Gnome User Interface Library Reference Manual

Table of Contents
Gnome User Interface Library
gnome-app-helper — Simplified menu and toolbar creation.
gnome-app-util — Utility functions for manipulating GnomeApp container widgets.
gnome-canvas-util
gnome-dialog-util
gnome-dns — Non-blocking name resolver interface.
gnome-geometry — Window geometry utility functions.
gnome-ice
gnome-icon-text — Text wrapping functions for icon captions.
gnome-init — Initialize GNOME libraries.
gnome-mdi-session — Routines providing GnomeMDI state saving and restoration
gnome-popup-help
gnome-popup-menu — Routines for attaching popup menus to widgets.
gnome-preferences — Fetching and setting GNOME preferences
gnome-properties
gnome-property-entries
gnome-startup — Internal routines for session management.
gnome-types — Some global types used by the GNOME libraries.
gnome-uidefs
gnome-winhints
gtkcauldron — Produce gtk/gnome dialog boxes from format strings.
GNOME Widgets and Objects
GnomeAbout — Simple way to provide an About box for your application.
GnomeAnimator — A widget for adding simple animations to GNOME applications.
GnomeApp — The toplevel GNOME container
GnomeAppBar
GnomeCalculator — Calculator widget.
GnomeCanvas — A generic engine for structured graphics.

The GNOME canvas is an engine for displaying structured graphics and simplyfing the development of complex graphic-based applications.

Canvas Items

The GNOME Canvas basic building block are the GNOME Canvas Items (GnomeCanvasItem): lines, rectangles, text, ellipses, polylines, images and embedded widgets. You can use any of those directly in your application.

The CanvasItem system is designed to be extensible. Applications can define their own GnomeCanvasItem objects for special purpose tasks. For example, the GNOME Gnumeric spreadsheet defines a number of special Canvas Items that are specialized for the task of spreadsheets.

Specialized canvas items allows the developer to write custom items that can adapt to its needs of speed, scalability and gives the user the power to extend the canvas.

Items on the canvas can be reconfigured by using the Gtk argument system. Users can reconfigure the parameters of the canvas items and the changes on the parameters will be reflected inmediately on the screen.


Flicker free display

The GNOME Canvas uses off-screen buffers to render the images before transfering them to the screen. Transfers can take place at the command of the programmer (by explicitly requesting a repait update) or done automatically by the engine (during the idle look handler).


Event dispatching

Each GnomeCanvasItem can receive mouse events, keyboard events, mouse-enter and mouse leave events. In addition a canvas item can grab the mouse (for example to implement reliable dragging of objects).


Canvas types

The Canvas can be run in two different modes: X11 mode and Art mode. The mode is chosen at the creation time of the widget by either calling gnome_canvas_new() or gnome_canvas_new_aa(), the former creates an X11 canvas, while the later creates an Art-based canvas.

The X11 mode uses the X server to draw the items and it takes advantage of the X server acceleration features for drawing on the screen. The only drawback is that the output quality and the imaging model are restricted to the X11 quality and imaging model.

The Art mode of the canvas has an advanced imaging model based on LibArt and it allows any GnomeCanvasItem (with the exception of the embedded widget item) to be rotated, scaled and translated (this is done by means of applying an affine transformation on the object).

GnomeCanvasItem
GnomeCanvasGroup
GnomeCanvasLine
GnomeCanvasPolygon
GnomeCanvasRE
GnomeCanvasRect
GnomeCanvasEllipse
GnomeCanvasText
GnomeCanvasImage
GnomeCanvasWidget
GnomeClient — Routines to provide session management support in your application
GnomeColorPicker — Widget for selecting colors.
GnomeDateEdit — Date and time entry widget.
GnomeDEntryEdit
GnomeDialog — Transient popup dialogs
GnomeDockBand — A widget implementing dock bands.
GnomeDockItem — A dockable widget.
GnomeDock — A widget supporting moveable and detachable widgets.
GnomeDruid
GnomeDruidPage
GnomeDruidPageStart
GnomeDruidPageStandard
GnomeDruidPageFinish
GnomeEntry — Entry widget with history tracking.
GnomeFileEntry
GnomeFontPicker
GnomeFontSelector
GnomeGuru
GnomeHRef — A link button.
GnomeIconEntry — A widget to select an icon
GnomeIconTextItem — Canvas item for editable text captions in icon lists.
GnomeIconList — A list of icons with captions, with optional caption editing.
GnomeIconSelection — An icon listing/chooser display.
GnomeLess — Simple file content browser widget.
GnomeMDIChild — An abstract MDI child class
GnomeMDIGenericChild — A generic GnomeMDI child
GnomeMDI — GNOME Multiple Document Interface
GnomeMessageBox — Message box display routines
GnomeNumberEntry — An entry line for number input.
GnomePaperSelector
GnomePixmapEntry
GnomePixmap — A widget to display and load images (pixmaps)
GnomePropertyBox — Standarized dialog box for handling configuration
GnomeScores
GnomeStock — 50% finished, API-docs not done; Default icons for toolbars, menus and buttons.
GtkClock
GtkTed — Deprecated.
GtkDial
GtkPixmapMenuItem
GnomeSpell
GnomeDockLayout — A widget for saving and retrieving the layout of a GnomeDock widget.
GnomeProcBar — Gnome Process Bar