Structure of the Book

This book is divided into several parts:

• Right now you're reading Part 1. This chapter gives you an overview of the Gnome application development framework. The following two chapters quickly introduce glib and GTK+ -- if you're already familiar with GTK+ programming, you may want to move directly to Part 2.

• Part 2 guides you through the development of a skeletal Gnome application. It starts with the creation of the source tree, and then explains how to write menus, dialogs, and other essential application components. At the end of Part 2, there's a checklist of features every application should have.

• Part 3 describes some advanced topics, including the internals of the GTK+ object and type system, writing a custom GtkWidget subclass, and using the GnomeCanvas widget. It also covers GDK.

• The appendices include a map of the GTK+ and Gnome object hierarchy, with a short description of each object; a map of the GTK+ and Gnome header files; and some pointers to online programming resources.

This book assumes some knowledge of GTK+ programming; chapters 2 and 3 will give you a quick overview if your knowledge is minimal, but they move very quickly. Most of the specific widgets in GTK+ are not covered. The book is intended to introduce Gnome programming, and some advanced GTK+ topics; it is a supplement to an introductory GTK+ book.

Due to time and space limitations, only the central Gnome libraries are covered; in particular, CORBA, printing, XML, plugins, and scripting are not covered. Most large applications will use these features in addition to the core libraries.