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GTK+ renamed to GTK

The GTK+ toolkit project has, after extensive deliberation, decided to remove the "+" from its name. "Over the years, we had discussions about removing the '+' from the project name. The 'plus' was added to 'GTK' once it was moved out of the GIMP sources tree and the project gained utilities like GLib and the GTK type system, in order to distinguish it from the previous, in-tree version. Very few people are aware of this history, and it's kind of confusing from the perspective of both newcomers and even expert users; people join the wrong IRC channel, the URLs on wikis are fairly ugly, etc."


From:  Emmanuele Bassi via gtk-devel-list <gtk-devel-list-AT-gnome.org>
To:  GTK Devel List <gtk-devel-list-AT-gnome.org>
Subject:  Project rename to "GTK"
Date:  Wed, 6 Feb 2019 10:03:55 +0000
Message-ID:  <CALnHYQHDh3jmo3z7_p4+Pr4c6h-pzWH1z51+1=SCUy5hcq3Gbw@mail.gmail.com>
Archive-link:  Article

Hi all;

tl;dr: GTK is GTK, not GTK+. The documentation has been updated, and the
pkg-config file for the future 4.0 major release is now called "gtk4"

over the years, we had discussions about removing the "+" from the project
name. The "plus" was added to "GTK" once it was moved out of the GIMP
sources tree and the project gained utilities like GLib and the GTK type
system, in order to distinguish it from the previous, in-tree version. Very
few people are aware of this history, and it's kind of confusing from the
perspective of both newcomers and even expert users; people join the wrong
IRC channel, the URLs on wikis are fairly ugly, etc.

With the move to Git, years ago, we had to add a couple of hacks to allow
for the "plus" to stay in the repository browsing UI; those hacks were
dropped once we moved to GitLab. We discussed again during IRC meetings and
hackfests whether to drop the "plus", and we finally decided to do so.

With the work in the master branch towards the 4.0 release, it's finally
time to say goodbye to the "plus" in "GTK+".

The documentation is updated so that the project in named consistently.

The removal of the plus has a side effect on the name of the pkg-config
file for GTK 4; additionally, since we don't break API across the same
major version, having a fully qualified major.minor version in the
pkg-config file is redundant. This means that the pkg-config file for GTK 4
is going to be called "gtk4".

Incidentally, the IRC channel on irc.gnome.org is now called "#gtk";
there's a re-direct in place, so if you join "#gtk+" you'll end up in the
right place.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

-- 
https://www.bassi.io
[@] ebassi [@gmail.com]
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GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 8, 2019 18:10 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (7 responses)

Shouldn't it really be renamed from “Gimp ToolKit” to something else by now too?

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 8, 2019 19:20 UTC (Fri) by newren (guest, #5160) [Link] (3 responses)

Are you thinking something along the lines of the Gnome ToolKit, or perhaps the GTK ToolKit?

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 10, 2019 23:03 UTC (Sun) by codyharrington (guest, #130219) [Link] (2 responses)

I believe the name is:

GNU's Not Unix Image Manipulation Program Tool Kit

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 11, 2019 9:21 UTC (Mon) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link] (1 responses)

I won't reply properly to this, because the expected result of infinitely many replies would not be ideal.

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 11, 2019 16:10 UTC (Mon) by newren (guest, #5160) [Link]

Ah, c'mon, it's begging for someone to point out that folks shouldn't confuse GDK and GTK, where GDK is the GTK Development Kit[1]...and then fully expand that.

[1] See e.g. https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3139 and a few other places; some locations sadly claim a different acronym expansion for GDK, but then you lose two words when fully expanding it modulo recursion -- who would want that?

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 8, 2019 20:40 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] (2 responses)

GTK doesn't expand to anything. It's just "GTK".

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 8, 2019 20:44 UTC (Fri) by newren (guest, #5160) [Link] (1 responses)

Will https://www.gtk.org/ be updated to reflect this?

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 8, 2019 23:16 UTC (Fri) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link]

Yes; a refresh of the GTK website is long overdue. We're already working on a replacement.

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 9, 2019 8:55 UTC (Sat) by birdie (guest, #114905) [Link] (2 responses)

Finally.

Also + is associated with C++.

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 9, 2019 22:15 UTC (Sat) by seneca6 (guest, #63916) [Link] (1 responses)

Only half-way! (SCNR)

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 11, 2019 18:24 UTC (Mon) by jengelh (guest, #33263) [Link]

Remember “gtkmm”? GTK+-- essentially was one step forward and two backwards ;-)

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 9, 2019 10:20 UTC (Sat) by andy_shev (subscriber, #75870) [Link] (4 responses)

Better if they would fix bugs with provided patches...

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 10, 2019 21:06 UTC (Sun) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

"But people love our bugs!"

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 11, 2019 16:36 UTC (Mon) by kmweber (guest, #114635) [Link]

"We have the best bugs, believe me. Everybody says so. They're beautiful."

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 11, 2019 11:45 UTC (Mon) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link]

https://xkcd.com/1172/ :) Children are freezing!

GTK+ renamed to GTK

Posted Feb 14, 2019 15:42 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

> Better if they would fix bugs with provided patches...

"That never happens on kernel mailing-lists!" he said, preparing to throw a rock at the eerily transparent walls.


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