As always, the latest version is available on the libsexy page or in the download directory.

Release notes:

• Fix a typo in SexyUrlLabel that was causing the widget to never be marked as unmapped, which prevented it from re-mapping the event window when the widget was shown again. (Bugs #364030 and #353946)
• Fixed the cursors to properly indicate whether the text was selectable.
• Get rid of the unused SexyTooltipPriv structure to fix building on Solaris. (Bug #378066)
• Remove some debug output from SexyIconEntry and SexyTreeView. (Bug #355129)

I’m really pleased that a lot of projects are now using libsexy. This is awesome stuff, and I want to thank people for making use of this library.

However, the one thing that bothers me is that everybody seems to think libsexy is like libegg. I’m seeing projects bundle libsexy directly in their apps or taking a piece of libsexy, renaming it, and sticking it in their tree. Guys, this lib is not meant to be used like this. It’s a formal library, and it’s pretty standard. Every distribution that ships notification-daemon or xchat-gnome also ships libsexy, so you can pretty much guarantee it’ll be there. I know it’s not part of the GNOME desktop, but given that so many apps are using it, I’d rather see it become a blessed dependency or a configure-time option than bundled.

Shipping a copy or fork of libsexy into your apps has the following problems:

• Upgrades to libsexy proper won’t fix bugs or enhance the applications that are using it.
• People end up modifying their forks and never send patches upstream.
• Some projects end up copying from other projects and never even realize they’re using libsexy in the first place.

It also confuses me that some projects end up rewriting their own versions of some of these widgets instead of using libsexy’s. For example, Evolution has EIconEntry, which is like SexyIconEntry except that it uses an HBox and some style tricks instead of being an actual GtkEntry. Let’s standardize!

So this is a call-out to the developers of Rhythmbox, Last-exit, xchat, gedit, and any other projects in any way making use of libsexy incorrectly. Please fix your apps so we can have an actual shared library that can be properly upgraded.

And to the Epiphany and Evolution projects, is there any reason anymore to not use SexyIconEntry instead of a custom HBox-based solution? A while back, I was told that the motivation was due to some rendering and usability bugs in SexyIconEntry that have since been fixed, so this is a good time to find out if there’s anything more that I could do to get you guys to use it.

Thanks.

Update: Last-exit now links against the system’s libsexy. Thanks to Brandon Hale for his work on this

Love, Christian.

libsexy v0.1.9 is just bug fix release (but a good one), containing the following fixes:

• Fixed a bug where the cursor position in a SexySpellEntry would change if the position was at the end of the entry and word was replaced.
• Fixed a few enchant-related bugs in SexySpellEntry.
• Fixed our GModule loading for enchant to let glib figure out the proper file extension, rather than hard-coding “.so”.
• Fixed some uninitialized variables when creating the icon windows for SexyIconEntry that were causing valgrind to complain. Patch by Benjamin Otte. (Bug #349701)
• Fixed a bug in SexyIconEntry where the caret would be invisible at the start of the entry when no icon was shown. Patch by Ed Catmur. (Bug #353671)
• Fixed a bug with SexyToolTip positioning in treeviews without headers where the tooltips would immediately disappear when shown at the bottom of the screen. (Bug #333424)
• Fixed a linking bug when building on win32. Patch by Steffen Eschenbacher. (Bug #351796)

libsexymm and sexy-python contain license updates and were updated to work with libsexy v0.1.9. Both bindings claimed to be GPL, while they were intended to be LGPL. Sorry for the confusion, packagers

On a more humorous note, I’ve been told by a friend that he can no longer visit my blog due to mentions of libsexy causing his proxy to block my site. Anybody else having this issue?

If you’re using the new notification-daemon, it is advised that you update your copy of libsexy in order to fix a minor visual glitch.

Also, libsexy now has a webpage set up! Woot! About time, really. A little directory containing tarballs and a few blog entries just wasn’t enough, as I’ve quickly come to learn by the number of packagers linking to my blog entries

I was in need of SexyIconEntry today for some work, and decided now was a good time to fix some of the problems I haven’t taken the time to fix in this widget, and add some features at the same time. To start with, SexyIconEntry now works correctly in all themes I have tested. Clearlooks’s GtkEntry border is no longer cut off, for instance. Also, the ability to put an icon on both sides has been added. See the sexy screenshot!

And remember, this is an actual GtkEntry! Anything you can do to a GtkEntry, you can do to this.

I’m adding more features, like the ability to add a clear button with one API call, and icon drag-and-drop support, to the widget. It will be in an upcoming release (possibly tonight or tomorrow morning), along with some other nifty features in other widgets.

By the way, isn’t it about time we replace the asterisk in masked entries with that unicode character for the round filled circle (“●”)? The asterisk is so 1980s.

I moved GalagoGtkIconEntry into libsexy, and renamed it SexyIconEntry. Also, SexyUrlLabel has been fixed up to allow for hyperlinks that span multiple lines. Thanks to everyone who pushed me in the right direction there. It’s also been optimized a little.

This is not a stable library. I imagine I’ll break things without soname bumps right away, but maybe not. Who knows? This is just a fun library, but useful.

Obligatory screenshots follow.

SexyUrlLabel

SexyIconEntry