GTK+ Programming

I try to help new users with GTK+ programming and Glade as often as I have time in the mailing lists, forums, and emails in response from my tutorials. I posted this to answer some of the more frequent questions I get about GtkBuilder and Libglade.

Libglade and GtkBuilder are libraries which are used by programmers to dynamically parse an XML file describing a GUI (usually created with Glade Interface Designer) and build the GUI. Using Glade with Libglade or GtkBuilder allows for RAD (Rapid Application Development) of GTK+ applications in a multitude if programming languages such as C, C++, PHP, Python, etc. If you don't know this already, this FAQ probably will not be very relevant to you and you should instead start with: GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial - Part 1

Writing a Basic Program to Implement the Glade File

In this part of the GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial series, I will show you a very basic program that will parse the Glade file we created in Part 1 and display the main window for our GTK+ text editor. In this part of the tutorial, I will be discussing the GTK+ concepts first and then show the code in both Python and C (in different colors). If you have chosen to work in one language or the other, you can opt to skip over the code explanation for the language you are not going to use.

Choosing a Programming Language for GTK+ Development

In part 1 of the GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial series, we designed a graphical user interface (GUI) for a GTK+ text editor application. After doing so, we were left with an XML file (tutorial.glade) which described our application's user interface.

In this part of the GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial series I will be discussing the various programming languages available for GTK+ development. Subsequent parts of this tutorial will cover both C programming and Python programming. With my help, you will have to make the decision of which one you want to learn how to use (or both!).

Designing a User Interface using Glade3

In part 1 of the GTK+ and Glade3 GUI Programming Tutorial series, we will be designing the graphical user interface (GUI) for a GTK+ text editor application (shown left) which will be used throughout these tutorials. This GUI design will be created using the Glade Interface Designer and is completely independent of the programming language used to implement the design, which will come in subsequent tutorials.

I have written a symbol browser (function browser, class browser, etc.) plugin for Gedit, the default GNOME text editor. The plugin is based on Exuberant Ctags (ctags.sourceforge.net) which must be installed to use the plugin.

If you've ever used Anjuta or MonoDevelop, you may have noticed the nice docking widgets they use. This is very common and useful for IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). Many people ask how they can get dockable windows in their own GTK+ applications. Well, since there is no built-in widget for this in GTK+, you can use the same libraries that Anjuta and MonoDevelop are using: gdl.

Andrew Krause's book, Foundations of GTK+ Development has been released. I did some of the technical review work on this book and can say that Andrew has done a fine job. As far as I am aware, it is the only GTK+ book currently available for GTK+ 2.x. It covers the new widgets like notification icon, print dialog, recent files, etc.

From Visual Basic...

... to C/GTK+

In this example code, I show how to use the GtkFontSelectionDialog and the GtkColorSelectionDialog using C/GTK+ and libglade. Both dialogs as well as the main window are in the gui.glade file created by Glade.

This is a simple Linux application using GTK+ and libglade to demonstrate some very simple dialog boxes. The application's interface is created in Glade and accessed using libglade, however, the dialog boxes are implemented entirely in GTK+ code since they're so easy to implement that way. These dialog boxes are from the GtkMessageDialog widget, which is a derivative of the GtkDialog widget.