Code cleanups and backend improvements

4.1. 升級至 GTK+ 2.10

GNOME 2.16 現在需要 GTK+ 2.10 才可以運作,因為它使用了許多由 Project Ridley 所帶來的改善的地方。Project Ridley 是一個將一部份 GNOME 函式庫整合至 GTK+ 的計劃。

One of the first benefits made available to GNOME users is the new printing functionality of GTK+ 2.10: It features a high level, platform-independent API, GtkPrintOperation, that also includes a new printing dialog. A low-level, UNIX-specific API is available as well that currently supports CUPS and lpr for printing.

圖表 11New and improved Print Dialog

Many GNOME applications were ported to use the new printing functionality, such as the document viewer Evince, the web browser Ephiphany, and the help browser Yelp.

這樣也標示了 libgnomeprintlibgnomeprintui 兩個函式庫將會被淘汰;GNOME 以外的軟體也建議使用 GTK+ 2.10 提供的新功能。

Another important improvement introduced by GTK+ 2.10 is the new API, GtkRecent: It manages a single list of recently opened files and documents. Among the GNOME applications using the new functionality are the panel, the file manager (Nautilus), the document viewer (Evince), and the text editor (Gedit).

用來選擇檔案的對話方塊也得到改善:用來直接輸入路徑的輸入欄以往是要按 Ctrl+L 才會顯示的,但現在已整合至對話方塊之內,即使是進行耗時的檔案操作,對話方塊仍能快速作出反應。

圖表 12Location entry in File Chooser Dialog

GTK+ 2.10 provides the gtk-touchscreen-mode mode controlling a number of changes that make GTK+ work better on touchscreens, which are widely used on mobile and embedded devices.

Several other improvements made available by GTK+ 2.10 are used throughout the desktop: New widgets to display clickable hyperlinks, or to create multi-step wizards, for example and better drag-and-drop support in notebooks allowing tabs to be reordered, moved between notebooks, and made into windows by dragging to the desktop.

4.2. GTK and GNOME get sharp

GNOME 2.16 now offers bindings to GTK+ and GNOME libraries for fans of the C# (C sharp) programming language. This also means that the development framework Mono is a dependency of the GNOME bindings.

另外,以 C# 寫成的軟體可以提議包括在日後的 GNOME 版本內。不過,如果是現有的軟體,本來由不需要用 GTK# / Mono 變成需要時,也要重新進行整個提名過程。

4.3. 新的 Bug-buddy 背景引擎

GNOME 的錯誤回報工具 Bug-buddy 現在改為使用 XML-RPC 協定,使用者就不需要在系統上安裝 sendmail。這個改變帶來的影響是,所有使用 Bug-buddy 來回報錯誤的程式都要在它們的 .desktop 檔案中加上正確的資訊。

使用者還可以在一年內用以往的方式回報錯誤(即採用 sendmail)。一年後,舊版本 Bug-Buddy 的使用者就不能再回報錯誤。

4.4. Unicode 5.0 支援

GNOME 2.16 will be the world's first desktop release that features support for the Unicode Character Database (UCD), version 5.0, which defines more than 99,000 characters for the languages of the world. The improvements are built into GNOME libraries GLib and Pango, and are thus available to all other open source and free software projects that use these libraries.

4.5. Removals and other notes

  • 因為缺乏人手維護,Grand-Canyon, Ocean-Dream, Simple, Smokey-BlueTraditional 這幾個佈景主題已經刪除。類似地,LighthouseblueMetal 佈景主題引擎也被刪除。
  • 畫面閱讀器 Gnopernicus 已經由 Orca 所取代。