desktop environments based on X11 and Wayland , or others including ones not made with GTK, provided the needed libraries are installed; this includes macOS if X11.app is installed. GTK can be also run on Microsoft Windows . It is used by some popular cross-platform applications like Pidgin and GIMP . wxWidgets , a cross-platform GUI toolkit, uses GTK on Linux by default. Other ports include DirectFB (for example used by
168-546: Is a wrapper for ispell, hunspell , etc., the actual spell checker engine/software. GtkSpell uses GTK's GtkTextView widget, to highlight misspelled words and offer replacement. GTK was originally designed and used in the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) as a replacement of the Motif toolkit; at some point Peter Mattis became disenchanted with Motif and began to write his own GUI toolkit named
192-545: Is an event-driven system like any other modern windowing library where every widget allows associating handler methods, which get called when certain events occur. Applications built using Gtk# will run on many platforms including Linux , Windows and macOS . The Mono packages for Windows include GTK, Gtk# and a native theme to make applications look like native Windows applications. Starting with Mono 1.9, running Gtk# applications on macOS no longer requires running an X11 server. Glade Interface Designer can be used with
216-435: Is done using Cairo. On January 26, 2018 at DevConf.cz , Matthias Clasen gave an overview of the current state of GTK 4 development, including a high-level explanation of how rendering and input worked in GTK 3, what changes are being made in GTK 4 (>3.90), and why. On February 6, 2019 it was announced that GTK 4 will drop the “+” from the project's name. GDK acts as a wrapper around the low-level functions provided by
240-644: Is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License , allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the Wayland and X11 windowing systems . The GTK team releases new versions on a regular basis. GTK 4 and GTK 3 are maintained, while GTK 2 is end-of-life . GTK1 is independently maintained by the CinePaint project. The GTK library contains
264-539: Is still being ported to GTK 3. The master branch of GTK utilizes Meson for its build automation. GTK (and GNOME, GLib, etc.) formerly utilized the GNU Build System (named Autotools) as the build automation system of choice. Since August 14, 2017, the Autotools build system files have been dropped. The most common criticism of GTK is the lack of backward-compatibility in major updates, most notably in
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#1732801783458288-879: The GTK_DEBUG=interactive environment variable. It was introduced with GTK version 3.14. GTK is mainly developed by The GNOME Project , which also develops the GNOME Development Platform and the GNOME Desktop Environment . GTK is mainly written in C . Many language bindings are available . GTK development is loosely managed. GNOME developers and users gather at an annual GNOME Users And Developers European Conference GUADEC meeting to discuss GNOME's current state and future direction. GNOME incorporates standards and programs from freedesktop.org to better interoperate with other desktops. On September 1, 2016,
312-480: The Debian installer ). Several desktop environments utilize GTK as the widget toolkit. The following window managers use GTK: For syntax highlighting there is GtkSourceView , "source code editing widget". GtkSourceView is maintained by GNOME separately from GTK as a library: gtksourceview. There are plans to rename to gsv. GtkSpell is a library separate from GTK. GtkSpell depends on GTK and Enchant . Enchant
336-578: The Windows API ), and macOS (interfaced with Quartz ). There is also an HTML5 back-end named Broadway . GTK can be configured to change the look of the widgets drawn; this is done using different display engines. Several display engines exist which try to emulate the look of the native widgets on the platform in use. Starting with version 2.8, released in 2005, GTK began the transition to using Cairo to render most of its graphical control elements widgets . Since GTK version 3.0, all rendering
360-478: The application programming interface (API) and theming. The result is that application developers or theme developers have to rewrite parts of their code to make it work with a newer version of GTK. The compatibility breaks between minor releases during the GTK 3.x development cycle was explained by Benjamin Otte as due to strong pressures to innovate, such as providing the features modern users expect and supporting
384-602: The GIMP toolkit and had successfully replaced Motif by the 0.60 release of GIMP. Finally GTK was re-written to be object-oriented and was renamed GTK+. This was first used in the 0.99 release of GIMP. GTK was subsequently adopted for maintenance by the GNOME Foundation , which uses it in the GNOME desktop environment. The GTK 2.0.0 release series introduced new features which include improved text rendering using Pango ,
408-534: The Glade# bindings to easily design GUI applications. A GUI designer named Stetic is integrated with the MonoDevelop integrated development environment (IDE). In addition to support the standard GTK/GNOME stack of development tools, the gtk-dotnet.dll assembly provides a bridge to consume functionality available on the .NET stack. At this point this includes the functionality to use System.Drawing to draw on
432-748: The delegation of functionality to ancillary objects instead of encoding it into the base classes provided by GTK. Other changes include: At the 2018 edition of DevConf.cz , Matthias Clasen gave an overview of the then-current state of GTK 4 development, including a high-level explanation of how rendering and input worked in GTK 3, what changes were being made to GTK 4, and the reasons for those changes. Examples of things that have become possible with GTK 4 were given as well. Overall support for UTF-8 The last to support Windows 98 / Me Print support: GtkPrintOperation Caps Lock warning in password entry Improvements on GtkScale, GtkStatusIcon, GtkFileChooser Improvement on file chooser, printing To remove much of
456-487: The increasingly influential Wayland display server protocol . With the release of GTK 4, the pressure from the need to innovate will have been released and the balance between stability and innovation will tip toward stability. Similarly, recent changes to theming are specifically intended to improve and stabilise that part of the API, meaning some investment now should be rewarded later. Some notable applications that use GTK as
480-853: The necessary IPC between the X11 application and the X11 server, GDK is rewritten (mainly by Alexander Larsson) to use "client-side windows", i.e., the GdkWindow, which every widget must have, belongs now to the client Improvement on file chooser, keyboard handling, GDK Introspection data is now included in GTK Most GDK drawing are based on Cairo Many internal data are now private and can be sealed in preparation to GTK 3 The CUPS print backend can send print jobs as PDF GtkBuilder has gained support for text tags and menu toolbuttons and many introspection annotation fixes were added Migrating from GTK+ 2.x to GTK+ 3 Completed mostly Project Ridley All
504-606: The rendering is done using Cairo GDK became more X11 agnostic List of language bindings for GTK As shown in the table below, GTK has a range of bindings for various languages that implement some or all of its feature set. GTK 2 is no longer supported, meaning some languages below do not have current GTK support. Gtk# is a set of .NET Framework bindings for the GTK graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit and assorted GNOME libraries . The library facilitates building graphical GNOME applications using Mono or any other compliant Common Language Runtime (CLR). Gtk#
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#1732801783458528-485: The system and environment. Examples of GTK backends are: There are several GUI designers for GTK. Here is a selection of GTK GUI designers: The GTK Inspector is a built-in interactive debugging tool in GTK, allowing developers to inspect and modify UI elements, test CSS changes, and analyze widget structure in real time. It can be enabled using the Control + Shift + I or Control + Shift + D shortcuts, or by setting
552-432: The underlying windowing and graphics systems. GSK is the rendering and scene graph API for GTK. GSK lies between the graphical control elements (widgets) and the rendering. GSK was finally merged into GTK version 3.90 released March 2017. GtkBuilder allows user interfaces to be designed without writing code. The interface is described in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file which is written by hand or generated by
576-655: Was dropped returning to simply 'GTK' in February 2019 during a Hackathon . HP stated that their goal was to merge the needed OpenVMS changes into the GTK Version 1.3 development stream, however this never materialised. The latest version of GTK for OpenVMS is version 1.2.10. One of the main changes made during the GTK 4 development cycle (i.e. GTK 3.92, etc.) was the removal of user customization options (like individual keyboard shortcuts that could be set in GTK+ 2), and
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