Re: [gtk-list] Gtk & Xlib

[Walt Pohl <pohl math washington edu>]

On Fri, 22 May 1998, Holger Eitzenberger wrote:

> Hi,
>     I exerciced through the GTK tutorial which was good as a starting
> point. First question: do i also need Xlib programming, e. g. to extend
> GTK or GDK? How does Xlib & GTK behave together, any difficulties?
>   Thx in advance.

Xlib is the underlying layer of both GDK and GTK.  You can think of GDK as
sitting directly over Xlib, and GTK sitting over GDK.  In theory, GDK
hides almost all of the details of Xlib from you, and you only need to
know GTK with a little GDK thrown in.  Unfortunately there isn't much
documentation for GDK, and some of the concepts are quite close to Xlib,
so learning some Xlib is the best course of action.  I'm working on GDK 
documentation in my spare time.

If you just want to use GTK as a widget set, then almost all the Xlib
details are hidden from you, except the event model.  If you want to write
new widgets, then probably the best way to go is to read how already
existing widgets work.

Walt Pohl