Submitted by GTK+ 3.0 has been released two days ago. This major release includes a large number of improvements, including a full switch from the old X11 drawing API to cairo for rendering, a switch to XorgInput2 for more flexible input device management, and a new theming API sporting a CSS-like syntax for theme configuration.
this release makes a clear break from the X11 roots of GTK+. It is now a clean (no hacks) cross-platform toolkit. Hopefully we will soon see native ports in Haiku, Syllable and possibly Ecommstation. You can have now gtk+ without and gtk+ is not a free/improved Motif alternative (it hasn’t been for a long time but now it is literally cross-platform).
Oh, well there is always lesstif
Your confusing thing. The Gimp version 0.9x was built on Motif. Gtk+ was invented by them for their own use. Gtk+ was never a Motif clone. That’d be Lesstif.
Agreed, a Syllable port would be nice.
Very few of the applications I have on my FreeBSD machine are not GTK+ so now I get to play the update game. As far as themes go, it looks like they will have to be created from scratch since the new theming API uses CSS syntax.
I’m interested if they got the accessibility decrease from Gtk (v1) to Gtk+ (v2) removed. Many things that other toolkits – namely the “old-fashioned” and “outdated” ones – got right, caused problems in Gtk+, like proper keyboard support, ability to use the middle-click edit buffer, the annoying use of list items that turn into inputlines (preventing the use if double-click selection) and the idiotic behaviour when gaining or losing focus. This was a very bad experience when I noticed that many programs that I did use, written using Gtk (v1), were now using Gtk+ (v2) and became slow and unusable that way.
Interesting step, and surely a good move for customization purposes. Maybe this is the chance for Gtk to be part in lightweight applications again? I appreciate their decision to be C-compatible. Gtk has been my favourite toolkit for X (prior to Gtk+), and I hope to be able to use it again – without getting a half of a Gnome installation for a simple “hello world” program written using Gtk+. 🙂
You already don’t need half a gnome installation to create a simple hello world program written in gtk+.
Which half of a Gnome installation did you need before? Oh, that’s right – none of it.
You did notice the appended “:-)”, didn’t you? This indicates the last statement to be understood not that seriously.
While it is true that a simple “hello world” program using Gtk doesn’t involve the installation of the half Gnome desktop, things like file open dialogs incorporate some other libraries and abstraction layers. Some of them can be configured using package build options at compile time when installing from source. You can notice this when using applications that are built with Gtk+: Just look at the dependencies they require, and question if this is really needed. Some of the dependencies are needed for building, others are needed for internationalization, and again others are needed by libraries employed. The nature of Gtk, being part of the basis of Gnome, suggests that many functonality is shared. This causes dependencies on the other hand that may not be needed if a Gtk program is run without Gnome.
And keep in mind that I said I did like Gtk. I do primarily complain about reduced accessibility in Gtk+ (v2) which I hope has been improved in the new v3. That’s all I care for at the moment.
Now that they have switched fully to Cairo, does this mean that the redraw issues are finally fixed?
I’m not an expert but I think using a compositing window manager (metacity or mutter) will fix the redraws.
Edited 2011-02-13 04:35 UTC
That’s not a solution, it’s a workaround, and hardly an acceptable one.
All the resources one gives up for that one little convenience…
Now that it is all based on Cairo it will hopefully translate into fixes being done at the back end rather than trying to hand optimise – tweaking the backends which will hopefully mean an across the board improvement. The question is whether the video card support and OpenGL implementation will improve for those using the OpenGL backend.
I found something a bit old, but which some might find interesting anyway :
http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2010/11/23/gtk3-vs-html5/
Edited 2011-02-13 21:21 UTC
Just noticing that Vala is not on the list of “official Gnome languages” even though languages like Java and C# are. WHY???? Vala is probably the language most custom-tailored to GTK+ out there, and it’s really cool, combining C#-like syntax (but better) with native compiled performance! If you ask me Gnome 3 should be written in it…. Oh well…