Re: Getting started writing a Gtk2 theme engine

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On Mon, 2011-02-14 at 15:26 +0100, Michele De Pascalis wrote:
> On 13/02/2011 20:09, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > On Sun, 2011-02-13 at 15:39 +0100, Michele De Pascalis wrote:
> >> Is there a guide/tutorial/reference that explains how to write a Gtk
> >> theme engine?
> > considering that the theme engine API changed pretty much drastically in
> > gtk3, are you really sure that you want to learn how to write a theme
> > engine for gtk2?
> >
> > in any case, you should probably look at the Clearlooks theme engine,
> > and modify it instead of starting from scratch.

> I'd rather to build it from scratch, because of the way I work.

again, I'd suggest smaller steps to understand an API that is not fully
documented.

>  I guess 
> that Clearlooks is written in C, and I'd like to use an OOP language, 
> like C++, to build the engine, even if the API is procedural.

you cannot really write a theme engine in c++: a theme engine is a gtk+
module, and has to provide a fairly specific implementation of a C API
through GObject virtual functions and types.

> However, how has the API changed whith gtk3?

quite radically. now you get passed a style context with meta-data about
the location and semantics of the UI element to draw, plus the Cairo
context to draw on.

>  And when will gtk3 be released (for testing)?

gtk+ 3.0 has been released on February 10.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
W: http://www.emmanuelebassi.name
B: http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi