XFCE project released a new development version of its Xfce Foundation Classes, which is a “set of integrated C++ classes for developing Xfce applications on UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux”. Here you gain access to the full annoucement (description, minimum dependencies, enhancements from 4.3.0, fixes and, of course, packages downloads).
XFce 4.3.1 development release
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Eugenia Loli
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index.xhtml == index.html
Thats a XFC 4.3.1 release and not XFCE!
People, please be more precise when you make news titles!
Confusing titles like this potentially produces bad news!
Right on! 🙂
Had a puzzled look on my face as well, as I track the dev-mailinglist, and had heard no such thing.
Hi! Is XFCE written in C++ since the foundation classes are? I was just surprised, I had always thought they were written in pure GLib-style C. Do they utilize gtkmm?
– Simon
No. The foundation classes are to allow people to write XFCE apps in c++.
I’m not sure Simon, but it is interesting that they’ve started this framework rather than using Gtkmm.
I wonder how they compare. Gtkmm seems to be “just another binding” when in reality it should be a bigger player. But I guess the current gtk/gnome developer mindset is to bypass C++ completely and go straight to a higher level, ala Python or C#.
This is, as stated above, not a release of XFce. XFC is a set of libraries for developing XFce applications with C++. As far as I know XFce is written in C.
What is an XFCE app? Besides the wrappers around the usual players such as Gtk+, Pango, ATk+, etc…I’m assuming they have some classes that are specific to XFCE.
Just asking (I’m not a gnome user): am I right in my impression that xfce compares to gnome the same way as firefox compares to mozilla (esp. the old one)? One small mean and lean desktop with a good plugin framwork, written with a consistent and unified toolkit as opposed to gnome with heavyweights like nautilus and a fairly large, often difficult to build codebase, still debating what toolkit/language to use for the next version.
It seems to me that xfce is the future of GNOME – I mean components are HIGified, so they represent GNOME’s philosophy quite well while being ahead of it in performance and stability. Oh, and perhaps being ahead in another important aspect: less politics. I haven’t seen such controversies that I hear from GNOME (what to do with mono, java, python, etc…, what to do with the UI, hig this and hig that while changing the button order, disregarding some very sane suggestions from ppl. like eugenia and most importantly, their own userbase – like spatial naut. – … that kinda things).
No, that’s not going to happen. XFCE and Gnome target two slightly different groups, and one does not compliment the other. It is true that XFCE is smaller and leaner, but it doesn’t provide near the same amount of user-friendlyness and features. You can’t do the same things with XFCE as you can with Gnome, and a lot of things need 3rd party apps (for instance icons on the desktop).
XFCE will soon feature the new Finder-like file manager Thunar, maybe that will change some things. At the moment, XFCE 4 is not very userfriendly compared to Gnome.
– Simon
don’t know about xfc, but xfce is very fast, stable and a joy to use daily on my Arch Linux box.
“What is an XFCE app? Besides the wrappers around the usual players such as Gtk+, Pango, ATk+, etc…I’m assuming they have some classes that are specific to XFCE.”
There are some libs that are XFCE specific. For example, XFCE has its own configuration lib and some custom widgets. I would assume that you are supposed to use gtkmm with XFC, but I don’t know. I am not a fan of c++
.
I’m also quite fond of xfce, though I can’t stand xffm and have nautilus installed.
According to Nat Friedman’s blog (sorry to lazy to post url), Ubuntu might be switching over to Thunar soon. I think the spatial experiement might be coming to a close…of course I go into gconf and turn on browser mode, so i don’t know how much more Thunar brings to the table for me over Nautilus.
I don’t think you’re supposed to use gtkmm in XFC. If I read the FAQ correctly, they’ve got their own bindings for gtk+,atk, pango, etc…
Lumbergh wrote: I’m not sure Simon, but it is interesting that they’ve started this framework rather than using Gtkmm.
Now, they didn’t start it. XFC is rather old, previously known as the GTK Foundation Classes (GFC), previously known as Inti.
It is similar to GTKmm but has a more Java-like API if I remember correctly.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to use gtkmm in XFC. If I read the FAQ correctly, they’ve got their own bindings for gtk+,atk, pango, etc… ”
Ya..your right. This is much more interesting then I at first thought. Little odd though..gtkmm is an excellent set of bindings. Not sure I would have gone with something else personally.
According to Nat Friedman’s blog (sorry to lazy to post url), Ubuntu might be switching over to Thunar soon.
I think that he (or you) misunderstood something. At the moment thunar is just a pygtk mockup without any funtionality, just for testing GUI. Real coding isn’t started yet.
As a note, I DO prefer the spatial Nautilus (or rox, when I was a xfce user). Of course you must know that mouse middle button open a new folder and close the old one…
is that on a dual monitor setup i.e. LCD and TV, my TV is recognised as the primary desktop and LCD as secondary (a Nvidia Xorg issue) but xfce doesn’t save desktop alterations on the secondary desktop. Only on the primary do changes to the bar and other desktop things get saved. Very annoying and I also prefer Nautilus to the default file browser and allowing user shutdown/reboot easily would be nice as GDM only works on the TV which I have off most of the time.
I have Gnome with a 5 second login although I think that will end up being a auto login as I rarely login as anything else nowdays.