September 2024

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc7 is released.

This is the seventh release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Fixing the 0.8.0-rc6 release tarball malformed issue

• This release merely fixes a missing examples/gtk-4/Makefile.am (sub)target entry, so the tarball also distributes the newly added examples/gtk-4/demos/*.scm files.

September 2024

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc6 is released.

This is the sixth release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

New interfaces

• New (g-golf support color) module

A color management module has been added. Documented under the Support Canyon -> Color Hollow section.

• Adding derived class custom layout-manager support

Derived class now support a #:layout-manager define-class option.

• nil

Users need a way to inform g-golf to not process some callback ffi 'out argument(s) (which can't be by using #f, as this mught be a valid ffi 'out arg value). To solve this, g-golf now defines a global nil variable (defined as 'nil). See the newly added layout manager demo for a concrete example of such a need and usage.

Examples

• Gtk-4 - Layout Manager

The upstream gtk4-demo layout-manager (transition) example has been ported to g-golf.

• Adwaita Demo

The following Adwaita Demo pages have been added:

AdwDemoPageButtons
AdwDemoPageToasts
AdwDemoPageBanners
AdwDemoPageAbout

Bug Fixing

• <vfunc>

<vfunc> instances must hold a reference to the <closure-callback> instance (not the <callback> instance).

• next-vfunc

Fixed to retreive the vfunc pointer offset from one of the class-direct-supers, recursively if needed, then grab and unlesss NULL, call the immediate direct super vfunc.

• g-golf-vfunc-closure

Enhanced to accept and (use if passed) an optional argument, vfunc-long-name, as vfunc callback instances must be cached against their long name, i.e. gdk-paintable-get-flags, gdk-paintable-snapshot ... (not get-flags, snapshot ...).

• g-callable-info-make-closure

When calling g-callable-info-create-closure (fixed to work with the new libffi api), we also need to call (and return the result of) g-callable-info-get-closure-native-address, as the native-ptr.

• ffi 'out arg values

scm->gi-argument has been enhanced to properly ignore ffi 'out args for which the value is nil.

scm->gi-argument has been fixed, when that applies, to properly set the (dereferenced) foreign (ffi 'out arg) pointer to its value.

• g-object-import-with-supers

For some still misterious reason, when automatically importing an object dependency, such as, for example, importing GtkApplication will trigger the import of (among many others ofc) the GtkLayoutManager, unless we call g-base-info-ref upon the info, those info maybe gc'ed.

Although this should actually never happen, as g-golf doesn't unref any GIObjectInfo instances (but it did 'misteriously' happen), to be on the safe side of things, g-golf (core) now calls g-base-info-ref upon the result of calling g-object-info-get-parent.

July 2024

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc.5 is released.

This is the fifth release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

New interfaces

• g-markup-escape-text
• gi-import-by-name

  new #:allow-constant? optional keyword argument

• GVariant
  GVariantClass
  GVariantType

  The GLib Variant, VariantType and VariantClass typelib entries are now imported. Testing has been so far somewhat limited, but for what it's worth, the AdwDemoPageTabView, added in this release, defines and uses a couple of g-variant-new-boolean based simple actions. However, they work iif g-simple-action-new-stateful calls pass #f (NULL) as their parameter-type arg, and therefore, (as stated by the upstream documentation), none of the action activate callback ever receives a valid g-variant arg value (it always is #f (NULL)). This needs further investigation, but you may (and even may prefer to) implement an hold an action state as/in a goops slot, i.e. in the (pages tab-view tab-view-demo-page) module, the icon?, loading?, needs-attention?, indicator? and muted? slots.

Enhancement

• Template and ui sxml files support

  Syntax highlighting support for the comments attribute has been added.

• g-closure-marshal

  (1) <closure> initialize method has been updated to not force the #:return-type and #:param-types initialize keyword arguments, as as GObject actually fills the GClosure structure with those (unless you are testing <closure> and plan to call the invoke g-golf method).

  (2) some GObject function/method GClosure arg(s) should preserve the GValue pointer when calling the user scheme closure, instead of extracting its value - for example, bind-property-full last two args expect a BindingTransformFunc GClosure, for which it is essential to preserve its second and third GValue arguments, as the user needs to actually set either one, the other or both.

  Note that wrt (2), there is no way to automatically detect which argument(s) of a callback require(s) a GValue pointer preservation prior to call the user scheme closure. Therefore, g-golf implements a (simple) mechanism to handle those situations, but it has to be maintained 'manually' - if you come across a similar need, not being covered by the existing implementation, let us know, we'll fix it. Those interested may search and read both the preserve-g-value-ptr? procedure code as well as the preceding comment, which briefly explains how it works, in the (g-golf hl-api callable) module.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  The Adwaita demo has been restructured, and now properly support the Dark Style desktop (or application) mode.

  The following Adwaita Demo pages have been added:

  AdwDemoPageAvatar
  AdwDemoPageSplitViews
  AdwDemoPageTabView

Bug Fixing

• <gtype-instance> g-param slots initialization

  It was a bug not to call g-inst-g-param-set-property, whether the instance initialization was passed an init-kw arg or whether the initialization has to use the p-spec default value - fixed.

• gi-import-registered with-methods? default value

  Removing the specialization default value for the with-methods? argument when the namespace is part of the namespace import exception list.

  The fix allows to automatically (gi) import GLib/GObject typelib component(s) that are not part of the manually (ffi) defined subset, such as the GVariant type, constructors and methods.

May 2024

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc-4 is released.

This is the fourth release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo
  
  The following Adwaita Demo pages have been added:

  AdwDemoPageCarousel
  AdwDemoPageClamp
  AdwDemoPageLists
  AdwDemoPageViewSwitcher

Apr 2024

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc-3 is released.

This is the third release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Dependencies

• Adwaita examples
  
  Adw-1 >= 1.5.0
  

  The adw1-demo has been updated, following upstream changes, so that most of its demo pages now inherit and/or use the AdwDialog class, which is available in Adwaita since 1.5.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  The 'Navigation View' and 'Style Classes' pages have been updated to inherit and/or use the AdwDialog Class.

  The 'Dialogs' page has been updated to use the AdwAlertDialog class. It also has been enhanced to properly support the async-api model, and, while running the alert dialog callback, to dismiss any previsouly added 'Toast' if any.

Bug fixing

• Autotool chain

  Changes has been made to support parallel installation as well as cross-compilation,

• Callback closure marshal(er)

  The callback closure marshal(er) has been fixed to support callback with 'inout and 'out argument(s).

• scm->gi-argument

  Fixed to allow all GDestroyNotify callback functions to be nullable by default.

Nov 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc-2 is released.

This is the second release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  The 'Dialogs' page has been added to the demo.

Bug fixing

• emit
  signal-emit

  Fixed to properly handle 'object extra arg(s) type. Prior to this fix, a call such (emit window 'add-toast toast), with window and toast being goops proxy instances, would raise an exception, as the extra args handler missed a proper dispatch clause and treatment for the 'object arg type,

Oct 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-rc-1 is released.

This is the first release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

New features

• Derived class
  GObject properties

  Derived classes slot exposed as a gobject property now also support the boolean, uint, float, double, flags, string, param and boxed types.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  The 'Style Classes' page has been added to the demo.

Sep 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-alpha-6 is released.

This is the sixth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Dependencies

• Core dependencies

  The guile-lib dependency has been removed from the core dependencies, as it effectively is only required to run the test-suite.

• Test Suite

  The test-suite requires guile-lib >= 0.2.5
  The test-suite no longer requires clutter.

• Adwaita examples
  
  Adw-1 >= 1.4.0
  

  The adw1-demo - which currently implements the main window, primary menu and first two pages (wip) - has been updated to correspond to the latest upstream version, which no longer uses the deprecated AdwLeaflet* classes. Instead, it uses the AdwNavigationSplitView, AdwNavigationView and AdwNavigationPage classes, available since 1.4.0.

New features

• Derived class
  GObject properties

  Derived classes slot exposed as a gobject property now also support the object type - Wip (supported type are now int, enum and object).

• disconnect

  New method, which calls the newly added g-signal-handler-disconnect binding.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  The adw1-demo - which currently implements the main window, primary menu and first two pages (wip) - has been updated to correspond to the latest upstream version, which no longer uses the deprecated AdwLeaflet* classes. Instead, it uses the AdwNavigationSplitView, AdwNavigationView and AdwNavigationPage classes, available since 1.4.0.

Bug fixing

• g-value-set-boxed

  Was silently setting the g-value to #f for opaque boxed type, fixed.

• connect
  signal-connect

  Now return the handler-id, needed to call disconnect.

Aug 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-a.5 is released.

This is the fifth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.4. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Dependencies

• Glib >= 2.73.0
  GObject >= 2.73.0

  G-Golf requires GObject-Introspection >= 1.72.0. This actually imposes Glib-2.0 >= 2.73.0, which itself imposes Gobject-2.0 >= 2.73.0.

New features

• Derived class
  GObject properties and signals

  Derived classes now support a mechanism that allow users to expose slots as gobject properties and define new signals.

• Templates

  This release adds support for templates, a mechanism and facilities exposed by GtkWidget to automate the procedure of creating composite widgets with GtkBuilder XML.

• Template and GtkBuilder ui files
  SXML support

  [ Currently in the examples/adw-1/adw1-demo/ui directory ]

  sxml-ui.el

  Emacs users should import this file in their .emacs file.

  This is an attempt to provide both indentation and font-lock support, so ui files editing becomes a more pleasant exprerience. It is a first draft and definitely an experimental attempt. Better then nothing (much better imo), but suggestions to improve this first and quite 'naive' draft would be welcome.

  Makefile

  Offered as an example of the simplest possible way to convert all *.scm files of a directory to their corresponding *.ui files.

Examples

• Adwaita Demo

  A G-Golf port of the Adwaita 1 demo. This is a work in progress, currently implementing the Adwaita 1 demo window, header bar, primary-menu (and the inspector, preferences and about actions and windows) as well as the Welcome and Leaflet pages:

  Note: Adwaita 1.4 (unavailable in distros at the time of this release) deprecates the AdwLeaflet* classes, in favor of the AdwNavigationView and AdwNavigationPage classes. We'll move the demo to use those when Adwaita 1.4 becomes available in dostros.

Bug fixing

• G-Golf core bugs

  A few G-Golf core bugs have been fixed, but none that we could expose here as 'user visible'. If you're nonetheless interested to find out what progress we made on that front, search the git logs for 'Fixing' or 'Bug fixing'.

• The peg-solitaire example

  An ABI change was made, by the Gtk team, in Gtk 4.10.0, to the gtk-css-provider-load-from-data function second argument, wHich is no longer defined as an array, but a utf8, and hence g-golf would fail, when using Gtk 4.10.0, to detect, compute and supply the third argument, which is the css string length - fixed.

Apr 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-a.4 is released.

This is the fourth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.3. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

New features

• Next-vfunc

  This release adds full support for a next-vfunc mechanism - which is to the GObject virtual method system what the next-method concept and mechanism is to the GOOPS (compute applicable) method system.

Examples

• Simple Paintable
  Animated Paintable

  New examples. Please note that these examples requires Guile-Cairo. They actually requires a patched version of guile-cairo that contains the following new interface (which is not in guile-cairo 1.11.2): cairo-pointer->context.

Bug fixing

• Missing <gobject> g-struct-fields

  At (load eval) time, the (g-golf defined) <gobject> class must be completed: retreive the class-struct and fill the <gobject> g-struct-fields slot - used by the vfunc mechanism.

Fev 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-a.3 is released.

This is the third release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.2. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Enhancement

• Skip Array Length Argument(s)

  This release implements skip array-length argument mechanism. This affects all functions and methods of any upstream (type)lib that accept one or more array argument(s), for which the function or method also expect an array length argument.

  Starting with this release, users don't have to pass those array length arg(s) (more accurately, users may not pass those arg(s) anymore), as G-Golf will supply those automatically. Note that this is also valid for arrays of uint8 - those arg(s) are 'array of chars', that users must provide as a string (as opposed to a list) - for example, see the peg-solitaire example, updated accordingly, so that the gtk-css-provider-load-from-data call does no longer provide the 'data' array length argument.

Examples

• All

  Updated, wrt the above enhancement, to call the g-application-run method 'without' the args length argument.

• Peg Solitaire

  In addition, updating the call to gtk-css-provider-load-from-data, removing the 'data' array length argument.

Bug fixing

• Callback and VFunc

  In G-Golf, both Callback and VFunc use one (identical) marshal procedure, g-golf-callback-closure-marshal, entirely written in scheme, which implements, in short, the foreign function interface (ffi) arg retrieval and transfornmation into their scheme representation, then call the callback of vfunc (user provided) scheme code, then sets the GI argument to the return value (if any).

  To obtain the ffi arg scheme representation values, G-Golf was calling gi-type-info-extract-ffi-return-value (a GI function, in the girffi module, not a G-Golf procedure) - but that function has some bug.

  G-Golf has now been updated so g-golf-callback-closure-marshal calls a 'self made' ffi-args->scm (see commit 6a30a12dd) for further details on this).

• Peg Solitaire

  The peg-solitaire example has been updated, as the Callback and VFunc bug fixed its snapshot-vfunc method. More specifically its width and height argument values are now correct, we no longer need to explicitly call get-intrinsic-width and get-intrinsic-height.

Jan 2023

G-Golf version 0.8.0-a.2 is released.

This is the second release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.1. For a complete list and description of all changes, see the G-Golf git summary and git log.

Dependencies

• GObject-Introspection-1.0 >= 1.72.0

  G-Golf uses GI girffi innterfaces, some only available since 1.72.0.

New interfaces

• allocate-c-struct

Examples

• Peg Solitaire

  The peg snapshots (which are what users drag while playing the game) now also have rounded corners. Before this improvment, they were being clipped by their <gtk-image> instance hosts, which use both a css border-radius style option and the overflow property, but users were dragging a squared rectangle snapshot.

• Drawing Widget

  New example, which demonstrates how implement a widget that does some custom drawing.

Performance

• ~15% improvment

  Note: by performance, until otherwise specified, we only refer to and measure how fast G-Golf imports the entire Gtk 4.0 typelib.

  After some changes made to the G-Golf main GI cache, importing Gtk-4.0 shows a ~15% improvement.

Bug fixing

• VFunc

  A VFunc specializer may also be a g-object class, as the newly added example demonstrates. Prior to this fix, a VFunc specializer was assumed to (always) be a g-interface class (as in the peg-solitaire example).

• GObject.TypeInstance

  GObject.TypeInstance fundamental class support fix. They must inherit <gtype-instance> and specify <gtype-class> as their metaclass.

Dec 2022

G-Golf version 0.8.0-a.1 is released.

This is the first release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available for testing.