Gtk.Drawing 1.3.24.26204

Net4x.Gtk.Windows.Forms

Introduction

Native Visual Studio development, no learning curve, compile once, run cross-platform. A cross-platform (Windows, Linux, macOS) C# desktop application framework based on GTK components. Using this framework, projects can be developed in Visual Studio with the native C# WinForms designer, using the same properties, methods, and events as standard WinForms. Development is done entirely with familiar C# techniques — no additional learning required.

Compile once and run across platforms. It makes cross-platform WinForms application development easy and enables existing C# WinForms applications to be upgraded to cross-platform applications with minimal effort.

Details: Details

Platform notes and non-goals

The library targets compile-once, behave-the-same for mainstream WinForms code. A few areas are Windows- or Win32-bound by nature and are deliberately not implemented — an application that depends on them is not portable to the GTK substrate. They are listed here so the boundary is known up front rather than discovered in production:

• Win32 message pump and native windows. Control.WndProc/DefWndProc throw PlatformNotSupportedException; NativeWindow, SendKeys and IMessageFilter-driven pumping are not supported. Control.Handle returns a GTK widget handle, not an HWND.
• COM / ActiveX. AxHost and the COM interop surface are Windows-only by definition.
• Web / HTML hosting. WebBrowser, HtmlDocument, HtmlElement have no cross-platform engine behind them.
• EMF/WMF metafiles. The types exist but the Windows record format has no cross-platform playback.
• Legacy controls. The pre-2.0 DataGrid family and ToolBar/ToolBarButton are superseded by DataGridView and ToolStrip.
• GDI+ Imaging.Effects (.NET 8+) and the .NET 9+ dark-mode surface are not implemented.

A small number of members exist but deviate from Windows behaviour by necessity — for example Control.CreateGraphics() returns a deferred (next-paint) surface rather than an immediate-mode DC, and Form.TransparencyKey emulates only the whole-form-background case, not per-pixel keying. These and other substrate-bound deviations are catalogued in the project's EMULATION-GAPS.md; the measured API surface is tracked in API-COMPLETENESS.md.