STLWRT

For anyone who does not know yet, STLWRT is the successor to GTK+ 2, originally based almost entirely on the original code from GTK+ 2. STLWRT has deviated from the GTK+ 2 code, however, and continues to deviate. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to run most GTK+ 2 and many GTK+ 3 applications using the same STLWRT library, while both types of applications keep a conservative, traditional GTK+ 2-esque look and feel.

I emphasized the word "the" above because, as of right now, I do not know of anyone else who has any actively maintained fork of any version of GTK. If anyone who has such a fork happens to be reading this, please drop me a line and let me know; I'd be interested in the design decisions you are making and have made, and I hope we may be able to collaborate somehow.

What's new?

Progress has been slow since the mid-to-late fall, as anybody who reads the commit logs can see. The stuff I've been doing lately is STLWRT-ization of the roughly 260 source files. Specifically, all STLWRT objects need to stop using object instance structures directly and need to go through at least one generated function. As an example, the following hypothetical function which packs a widget inside of a GtkDialog:

    void
    gtk_dialog_really_stupid_function (GtkDialog *dialog, GtkWidget *child)
    {
      g_return_if_fail (GTK_IS_DIALOG (dialog));
      g_return_if_fail (GTK_IS_WIDGET (child));
    
      gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (dialog->vbox), child);
    }

...needs to become:

    void
    gtk_dialog_really_stupid_function (GtkDialog *dialog, GtkWidget *child)
    {
      GtkDialogProps *dialog_props;
    
      g_return_if_fail (GTK_IS_DIALOG (dialog));
      g_return_if_fail (GTK_IS_WIDGET (child));
    
      dialog_props = gtk_dialog_get_props (dialog);
    
      gtk_container_add (GTK_CONTAINER (dialog_props->vbox), child);
    }

Of course, many functions are a lot longer than this, so the dialog_props can be used multiple times in the same function, or maybe even shared between local functions which have no need for ABI compatibility. src/gtkbbox.c is an example of a coding nightmare, something which was allowed to collect a lot of bad coding practices over time. A cursory look at GTK+ 1.0.0 source code reveals that GtkButtonBox existed even back then in 1998, when GTK worked much differently than it does now. So in short, there are some files which are hard to convert because they're full of inconsistencies, such as inconsistent variable naming schemes.