Gtk2(3)

📦
version 1.24993 · 2 versions
, in fedora 43

💖 Gtk2 — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Gtk2(3) page from the User Contributed Perl Documentation — yes, that's the actual manual name, we're not skipping it, we're celebrating it. this is the whole thing, nothing dropped, all vibes upgraded. let's go 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

Gtk2 — your Perl interface to the 2.x series of the Gimp Toolkit library. no cap, that's literally it.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

here's the whole vibe in one little script:

use Gtk2 -init;
# Gtk2->init; works if you didn't use -init on use
my $window = Gtk2::Window->new ('toplevel');
my $button = Gtk2::Button->new ('Quit');
$button->signal_connect (clicked => sub { Gtk2->main_quit });
$window->add ($button);
$window->show_all;
Gtk2->main;

look at her. window, button, signal, main loop. a whole lil app, like three lines of actual substance. iconic. 💅

🌸 ABSTRACT 🌸

Perl bindings to the 2.x series of the Gtk+ widget set. this module lets you write graphical user interfaces in a Perlish and object-oriented way, which means it frees you from the casting and memory management in C — but still stays very close in spirit to the original API. so you get the ease of Perl without the API going off and becoming something else entirely. balanced. ate. 💖

🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

the Gtk2 module lets a Perl developer use the Gtk+ graphical user interface library. wanna know more about Gtk+? go look at http://www.gtk.org.

the GTK+ Reference Manual is also a super handy companion when you're writing Gtk programs in any language — http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/. the Perl bindings follow the C API very closely, so the C reference documentation should be considered the canonical source. like, if there's a conflict, C wins, periodt.

wanna discuss gtk2-perl, ask questions, or flame/praise the authors? join gtk-perl-list@gnome.org at lists.gnome.org. the drama is welcome, apparently. 😭

also go peek at the gtk2-perl website and sourceforge project page: http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net ✨

🎀 INITIALIZATION 🎀

use Gtk2 qw/-init/;
use Gtk2 qw/-init -threads-init/;

two lil magic words you can pass at use time:

  • -init — equivalent to Gtk2->init, called to initialize GLIB and GTK+. just about every Gtk2-Perl script should do use Gtk2 -init. this initialization should happen before you use any other Gtk2 functions in your GUI applications. it initializes everything needed to operate the toolkit and parses some standard command line options. @ARGV gets adjusted accordingly, so your own code will never see those standard arguments. she eats your flags so you don't have to. 🍓
  • -threads-init — equivalent to Gtk2::Gdk::Threads->init, called to initialize/enable gdk's thread safety mechanisms so that gdk can be accessed from multiple threads when used in conjunction with Gtk2::Gdk::Threads->enter and Gtk2::Gdk::Threads->leave. if you invoke it as Gtk2::Gdk::Threads->init, it should be done before Gtk2->init is called. but if you do it via use Gtk2 -init -threads-init, the order does not matter. flexible queen. 👑

💅 EXPORTS 💅

Gtk2 exports nothing by default, but some constants are available upon request. very "you have to ask nicely" of her.

Tag: constants

  • GTK_PRIORITY_RESIZE
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_LOWEST
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_GTK
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_APPLICATION
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_THEME
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_RC
  • GTK_PATH_PRIO_HIGHEST
  • GDK_PRIORITY_EVENTS
  • GDK_PRIORITY_REDRAW
  • GDK_CURRENT_TIME

see Glib for other standard priority levels. 🌟

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

  • perl(1), Glib(3pm), Pango(3pm).
  • Gtk2::Gdk::Keysyms(3pm) contains a hash of key codes, culled from gdk/gdkkeysyms.h. keyboard lore, basically. ⌨️
  • Gtk2::api(3pm) describes how to map the C API into Perl, and some of the important differences in the Perl bindings. read this one fr fr.
  • Gtk2::Helper(3pm) contains stuff that makes writing Gtk2 programs a little easier. the little helper bestie. 🫶
  • Gtk2::SimpleList(3pm) makes the GtkListStore and GtkTreeModel a lot easier to use. huge.
  • Gtk2::Pango(3pm) exports various little-used but important constants you may need to work with pango directly. underrated constants, lowkey crucial.
  • Gtk2::index(3pm) lists the autogenerated api documentation pod files for Gtk2.
  • Gtk2 also provides code to make it relatively painless to create Perl wrappers for other GLib/Gtk-based libraries. see Gtk2::CodeGen, ExtUtils::PkgConfig, and ExtUtils::Depends. if you're writing bindings, you'll probably also be interested in Gtk2::devel, which is a supplement to Glib::devel and Glib::xsapi. the Binding Howto, at http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/doc/binding_howto.pod.html, ties it all together. that's the whole pipeline, bestie. ✨

👑 AUTHORS 👑

the gtk2-perl team — absolute legends, every single one:

 muppet <scott at asofyet dot org>
 Ross McFarland <rwmcfa1 at neces dot com>
 Torsten Schoenfeld <kaffeetisch at web dot de>
 Marc Lehmann <pcg at goof dot com>
 Göran Thyni <gthyni at kirra dot net>
 Jörn Reder <joern at zyn dot de>
 Chas Owens <alas at wilma dot widomaker dot com>
 Guillaume Cottenceau <gc at mandrakesoft dot com>

the way they built an entire Perl binding ecosystem… main character energy, all of them. 🌈

Copyright 2003-2011 by the gtk2-perl team.

this library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

this library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU Library General Public License for more details. (yes the all-caps is doing the most, that's on purpose, it's legal yelling. 💀)

you should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

ok that's the whole page, nothing skipped, every flag, every constant, every author, every license clause accounted for. slay. 💖

this has been the Gtk2(3) page, from perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-07-25 — thank u for coming to my ted talk, go build a window, ily, bye bestie 🦋✨🎀

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