General Information
===================

This is GTK+ version 2.8.3. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for
creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets,
GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to
complete application suites.

GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project. However, the
licensing terms for GTK+, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all
developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any
license fees or royalties.

The official ftp site is:
  ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk

The official web site is:
  http://www.gtk.org/

Information about mailing lists can be found at
  http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html

Installation
============

See the file 'INSTALL'

Release notes
=============

* GTK+ 2.6 supports clipboard persistency. To make use of this feature,
  a clipboard manager following the specification at
  http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/clipboard-manager-spec
  must be running. A sample implementation of such a clipboard manager
  is available at 
  http://people.imendio.com/andersca/archives/clipboard-manager-0.3.tar.gz
  Applications can use the function gdk_display_supports_clipboard_persistence() 
  to find out if clipboard persistence is available.

* Notification on clipboard ownership changes via GdkOwnerChange events 
  requires the XFIXES X extension. Applications can use the function
  gdk_display_supports_selection_notification() to find out if ownerchip
  change notification is available.

* The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 follows the freedesktop.org icon theme 
  specification. Setting the XDG_DATA_DIRS environtment variable may be 
  necessary if your icons aren't installed in the default location 
  /usr/share/icons.

* The icon theme code in GTK+ 2.6 can make use of mmap()able cache files
  to avoid a lot of disk searching overhead. GTK+ includes a utility named
  gtk-update-icon-cache to generate these cache files. For further details,
  see the gtk-update-icon-cache man page or the GTK+ documentation.

* To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GTK+, when compiled 
  with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry 
  points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with 
  IA__, may be seen when debugging a GTK+ program.

* The following functions have been deprecated in GTK+ 2.6:
  gdk_pango_context_set_colormap
  gtk_cell_renderer_editing_canceled

* The new GtkFileChooser widget emphasizes simplicity and thus does 
  not provide a navigation entry by default when opening files. 
  Experienced command line users will likely want to make heavy use of
  the location dialog brought up by the Control-L key shortcut.

* The GTK+ libraries use an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
  must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning 
  with prefixes such as _gtk, _gdk, and _pango will be exported
  from the library, on others not. In no case can applications
  use these private symbols. In addition to that, GTK+ 2.6 makes several
  symbols private which were not in any installed header files and
  were never intended to be exported.

* The gdk_pixbuf_xlib library included in the contrib/ directory 
  and the framebuffer GDK backend included in the gdk/linux-fb directory
  of GTK+ are provided on an as-is basis and have not been tested at all. 
  No guarantees about the degree of workingness or about future
  compatibility are provided.

* On Unix, the assumption of GLib and GTK+ by default is that filenames on 
  the filesystem are encoded in UTF-8 rather than the encoding of the locale;
  the GTK+ developers consider that having filenames whose interpretation
  depends on the current locale is fundamentally a bad idea.

  If you have filenames encoded in the encoding of your locale, then you 
  may want to set the G_FILENAME_ENCODING environment variable:
  
   G_FILENAME_ENCODING=@locale
   export G_FILENAME_ENCODING

  (Earlier versions of GLib 2.x required a different environment variable
  setting; G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1 to achieve the same effect; this 
  is still supported, but G_FILENAME_ENCODING is preferred.)
  Best integration of GTK+ 2.6 with the environment is achieved by 
  using a UTF-8 locale.

  On Windows, filenames passed to GTK+ should always be in UTF-8, as
  in GLib 2.6. This is different than in previous versions of GTK+
  where the system codepage was used. As in GLib, for DLL ABI
  stability, applications built against previous versions of GTK+ will
  use entry points providing the old semantics.

  When compiling against GTK+ 2.6, applications intended to be
  portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
  consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose 
  names have been constructed from strings returned from GTK+ or GLib.

How to report bugs
==================

Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product gtk+.) You will need to create an
account for yourself.
  
In the bug report please include:
  
* Information about your system. For instance:

   - What operating system and version
   - What version of X
   - For Linux, what version of the C library

  And anything else you think is relevant.

* How to reproduce the bug. 

  If you can reproduce it with one of the tests or demos built with GTK+, 
  such as demos/gtk-demo/gtk-demo, that would be most convenient. Otherwise, 
  please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a 
  last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software 
  that can be downloaded.

* If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the
  crash occured.

* Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not
  necessary. If you do send a stack trace, and the error is an X error,
  it will be more useful if the stacktrace is produced running the test
  program with the --sync command line option.

Patches
=======

Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the patch
fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug
report.

Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach
the patch to that bug report.

Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword in their
keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GTK+ programming
interface, the API keyword should also be included.
  
Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU diff.)
