This is third post related to my new project – migration of SWT from GTK+ 2.x to GTK+ 3.x .
In order to successfully build SWT with GTK+ 3.x all deprecations must be resolved. Big chunk of deprecated methods are GDK methods.
What is GDK ?
GDK is GIMP Drawing Kit. Wikipedia states that GDK “is a computer graphics library that acts as a wrapper around the low-level drawing and windowing functions provided by the underlying graphics system….GDK lies between the X server and the GTK+ library, handling basic rendering such as drawing primitives, raster graphics (bitmaps), cursors, fonts, as well as window events and drag-and-drop functionality.” ( more on GDK here )
GDK has a lot of tools for most of the use cases that one might need. I have found very informative GDK reference manual on their website .
What is GIMP ?
If GDK is GIMP Drawing Kit, it would be important to find out – What is GIMP. Thankfully GIMP has huge website that describes what it does in many languages. If you are interested, please visit http://www.gimp.org to find out more.
Making story short – GIMP is open-source drawing software used for image editing, free-form drawing and other manipulation with images and photos.
Image is taken from: http://redskiesatnight.com
GDK was originally developed for GIMP, however it is used in many places including SWT as GIMP toolkit called GTK+. With new release of GTK+, several steps needed to be taken to successfully migrate from old GTK+ 2.x to new GTK+ 3.x. As I have already mentioned - one of the major steps is to implement Cairo library for drawing instead of deprecated GDK methods.
