Three things about GTK + 3

Recently, GTK + Hackfest 2008 was successfully closed in Berlin, Germany. The future of GTK + that everyone cares about has a clear road map. From this path, we can imagine the future of GNOME desktop environment.

As we all know, GTK + is the cornerstone of GNOME desktop environment. Its changes will directly affect all aspects of GNOME desktop, just like qt kde.

GTK + 2 has been available for six years. Over the past six years, it has become increasingly popular. GTK + is widely used as its graphic development toolbox for Free Software and commercial software. Commercial companies such as Adobe, nVIDIA, and VMware all use GTK + as the basis for their products.

As GTK + 2, which has been in existence for several years, has become more and more mature. Therefore, at Hackfest 2008, the next generation of GTK + 2: GTK + 3 has become a hot topic. There is no doubt that it is time for GTK + 3 to debut.

A long time ago, LDCN disclosed the developer's intention in GNOME 2.22 and 2.24 feature preview, that is, GNOME 3 will not be re-designed, but will make a smooth transition.

However, this goal has changed. It is very difficult to achieve a stable transition and adding new features at the same time. In the end, the developer decides the Break API and ABI. First, the developer completes GTK + 3.0, which removes all obsolete APIs and improves the class structure, and then adds the new features to GTK + 3.x. This approach is relatively stable.

Below I will summarize the results discussed in GTK Hackfest 2008 as follows, hoping to give all developers who are interested in GTK + and friends who are interested in the future of GNOME Desktop an answer:

• Alpha transparent support: In GTK + 3, all controls will receive Alpha transparent support. This allows developers to create flexible and interesting user interfaces. This is different from Compiz's transparency, because in the future GTK + 3, you can determine the transparency of a control in encoding.
• Easier layout management: Although the existing GTK + layout manager such as Box is very powerful enough, in GTK + 3, a simpler and easier-to-use control will be added for layout management.
• Transition, physical, and animation Effects: GTK + 3 introduces transition effects, physical effects, and animation effects to make the user interface more natural, smooth, and smooth. For example, when you use Notebook to switch tags, the effect will be fade in and out. The physical effect is mainly applied to the drag and drop operation.
• Theme Improvement: Despite the rich variety of GNOME desktop themes, there are still a lot of art engineers who are very hard to reflect the theme. Therefore, GTK + 3 will improve the difficulties in topic creation,

The above are some new features that will be added to GTK + graphics. In addition, the performance of the current GTK + 2 deficiency will also be improved, such as better cross-platform performance and more convenient language binding.

There is no formal timetable for GTK + 3. It may take a long time. Therefore, GNOME 3 is unpredictable. Wait!

For more information, see GTK + Berlin Hackfest 2008

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