After three months of development, the release of a multiplatform toolkit for creating a graphical user interface - GTK 4.2.0 - is presented. GTK 4 is being developed under a new development process that attempts to provide application developers with a stable and supported API for several years, which can be used without fear that applications will have to be reworked every six months due to API changes in the next GTK branch.
The new release mainly fixes bugs and makes improvements to the API based on feedback from developers who have ported their programs to GTK4. Some of the most notable improvements in GTK 4.2 include:
- Added NGL renderer, a new OpenGL rendering engine that is enabled by default on Linux, Windows and macOS. NGL renderer provides better performance while reducing CPU load. To bring back the old rendering engine, run the application with the environment variable GSK_RENDERER=gl.
- Reworked the handling of Compose sequences and silent keys that change the look of the next typed character.
- The ability to use GTK as a subproject in the Meson build system has been implemented, which allows you to build GTK and all its dependencies as part of your own application's build environment, as well as get all build artifacts to ship with your application using the selected toolkit.
- Improved support for compiling GTK for Windows and macOS using platform-native toolkits.
- The API documentation has been redesigned, for the formation of which a new gi-docgen generator is used, which produces a more convenient presentation of information, including buttons for adding code examples to the clipboard, a visual representation of the hierarchy of ancestors and interfaces of each class, a list of inherited properties, signals and class methods. The interface supports client-side search and automatically adapts to different screen sizes. A new site, docs.gtk.org, has been launched for documentation, which also offers companion tutorials on GObject, Pango, and GdkPixbuf introspection.
- Optimized the performance of various components, from the GLSL shaders involved in rendering to objects for people with disabilities.
- Implemented subpixel text positioning when using new versions of the Cairo library.
- Provided responsive UI layout for emoji selection.
- Improved support for the Wayland protocol extension for input control.
- Improved scrolling performance in the text view widget.
- Improved rendering of shadows in popover widgets.
Source: opennet.ru