GTK+ FAQ

Nathan Froyd, Tony Gale, Shawn T. Amundson, Emmanuel Deloget

1. General Information

• 1.1 Before anything else: the greetings
• 1.2 Authors
• 1.3 What is GTK+?
• 1.4 What is the + in GTK+?
• 1.5 Does the G in GTK+ stand for General, Gimp, or GNU?
• 1.6 Where is the documentation for GTK+?
• 1.7 Is there a mailing list (or mailing list archive) for GTK+?
• 1.8 The gtk-list hasn't had any traffic for days, is it dead?
• 1.9 How to get help with GTK+
• 1.10 How to report bugs in GTK+
• 1.11 Is there a Windows version of GTK+?
• 1.12 What applications have been written with GTK+?
• 1.13 I'm looking for an application to write in GTK+. How about an IRC client?

2. How to find, configure, install, and troubleshoot GTK+

• 2.1 What do I need to run GTK+?
• 2.2 Where can I get GTK+?
• 2.3 How do I configure/compile GTK+?
• 2.4 When compiling GTK+ I get an error like: make: file `Makefile' line 456: Syntax error
• 2.5 I've compiled and installed GTK+, but I can't get any programs to link with it!
• 2.6 When compiling programs with GTK+, I get compiler error messages about not being able to find "glibconfig.h".
• 2.7 When installing a GTK+ application, configure reports that it can't find GTK.

3. Development of GTK+

• 3.1 Whats this CVS thing that everyone keeps talking about, and how do I access it?
• 3.2 How can I contribute to GTK+?
• 3.3 How do I know if my patch got applied, and if not, why not?
• 3.4 What is the policy on incorporating new widgets into the library?
• 3.5 Is anyone working on bindings for languages other than C?

4. Development with GTK+: the begining

• 4.1 How do I get started?
• 4.2 I tried to compile a small Hello World of mine, but it failed. Any clue?
• 4.3 What about using the make utility?
• 4.4 I use the backquote stuff in my makefiles, but my make process failed.
• 4.5 I want to add some configure stuff, how could I do this?
• 4.6 I try to debug my GTK+ application with gdb, but it hangs my X server when I hit some breakpoint. Any Idea ?

5. Development with GTK+: the programming part

• 5.1 What widgets are in GTK?
• 5.2 Is GTK+ thread safe? How do I write multi-threaded GTK+ applications?
• 5.3 How do I find out about the selection of a GtkList?
• 5.4 How can I prevent redrawing and resizing while I change multiple widgets?
• 5.5 How do I catch a double click event (in a list widget, for example)?
• 5.6 By the way, what are the differences between signals and events?
• 5.7 I have my signal connected to the the (whatever) event, but it seems I don't catch it. What's wrong?
• 5.8 Is it possible to get some text displayed which is truncated to fit inside its allocation?
• 5.9 How can I define a separation line in a menu?
• 5.10 How can I right justify a menu, such as Help?
• 5.11 How do I add some underlined accelerators to menu items?
• 5.12 How do I make my window modal? / How do I make a single window active?
• 5.13 Why doesn't my widget (e.g. progressbar) update?
• 5.14 How do I attach data to some GTK+ object/widget?
• 5.15 How do I remove the data I have attached to an object?
• 5.16 How do I right (or otherwise) justify a label?
• 5.17 How could I get any widget position?
• 5.18 How do I set the position/size of a widget/window?
• 5.19 How do I add a popup menu to my GTK+ application?
• 5.20 How do I disable or enable a widget, such as a button?
• 5.21 How do I set the cursor position in a GtkText object?

6. Development with GTK+: misc questions

• 6.1 Why do this strange 'x io error' occur when I fork() in my GTK+ app?
• 6.2 I can't add more than (something like) 2000 chars in a GtkEntry. What's wrong?
• 6.3 Why don't the contents of a button move when the button is pressed? Here's a patch to make it work that way...

7. About gdk

• 7.1 What is GDK?
• 7.2 How do I use color allocation?

8. About GLib

• 8.1 What is GLib?
• 8.2 How can I use the doubly linked lists?
• 8.3 Why use g_print, g_malloc, g_strdup and fellow glib functions?

9. GTK+ FAQ Contributions, Maintainers and Copyright