GTK4 Seeing Text Entry Improvements, Easier To Create Custom Entry Widgets

Adding to the big list of changes to find with the yet-to-be-released GTK4 toolkit is some refactoring around the entry widgets to improve the text entry experience as well as making it easier to create custom entry widgets outside of GTK.

Landing recently in GTK was a rework of the entry hierarchy and the introduction of a new widget called GtkText. In the process, a GtkPasswordEntry widget was introduced for handling password-entry-related tasks like caps lock warning and being able to optionally view the contents of the entry field. For developers, this refactoring will make it more easy to create custom entry widgets.

Developers using GTK and wanting to look ahead to GTK 4.0 can learn more about this latest change via the GTK blog.

This comes on top of many other GTK4 changes ranging from Wayland improvements to a big GDK rework, a Vulkan renderer, CSS improvements, exclusively relies upon the Meson build system, the introduction of the GTK Scene Kit (GSK), and many other changes building up over the past roughly three years. After failing to materialize in 2018, it's expected GTK 4.0.0 will make it out this year.