Chapter 1. Introduction

PyGTK is a set of Python modules which provide a Python interface to GTK+. The primary web site for PyGTK is www.daa.com.au. The primary author of PyGTK is:

James Henstridge james@daa.com.au

Python is an extensible, object-oriented interpreted programming language which is provided with a rich set of modules providing access to a large number of operating system services, internet services (such as HTML, XML, FTP, etc.), graphics (including OpenGL, TK, etc.), string handling functions, mail services (IMAP, SMTP, POP3, etc.), multimedia (audio, JPEG) and cryptographic services. In addition there are many other modules available from third parties providing many other services. Python is licensed under terms similar to the LGPL license and is available for Linux, Unix , Windows and Macintosh operating systems. More information on Python is available at www.python.org. The primary Author of Python is:

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org

GTK (GIMP Toolkit) is a library for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed using the LGPL license, so you can develop open software, free software, or even commercial non-free software using GTK without having to spend anything for licenses or royalties.

It's called the GIMP toolkit because it was originally written for developing the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), but GTK has now been used in a large number of software projects, including the GNU Network Object Model Environment (GNOME) project. GTK is built on top of GDK (GIMP Drawing Kit) which is basically a wrapper around the low-level functions for accessing the underlying windowing functions (Xlib in the case of the X windows system). The primary authors of GTK are:

Peter Mattis petm@xcf.berkeley.edu

Spencer Kimball spencer@xcf.berkeley.edu

Josh MacDonald jmacd@xcf.berkeley.edu

GTK is essentially an object oriented application programmers interface (API). Although written completely in C, it is implemented using the idea of classes and callback functions (pointers to functions).

There is also a third component called GLib which contains a few replacements for some standard calls, as well as some additional functions for handling linked lists, etc. The replacement functions are used to increase GTK's portability, as some of the functions implemented here are not available or are nonstandard on other unixes such as g_strerror(). Some also contain enhancements to the libc versions, such as g_malloc that has enhanced debugging utilities.

This tutorial describes the Python interface to GTK+ and is based on the GTK+ Tutorial written by Tony Gale and Ian Main. PyGTK provides two interfaces to Python: a high level object-oriented interface and a lower level functional interface; this tutorial describes only the high level object-oriented interface. This tutorial attempts to document as much as possible of PyGTK, but is by no means complete.

This tutorial assumes some understanding of Python, and how to create and run Python programs. If you are not familiar with Python, please read the Python Tutorial first. This tutorial does not assume an understanding of GTK; if you are learning PyGTK to learn GTK, please comment on how you found this tutorial, and what you had trouble with. This tutorial does not describe how to compile or install Python, GTK+ or PyGTK.

This tutorial is based on:

GTK+ 1.2.9
Python 1.5.2
PyGTK 0.6.6 (part of PyGNOME 1.0.53)

The examples were written and tested on a RedHat 7.1 system.

This document is a "work in progress". Please look for updates on www.moeraki.com.

I would very much like to hear of any problems you have learning PyGTK from this document, and would appreciate input as to how it may be improved. Please see the section on Contributing for further information.

moe: 96:1095$ pygtkconsole.py
Python 2.2.2, PyGTK 1.99.14 (Gtk+ 2.0.6)
Interactive console to manipulate GTK+ widgets.
>>> w=GtkWindow()
>>> b=GtkButton('Hello')
>>> w.add(b)
>>> def hello(b):
...     print "Hello, World!"
... 
>>> b.connect('clicked', hello)
5
>>> w.show_all()
>>> Hello, World!
Hello, World!
Hello, World!

>>> bl=b.children()[0]
>>> bl.set_text("Hi There")
>>>