gtk2-ng/NEWS

April 2026: GTK2 is not dead! This is a fork created by
Daemonratte with the encouragement and support of the
devuanusers.com community with new patches and new features
to come. A summary of what's been done and roadmap for
future improvements:

Overview of Changes from GTK+ 2.24.33 to gtk2-ng
================================================

* Continue GTK+ 2.24 maintenance as gtk2-ng
* Preserve GTK+ 2 API and ABI compatibility
* Preserve existing GTK+ 2 features, behaviour, theming, modules and
  legacy code paths where possible
* Integrate selected downstream GTK+ 2 fixes
* Integrate selected safe improvements from other GTK+ 2 maintenance forks

* Build:
 - Improve compatibility with current Autoconf, Automake, Libtool and
   gtk-doc versions
 - Update autogen.sh handling for newer Automake/aclocal installations
 - Replace obsolete Autoconf macros with modern equivalents
 - Use AC_CHECK_TOOL for nm detection
 - Fix duplicate Automake variable warnings in generated build fragments
 - Add missing build-system entries for shared internal pixdata helper code
 - Fix parallel-build ordering for generated GTK type headers
 - Use a UTF-8 locale when generating the built-in icon cache
 - Add configure options to disable optional X11 extensions:
   XRandR, XFixes, XComposite and XDamage
 - Improve X11/Xext/XShm/XInput related configure checks
 - Keep gtk-doc optional

* GObject Introspection:
 - Fix GDK and GTK GIR generation with newer g-ir-scanner versions
 - Add missing internal include paths and build defines for introspection
 - Filter private/internal GTK headers from Gtk-2.0.gir generation
 - Add identifier and symbol prefixes where needed
 - Remove duplicate gtk-doc return annotations that confused modern
   introspection parsing

* Compiler warnings:
 - Fix warnings produced by newer GCC and Clang versions
 - Fix incompatible function pointer warnings in tests and demos
 - Fix stricter callback type warnings in GtkItemFactory test code
 - Fix stricter GLib type-propagation warnings for g_object_ref() and
   g_object_ref_sink()
 - Fix missing and implicit function declaration warnings
 - Fix unused-variable, set-but-not-used and misleading-indentation warnings
 - Fix const qualifier warnings
 - Preserve symbol attributes in generated alias definition files
 - Silence false-positive array-bounds diagnostics in old GTK text segment
   allocation code without changing the allocation strategy
 - Avoid broad warning suppression where local source fixes are possible

* Private data:
 - Modernize many GTK and GDK private-data implementations
 - Replace g_type_class_add_private() and G_TYPE_INSTANCE_GET_PRIVATE()
   with G_ADD_PRIVATE and generated instance-private accessors where safe
 - Keep public structs, public headers and exported symbols compatible
 - Preserve old widget->priv style access where required for GTK+ 2
   compatibility

* GLib and GObject modernization:
 - Replace selected g_memdup() calls with g_memdup2()
 - Replace deprecated g_value_get_char() and g_value_set_char() usage with
   signed-char variants
 - Replace selected deprecated GBookmarkFile application-info APIs
 - Replace selected deprecated recent-item timestamp APIs with GDateTime-based
   APIs
 - Replace g_test_trap_fork() with g_test_trap_subprocess()
 - Replace deprecated GParameter and g_object_newv() usage in GtkBuilder
   internals
 - Replace selected deprecated Pango parser helpers in gtk-icon-sizes parsing
 - Replace deprecated GCompletion usage in GtkCombo with local completion
   logic
 - Replace deprecated g_pattern_match_string() usage where safe
 - Remove unnecessary type-system initialization from helper code where safe

* Time handling:
 - Improve internal Y2038 safety without changing public ABI
 - Convert selected internal timestamp storage to wider integer types
 - Add safe conversion helpers where public APIs still expose time_t
 - Replace selected GTimeVal and g_get_current_time() usage
 - Improve internal timestamp handling in recent-file, file, icon/theme and
   related code paths
 - Preserve public time_t based APIs for ABI compatibility

* GtkRecentManager:
 - Store recent-file timestamps internally in a safer representation
 - Preserve the public time_t based API
 - Add safe conversion and clamping for public timestamp access
 - Modernize bookmark timestamp handling with GDateTime APIs

* GtkFileChooser:
 - Add an icon/grid view mode
 - Keep the classic list view available
 - Add switching between list view and icon view
 - Add separate pixbuf/model handling for list-view and icon-view icons
 - Add separate icon sizing for list view and icon view
 - Add icon-view zoom controls
 - Add Ctrl + mouse wheel zoom support in icon view
 - Improve icon-view zoom invalidation and layout updates
 - Improve scaling of small upscaled icons
 - Cache shared file chooser theme icons
 - Clear the file chooser icon cache when the icon theme changes
 - Update icon sizing when icon theme or monitor metrics change
 - Fix crashes when switching between list and icon views
 - Guard hidden-file and backup-file GFileInfo access by checking whether
   the attributes are present before reading them

* GtkFileSelection:
 - Fix missing pwd.h declarations for home-directory completion
 - Define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500 where needed for getpwnam(), setpwent(),
   getpwent() and endpwent()
 - Preserve the old GtkFileSelection widget and completion behaviour

* Icon cache and pixdata:
 - Add shared internal pixdata helper code
 - Use the shared pixdata helper in gtk-update-icon-cache
 - Replace deprecated GdkPixdata usage in selected internal code
 - Replace deprecated gdk_pixbuf_new_from_inline() usage in selected code
 - Keep the existing icon cache file format compatible
 - Improve icon cache pixdata validation
 - Remove invalid temporary icon cache files after validation failure
 - Ignore image files placed directly in the top-level icon theme directory

* Module loading:
 - Avoid falling back to loading GTK modules from the current working
   directory
 - Preserve normal GTK module search paths, absolute module paths and
   libtool .la fallback handling
 - Preserve support for theme engines, input modules and print backends

* X11:
 - Add support for the _NET_SYSTEM_TRAY_PADDING system tray hint
 - Apply tray-manager-provided GtkStatusIcon padding according to tray
   orientation
 - Update tray padding dynamically when tray orientation or padding changes
 - Keep default tray padding at zero when no tray hint is provided
 - Add OpenBSD process lookup support for GtkMountOperation on X11
 - Replace deprecated pango_unichar_direction() usage in X11 keymap code
   with an internal FriBidi-based helper
 - Modernize selected GDK thread initialization code

* Printing:
 - Preserve CUPS and PPD-related printing functionality
 - Preserve print backend module loading
 - Preserve the file print backend
 - Mark the LPR print backend as accepting both PDF and PostScript data
 - Fix module path handling so print backends can be found from build and
   install prefixes
 - Keep the existing GTK+ 2 print backend model
 - Improve selected CUPS backend warning and string handling without changing
   printing behaviour

* Quartz:
 - Add support for depth-1 Quartz images and drawable sources

* Text and Pango:
 - Add an internal base-direction helper using FriBidi
 - Replace deprecated pango_find_base_dir() usage in selected GTK widgets
 - Centralize text base-direction logic for GtkEntry, GtkTextBTree and
   GtkTextView

* GtkBuilder:
 - Replace deprecated GParameter usage internally
 - Replace g_object_newv() with g_object_new_with_properties()
 - Preserve GtkBuilder object construction behaviour

* GtkCombo:
 - Replace deprecated GCompletion usage
 - Preserve the old case-sensitive Alt+Tab inline completion behaviour

* Tests, demos and tools:
 - Fix GtkItemFactory callback type mismatches in test programs
 - Fix test code passing too many arguments to create_menu()
 - Fix gtk-demo Tool Palette handling for unsupported stock/demo item IDs
 - Fix warnings in documentation helper tools
 - Replace mallinfo() with mallinfo2() in test code when available, with
   mallinfo() retained as fallback
 - Remove deprecated gtk-doc @Varargs annotations



Future Plans for gtk2-ng
========================

* Continue gtk2-ng as a conservative GTK+ 2.24 maintenance fork
* Preserve GTK+ 2 API and ABI compatibility
* Keep applications built for GTK+ 2.24.33 working with future gtk2-ng
  releases
* Preserve existing GTK+ 2 features, behaviour, theming, modules and
  legacy code paths
* Keep changes conservative and avoid unnecessary behaviour changes

* Build and compiler cleanup:
 - Remove remaining compiler warnings with modern GCC and Clang versions
 - Remove remaining deprecation warnings by modernizing the affected code
 - Continue improving compatibility with modern build tools
 - Keep gtk2-ng buildable on supported Unix-like platforms
 - Keep optional components optional where possible

* Bug fixing:
 - Continue fixing regressions, crashes and long-standing GTK+ 2 bugs
 - Continue fixing issues found by downstream users and applications
 - Keep compatibility fixes small, reviewable and ABI-safe

* Performance and responsiveness:
 - Improve performance where this can be done without changing behaviour
 - Reduce unnecessary CPU and memory overhead
 - Keep GTK+ 2 responsive on older hardware
 - Improve responsiveness in large directories and slow filesystems
 - Avoid blocking the UI on network mounts where possible

* GtkFileChooser:
 - Continue improving the new icon view
 - Improve thumbnail handling for icon view
 - Add best-effort thumbnail generation for image-heavy directories
 - Avoid aggressive thumbnail retry loops
 - Add asynchronous loading for very large directories
 - Add asynchronous loading for slow or network-backed folders
 - Add an optional preview panel
 - Keep the classic list view available
 - Keep switching between list view and icon view lightweight
 - Preserve existing GtkFileChooser API and behaviour

* Themes and engines:
 - Keep traditional GTK+ 2 theme engines working
 - Improve theme-engine loading from system and custom GTK paths
 - Preserve support for existing GTK+ 2 themes
 - Preserve support for existing icon themes
 - Improve compatibility with distributions that package GTK+ 2 engines
   separately

* XDG path support:
 - Add support for XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
 - Keep support for ~/.gtkrc-2.0
 - Keep support for GTK2_RC_FILES
 - Add support for XDG_DATA_HOME/themes
 - Add support for XDG_DATA_HOME/icons
 - Keep support for ~/.themes and ~/.icons
 - Add XDG-aware lookup paths without removing legacy paths
 - Preserve existing GTK_PATH behaviour
 - Preserve backwards compatibility with existing user configurations

* YTK and Ardour:
 - Review Ardour's YTK GTK+ 2 fork for portable, ABI-safe improvements
 - Backport useful YTK features where they can be added without breaking
   GTK+ 2 compatibility
 - Review YTK touch input support for possible gtk2-ng integration
 - Review YTK smooth scrolling and input-event improvements for possible
   gtk2-ng integration
 - Review YTK macOS improvements for possible gtk2-ng integration
 - Avoid importing Ardour-specific code that only makes sense for Ardour
 - Keep gtk2-ng usable as a general GTK+ 2 replacement, not an
   application-specific toolkit

* Other GTK+ 2 maintenance forks:
 - Continue reviewing stefan11111's GTK+ 2 fork for safe improvements
 - Backport useful fixes from stefan11111's fork where they preserve GTK+ 2
   features and compatibility
 - Avoid importing changes that remove functionality or narrow platform
   support

* Printing:
 - Add libppd support for legacy PPD-based printer options with newer CUPS
 - Preserve existing CUPS 2.x printing support
 - Preserve legacy PPD workflows where possible
 - Keep GTK+ 2 print backend behaviour compatible with existing
   applications
 - Avoid requiring separate GTK+ 2 builds for different CUPS generations

* Platform support:
 - Preserve GNU/Linux support
 - Preserve BSD support where possible
 - Preserve macOS support where possible
 - Preserve Windows/ReactOS support where possible
 - Keep portability in mind when modernizing GLib, GDK and GTK internals

* Project identity:
 - Choose a better long-term project name
 - Keep the project clearly identifiable as a GTK+ 2 maintenance fork
 - Avoid misleading compatibility or trademark implications