That one could replace the entire GObject tutorial (which doesn’t even mention subclassing, from what I can see) with a few paragraphs in C++ or Ruby or seems somewhat silly.

In comparison, as a potential GNOME contributor who has started hacking on KDE4 instead, the cleanness and niceness of CMake, Qt, KDE’s libraries, etc. make working on it a pleasure. It takes me very little time to find the relevant code for a desired change in a KDE program, even if the relevant bit is in some other library four super-classes away. For someone who doesn’t know the code, trying to help out on a GTK project is daunting.

I don’t know what can be done, since existing apps are already in C, and I’m not sure how one could make subclasses work nicely in C… maybe a comprehensive set of *official* macros covering everything would help.

Anyway, it would be nice a lot if GTK hacking were made easier for mere mortals. I suspect I’m not the only one turned away by GObject.

http://aruiz.typepad.com/siliconisland/2008/02/subclassing-in.html

The way to do it is:

class MyButton < Gtk::Button
  type_register

  def signal_do_clicked
    # Do something on click
  end
end

public class MyButton : Button {

    protected override void OnClicked ()
    {
        // Do something on click!
    }

}

In ruby-gtk you can’t subclass like this.