Core Technologies

GNOME provides a number of libraries for constructing attractive graphical interfaces. It provides libraries for displaying and manipulating common user interface controls, for laying out and rendering text from most of the world's writing systems, and for drawing sophisticated vector graphics to the screen. The graphical technologies in GNOME are outlined in Section 3.1 ― Graphical Interfaces.

The GIO library in GLib, together with the GVFS backend, provides a file system abstraction that allows users to work with files on remote servers as well as the local file systems. GIO provides a high-level API for file operations, making development fast and easy. Using GIO will allow your application to support remote files and folders automatically. GIO and GVFS are discussed in Section 3.2 ― Virtual File System.

GNOME provides the GConf library and daemon for storing and retrieving user preferences. GConf has a simple API that makes it easy to provide instant-apply preferences in your application. Using GConf also allows administrators to provide default and mandatory application settings for their users. GConf is discussed in Section 3.3 ― Configuration and Lockdown.

GNOME provides facilities for internationalization and accessibility, helping you reach the largest possible number of potential users. Much of the internationalization and accessibility support is built right in, but there are many issues you should be aware of when developing applications. Internationalization is discussed in Section 3.4 ― Internationalization. Accessibility is discussed in Section 3.5 ― Accessibility.

GNOME ships with GStreamer, an extremely powerful multimedia framework for creating, editing, and playing audio and video content. GStreamer is discussed in Section 3.6 ― Multimedia.

GNOME also provides a complete print framework which leverages CUPS whenever possible. The print framework in GNOME allows you to provide a consistent interface to high-quality printing. The print framework is discussed in Section 3.7 ― Printing.