| Glade Interface Designer | |
| Glade | |
| Author: | Damon Chaplin[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] |
| Developer: | The GNOME Project |
| Released: | [6] |
| Discontinued: | yes |
| Latest Release Version: | 3.40 |
| Programming Language: | C, XML |
| Operating System: | Unix-like, Windows[7] |
| License: | GNU General Public License |
| Replaced By: | Cambalache Interface Designer |
Glade Interface Designer is a graphical user interface builder for GTK, with additional components for GNOME. In its third version, Glade is programming language - independent, and does not produce code for events, but rather an XML file that is then used with an appropriate binding (such as GtkAda for use with the Ada programming language).
Glade is free and open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Glade's development and maintenance ceased in 2022, with the final release on 10 August 2022.[8]
The first Glade release, version 0.1, was made on 18 April 1998.
Glade 3 was released on 12 August 2006. According to the Glade Web site, the most noticeable differences for the end-user are:
Most of the difference is in the internals. Glade-3 is a complete rewrite, in order to take advantage of the new features of GTK+ 2 and the GObject system (Glade-3 was started when Glade-1 hadn't yet been ported to GTK+ 2). Therefore, the Glade-3 codebase is smaller and allows new interesting things, including:
On 5 April 2011, two parallel installable stable Glade versions[9] [10] [11] were released:
On 11 June 2015 Glade 3.19.0 was released. It depends at least on GTK+ 3.16.0. Among many bug fixes this version is the first to support the widgets GtkStack, GtkHeaderBar and GtkSidebar.[12]
GtkBuilder is the XML format that the Glade Interface Designer uses to save its forms. These documents can then be used in conjunction with the GtkBuilder object to instantiate the form using GTK. GladeXML is the XML format that was used with conjunction with libglade, which is now deprecated.[13]
Glade Interface Designer automatically generates all the source code for a graphical control element.
The "Gtk.Builder class" allows user interfaces to be designed without writing code.[14] The class describes the interface in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file and then loads the XML description at runtime and creating the objects automatically. The Glade Interface Designer allows creation of the user interface in a WYSIWYG manner. The description of the user interface is independent from the programming language being used.
Code sketchers are software applications that help a user create source code from a GladeXML file. Most code sketchers create source code which uses libglade and a GladeXML file to create the GUI. Some sketchers are able to create raw code that does not need the GladeXML file. The table below compares basic information about GladeXML code sketcher packages.
| Name | Author | Programming languages | Software license | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eglade | Daniel Elphick | Eiffel | Eiffel Forum License | |
| Gladex | Christopher Pax and Charles Edward Pax | Perl, Python, Ruby | GPLv3 | |
| glc | Bill Allen | Python | LGPL | |
| ruby-glade-create-template | Masao Mutoh | Ruby | ||
| Tepache | Sandino Flores Moreno | Python | LGPL | |
| GladeToBac | Thomas Freiherr | FreeBASIC (includes headers for GTK-3 andGTK-2.22.0 / GTKGlExt-1.2.0) | GPLv3 | |
| Glade2FB | Arnel Borja | FreeBASIC | GPLv3 | |
| gate3 | F. J. Fabien | Ada | MIT License |
| Cambalache | |
| Cambalache | |
| Author: | Juan Pablo Ugarte |
| Repo: | https://gitlab.gnome.org/jpu/cambalache |
| Programming Language: | Python |
| Operating System: | Unix-like |
| License: | GNU Lesser General Public License |
| Website: | https://flathub.org/apps/ar.xjuan.Cambalache |
| Replaces: | Glade Interface Designer |
Cambalache (/kambaˈlat͡ʃe/)[15] is a free and open-source rapid application development (RAD) tool[16] [17] designed for creating user interfaces with GTK 4. It is designed as a successor to Glade,[18] [19] with a focus on supporting the latest GTK 4 library while maintaining compatibility with GTK 3. Cambalache is geared toward developers working within the GNOME ecosystem. Cambalache's design emphasizes the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, ensuring separation between the UI components and the business logic of applications.
The UI editing workspace is driven by a separate process called Merengue which interfaces with Casilda, a Wayland compositor embeded in a GTK widget. This architectural choice improves stability by separating the user interface preview from the main application. This separation enables the system to handle different GTK versions efficiently, ensuring the rendered UI accurately mirrors the application's appearance and behavior.[20]