GTK+ FAQ

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

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+, GDK and GLib stand for?
• 1.6 Where is the documentation for GTK+?
• 1.7 Is there a mailing list (or mailing list archive) for GTK+?
• 1.8 How to get help with GTK+
• 1.9 How to report bugs in GTK+
• 1.10 Is there a Windows version of GTK+?
• 1.11 What applications have been written with GTK+?
• 1.12 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+: general questions

• 5.1 What widgets are in GTK?
• 5.2 Is GTK+ thread safe? How do I write multi-threaded GTK+ applications?
• 5.3 Why does this strange 'x io error' occur when I fork() in my GTK+ app?
• 5.4 Why don't the contents of a button move when the button is pressed? Here's a patch to make it work that way...
• 5.5 How to I identifiy a widgets top level window or other ancestor?
• 5.6 How do I get the Window ID of a GtkWindow?
• 5.7 How do I catch a double click event (in a list widget, for example)?
• 5.8 By the way, what are the differences between signals and events?
• 5.9 Data I pass to the delete_event (or other event) handler gets corrupted.
• 5.10 I have my signal connected to the the (whatever) event, but it seems I don't catch it. What's wrong?
• 5.11 I need to add a new signal to a GTK+ widget. Any idea?
• 5.12 Is it possible to get some text displayed which is truncated to fit inside its allocation?
• 5.13 How do I make my window modal? / How do I make a single window active?
• 5.14 Why doesn't my widget (e.g. progressbar) update?
• 5.15 How do I attach data to some GTK+ object/widget?
• 5.16 How do I remove the data I have attached to an object?
• 5.17 How do I reparent a widget?
• 5.18 How could I get any widgets position?
• 5.19 How do I set the size of a widget/window? How do I prevent the user resizing my window?
• 5.20 How do I add a popup menu to my GTK+ application?
• 5.21 How do I disable or enable a widget, such as a button?
• 5.22 Shouldn't the text argument in the gtk_clist_* functions be declared const?
• 5.23 How do I render pixels (image data) to the screen?
• 5.24 How do I create a pixmap without having my window realized/shown?

6. Development with GTK+: widget specific questions

• 6.1 How do I find out about the selection of a GtkList?
• 6.2 How do I stop the column headings of a GtkCList disappearing
• 6.3 I don't want the user of my applications to enter text into a GtkCombo. Any idea?
• 6.4 How do I catch a combo box change?
• 6.5 How can I define a separation line in a menu?
• 6.6 How can I right justify a menu, such as Help?
• 6.7 How do I add some underlined accelerators to menu items?
• 6.8 How can I retrieve the text from a GtkMenuItem?
• 6.9 How do I right (or otherwise) justify a GtkLabel?
• 6.10 How do I set the background color of a GtkLabel widget?
• 6.11 How do I set the color and font of a GtkLabel using a Resource File?
• 6.12 How do I configure Tooltips in a Resource File?
• 6.13 I can't add more than (something like) 2000 chars in a GtkEntry. What's wrong?
• 6.14 How do I make a GtkEntry widget activate on pressing the Return key?
• 6.15 How do I validate/limit/filter the input to a GtkEntry?
• 6.16 How do I use horizontal scrollbars with a GtkText widget?
• 6.17 How do I change the font of a GtkText widget?
• 6.18 How do I set the cursor position in a GtkText object?

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 Memory does not seem to be released when I free the list nodes I've allocated
• 8.4 Why use g_print, g_malloc, g_strdup and fellow glib functions?
• 8.5 What's a GScanner and how do I use one?

9. GTK+ FAQ Contributions, Maintainers and Copyright