A lot of the names come from Xlib and ancient history. On 8/8/05, Chris Seaton <chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > GdkPixmap - server side pixel map > GdkBitmap - server side pixel map, 1bpp Bingo! Exactly right. Names from X history. Bitmap was the original, pixmap was added later when the first colour displays appeared. They are close to the hardware, so they have a bunch of extra stuff like visuals and colormaps associated with them. > GdkPixbuf - client side pixel map The big thing here is that pixbuf is not so close to the hardware. It's just a 24 bit RGB buffer (they have some hooks for other colour spaces, but I don't know if there are plans to add them). Pixbuf is a nice clean (fairly) high level API added by the gtk team that hides client-side complexity from you. > GdkImage - not really sure, but it says it's redundant to GdkRGB XImage is what used to be used for client-side images. It is close to the hardware and changes annoying between different displays. Just awful to work with, avoid it if you possibly can. > GdkRGB - seems to render raw pixel data from a simple pointer This is (sort of) the thing GdkPixbuf uses to hide the insides of GdkImage from you. You can (sometimes) get a little speed by using it directly, but usually you should go through GdkPixbuf. > Is that right? Please set me straight. What are they all for? And which > do I want to solve my problem in the first paragraph? Summary: use GdkPixbuf client-side and GdkPixmap server-side. _______________________________________________ gtk-list@xxxxxxxxx http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
