GTK+ 3.16 Released With Mir Backend, Native OpenGL Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GTK+ 3.16 Released With Mir Backend, Native OpenGL Support

It's GNOME 3.16 week! Matthias Clasen checked in the important GTK+ 3.16.0 package prior to the deadline tonight...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GTK-3.16-Toolkit-Released

[uid313]

Wayland

I look more forward to improved Wayland backend support in GTK.

GTK 3.14 has Wayland support, but is rather buggy and incomplete and not really usable.
I look forward to 3.16 and hope that the Wayland support is in much better shape.

[BlackStar]

So how do I get rid of CSD which is messing with my DE integrity ? Without recompiling everything I mean.

You switch to a different WM, like KDE. CSD is an integral part of Gnome, you can't have one without the other.

[blackout23]

I look more forward to improved Wayland backend support in GTK.

GTK 3.14 has Wayland support, but is rather buggy and incomplete and not really usable.
I look forward to 3.16 and hope that the Wayland support is in much better shape.

I have no problems with Gnome 3.16 on Wayland. I'm using it as default on my latop with nouveau. Only downside is that, copy and paste between native applications and Xwayland doesn't work yet. But that not a big problem for me.

[Luke]

Top level window transparency is broken with compiz or metacity using Gtk3.16

I tested the prerelease version of Gtk3.16 a couple days ago, and ran into some issues with transparency. Some windows cannot become transparent when using Compiz or Metacity (set to composite) and get a black background, others work OK. I am working with a transparent theme for the gtk3 verrsion of mate-panel, and normally run gtk3.14 right now. I tried the 3.15.12 development version from the ricotz PPA and things mostly worked except for two ugly bugs: Scrollbars that disappear when the window is not active, and worst of all failed transparency on all the transparent menus I spent so much time working on!

Here are some clues: transparency works just fine in mutter or gnome-shell, even though those are still the GNOME 3.14 versions on my box. Even more interestingly, if the panel is started with mutter running, most but not all of the transparent windows still work after switching back to compiz. Those menus which are children of another menu revert to black backgrounds. If started with compiz and switched to Mutter the exact opposite behavior occurs, with transparency working only in child menus and some of the right-click menus. This seems to relate to an issue with Gtk communicating with the window manager when the program calling it is first initialized. This seems to work in mutter (and gnome-shell) but not work in compiz or in metacity(with compositing enabled). In Gtk3.14 all the transparent items except the calendar window work in compiz, mutter, cinnamon, gnome-shell, and metacity with compositing enabled. That one outlier, the calendar window is something I have been trying to track down for a week.

I ruled out any MATE code as the culprit by temporarily setting my theme to render all popup menus with a fully transparent background in all apps, and found the same behavior in Gedit 3.10(as shipped by Ubuntu) and in Nemo. Again it is which window manager was running when the app was started.
I rolled back to gtk3.14 but expect that Gtk3.16 will be in the next version of Ubuntu after Vivid, meaning it will be in the alpha sometime around May. Ubuntu uses compiz in Unity, though I do not know if they are going to put enough effort into Compiz with all the Mir stuff to bother fixing this for Unity's transparent widgets assuming they run into issues too. Hopefully someone will patch Compiz so it can talk to the new version of GTK properly, otherwise I will eventually have to either find another compositor with similar features that does or pin Gtk3 at version 3.14.

[Julius]

Ah cool, I hope GTK support for mir (Ubuntu Touch) will lead to quicker ports of older N900/Maemo (GTK2 though) apps to Ubuntu Touch

[dh04000]

Hopefully someone will patch Compiz so it can talk to the new version of GTK properly, otherwise I will eventually have to either find another compositor with similar features that does or pin Gtk3 at version 3.14.

File a bug report and work with the Compiz devs. Best way to see things fixed, as always.

[Luke]

Don't know if the Compiz folks would consider this a bug or a corner case

File a bug report and work with the Compiz devs. Best way to see things fixed, as always.

I don't know if any other GTK theme than mine uses transparency between a top level or a popup window and the desktop(or other unrelated application windows). Cairo-dock works right through this problem, as does the option in mate-panel to manually make the panel itself transparent. I don't even know if this is supposed to work or I'm just using an accidental feature to do something normally done with direct cairo background setting.

I did find that a rollback of Gtk all the way to 3.12 also broke transparency-and hard broke it for the windows in question in ALL window managers. Therefore, I don't know if this is a compiz bug, a requrement that compiz or some other package be built with the GTK version in question. Compiz as installed does not even depend on Gtk at all, but I do not know about at build time. One more possiblity is that my own MATE packages would need to be build against the version of GTK in use in order for transparency to work.

There are other bugs as well to dropping Gtk3.16 into Ubuntu, mostly some minor rendering issues. At least the theme issues are nowhere near what they were last time around other than this transparency issue. If this does not work when Ubuntu brings in Gtk-3.16 in the sucessor to Vivid that would definately call for a bug report against compiz. but I don't know if a bug report of problems with a very unusual theme with a version of Gtk nor only used in Ubuntu GNOME as updated from a PPA would be considered valid.

A bug report against Gtk3 would would have this result: GNOME uses transparency in the defauilt shell theme exactly as I am copying-but in mutter, for which gnome-shell is a plugin. Transparency works perfectly in Mutter. GNOME devs have stated over and over that they do not care about any problems with Gtk3 other than in GNOME apps. Real worst case is I have to rename Gtk3.14 so it can install alongside later Gtk3 and replace all the names for it in my MATE packages with what I would probably call "MTK3" for mate-toolkit and build against it. I REALLY don't want to have to do that. I do not know if the theme work I've done is even possible in Gtk2, I got nowhere trying even to split out the main menu from application menu themes back in October with Gtk2.

Other than that, it seems all other devs using Gtk3 can either write around it, fork it, or pin it.

[Krejzi]

I have no problems with Gnome 3.16 on Wayland. I'm using it as default on my latop with nouveau. Only downside is that, copy and paste between native applications and Xwayland doesn't work yet. But that not a big problem for me.

Sadly, that didn't make it into mutter 3.16.0. But fear not, weston has had the functionality for some time now and mutter now has patches for that too!

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738312

[dh04000]

I don't know if any other GTK theme than mine uses transparency between a top level or a popup window and the desktop(or other unrelated application windows)....................Other than that, it seems all other devs using Gtk3 can either write around it, fork it, or pin it.

Well, you could file a bug report for both (just throw things at the wall), and if one report is kept, while the other doesn't then you still get your fix either way (just see what sticks). Let the up-streams figure out if this report applies to them or not.