GDK

GDK (GIMP Drawing Kit) is a computer graphics library that acts as a wrapper around the low-level drawing and windowing functions provided by the underlying graphics system. Originally developed on the X Window System, GDK lies between the X server and the GTK+ library, handling basic rendering such as drawing primitives, raster graphics (bitmaps), cursors, fonts, as well as window events and drag-and-drop functionality.

Like GTK, GDK is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

GDK is an important part of GTK+'s portability. Since low-level cross-platform functionality is already provided by GLib, all that is needed to make GTK+ run on other platforms is to port GDK to the underlying operating system's graphics layer. Hence, the GDK ports to Win32 and Quartz are what makes GTK+ applications run on Windows and Mac OS X, respectively.

Starting with GTK+ 2.8, GDK supports Cairo.

External links

* [http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gdk/index.html GDK API]
* [http://developer.gnome.org/doc/GGAD/cha-gdk.html GDK Basics; GTK+ / Gnome Application Development: Havoc Pennington]
* [http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gtk%2B/tags/GTK_2_12_10/gdk/ GDK code from release GTK+ 2.12.10]