Glade Interface Designer is a

graphical user interface builder A graphical user interface builder (or GUI builder), also known as GUI designer or sometimes RAD IDE, is a software development tool that simplifies the creation of GUIs by allowing the designer to arrange graphical control elements (often calle ...

for

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...

, with additional components for

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

. In its third version, Glade is

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

–independent, and does not produce code for events, but rather an

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

file that is then used with an appropriate binding (such as GtkAda for use with the

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, Tur ...

programming language). See

List of language bindings for GTK As shown in the table below, GTK has a range of bindings for various languages that implement some or all of its feature set. GTK 2 is no longer supported, meaning some languages below do not have current GTK support. * GObject (GOB) was initiall ...

for the available ones. Glade is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

distributed under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...

History and development

The first Glade release, version 0.1, was made on 18 April 1998. Glade 3 was released on 12 August 2006. According to the Glade Web site, the most noticeable differences for the end-user are: *

Undo Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document, reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs, such as graphic processing, undo will negate the las ...

and redo support in all operations. * Support for multiple open projects. * Removal of code generation. * Contextual help system with

Devhelp Devhelp is a GTK/ GNOME browser for API documentation; it works natively with gtk-doc (which is the API reference format for GTK/GNOME documentation). It is integrated in GNOME development tools such as GNOME Builder, Glade and Anjuta, and is a ...

Most of the difference is in the internals. Glade-3 is a complete rewrite, in order to take advantage of the new features of GTK+ 2 and the

GObject The GLib Object System, or GObject, is a free software library providing a portable object system and transparent cross-language interoperability. GObject is designed for use both directly in C programs to provide object-oriented C-based APIs ...

system (Glade-3 was started when Glade-1 hadn't yet been ported to GTK+ 2). Therefore, the Glade-3 codebase is smaller and allows new interesting things, including: * Catalogs of "pluggable" widgets. This means that external libraries can provide their set of widgets at runtime and Glade will detect them. In fact, Glade 3 supports only standard GTK widgets; GNOME UI and DB widgets are provided separately. * The various Glade Tools (palette, editor, etc.) are implemented as widgets. This allows for easier integration in like

Anjuta Anjuta is an integrated development environment written for the GNOME project. It has support for C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python and Vala programming language. Anjuta DevStudio The goal of Anjuta DevStudio is to provide a customizable and ...

, and makes it easier to change the Glade UI. On 5 April 2011, two parallel installable stable Glade versions were released: * Glade 3.8: That includes all support for GTK+ up till version 2.24. This version is to serve as a decent migration path for older projects migrating to GTK+ 3.0. * Glade 3.10: That includes support only for widgets that are still included in GTK+ 3.0 and additionally drops support for Libglade. On 11 June 2015 Glade 3.19.0 was released. It depends at least on GTK+ 3.16.0. Among many bug fixes this version is the first to support the widgets GtkStack, GtkHeaderBar and GtkSidebar.

GtkBuilder

''GtkBuilder'' is the

format that the Glade Interface Designer uses to save its forms. These documents can then be used in conjunction with the GtkBuilder object to instantiate the form using

. ''GladeXML'' is the

format that was used with conjunction with libglade, which is now deprecated. Glade Interface Designer automatically generates all the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

for a

graphical control element A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct ...

. The "Gtk.Builder class" allows user interfaces to be designed without writing code. The class describes the interface in an

Extensible Markup Language Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

(XML) file and then loads the XML description at runtime and creating the objects automatically. The Glade Interface Designer allows creation of the user interface in a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

manner. The description of the user interface is independent from the programming language being used.

Code sketching

Code sketchers are software applications that help a user create source code from a GladeXML file. Most code sketchers create source code which uses libglade and a GladeXML file to create the GUI. Some sketchers are able to create raw code that does not need the GladeXML file. The table below compares basic information about GladeXML code sketcher packages.

References

External links

* *
Binaries for OS X
{{GUI builders Free computer libraries GNOME Developer Tools GTK Software that uses GTK User interface builders User interface markup languages

History and development

GtkBuilder

Code sketching

See also

References

External links