This document describes most of the PyGTK version 2.0 through 2.6 classes and their methods and associated functions. Deprecated classes, functions and methods have been specifically left out of this reference though classes that have become deprecated since PyGTK 2.0 have been left in but annotated with a deprecation warning. I have attempted to document as much of the PyGTK API as I can but there are undoubtedly errors and omissions. If you discover any of these please send me email at <finlay@moeraki.com> or file a bug report at bugzilla.gnome.org for the pygtk project. Specific areas that have not been documented include:
This reference describes the API for PyGTK as of version 2.5.0+ and assumes that the additional API changes for version 2.6 may be significant. There will undoubtedly be changes that are not reflected in this reference. The differences in the API between version 2.0 and previous versions are denoted in this reference with a Note that describes the availability of the object, constructor, method or function. Any of these that do not have a notation can be assumed to be available in all versions of PyGTK from 2.0 and up. In the case of properties and signals the availability is dependent on the version of the underlying GTK+, GDK or Pango libraries. These will be annotated appropriately in a similar fashion. The source code must be consulted if this reference and your version of PyGTK seem to differ. You are encouraged to use the latest version of PyGTK that is available. See the PyGTK homepage for more information and more resources on how to use PyGTK as well as help in its development.
The Reference contains a chapter for each PyGTK module (that corresponds to the underlying GTK+ library) containing the class descriptions. The second chapter illustrates the PyGTK class hierarchy covering the gobject, gtk, gtk.gdk and pango modules.
The class descriptions are arranged alphabetically within the chapters. Currently there are five module chapters:
| The gobject module | The classes that are included in the gobject module of PyGTK and are accessed similar to: gobject.GObject. These classes are the base object classes that the gtk and gtk.gdk module classes are built on. |
| The gtk module | The classes that are included in the gtk module of PyGTK and are accessed similar to: gtk.Widget. These classes are the "higher" level widget classes that provide most of the user interface widgets used for application development. |
| The gtk.gdk module | The classes that are included in the gtk.gdk module of PyGTK. These classes are "lower" level classes that provide more fundamental capabilities that the gtk module widgets are built upon. These classes provide an abstract interface to the underlying window system (either X Window System or Microsoft Windows). |
| The gtk.glade module | The classes that are included in the gtk.glade module of PyGTK. These classes provide access to the libglade functions that allow the dynamic loading of user interfaces from XML descriptions. |
| The pango module | The classes that are included in the pango module of PyGTK. These classes provide access to the Pango text layout and rendering engines. PyGTK supports a subset of the full Pango capability: mainly the high level layout capabilities exposed by the pango.Layout objects. The low level rendering capabilities have not been exposed mostly because there isn't a full GObject interface to the underlying Pango data structures. It's also likely that the rendering capabilities require more performance that Python can provide. |
The atk module classes will be added in a later version of this Reference.
The major changes in this document since version 1.9 include:
descriptions of new GTK+ 2.2 and 2.4 classes:
Descriptions of new GTK+ 2.6 classes:
a reference page in each module chapter containing descriptions of or links to all of the functions defined in a module.
a reference page in each module chapter containing descriptions of all of the constants defined in a module.
additional methods, functions, properties and signals added for GTK+ 2.2, GTK+ 2.4, GTK+ 2.6, PyGTK 2.2, PyGTK 2.4, PyGTK 2.6, PyGTK 2.8 and PyGTK 2.10.
Descriptions of new GTK+ 2.10 classes:
new in PyGTK 2.10, the Unix print module gtk.unixprint.
documentation on the Accessibilty Tool Kit atk.