I thought it'd be useful to write some user level documentation for gtkrc files. There's nothing linked from gtk.org for gtk 2.x, closest being a quickly-penned, colour-specific thing by havoc pennington.

I wrote a quick email to the gnome-love list describing the order in which various rc files are read, in response to a question.

I see this bug in the bugzilla archives that describes a need for user-level docs, making specific reference to format of the .gtkrc file.

Thoughts: such a document needs to clearly indicate it's for a user, not a coder/developer. It should describe the order in which gtkrc files are read in and the logic behind that. It should also describe either a) the customisations that are possible, or b) how to work out the customisations that are possible.

Thinking about this and my own steep-learning-curve experiences hacking on GTK+, there are three types of GTK+ users I have identified with their own specific documentation needs:

  1. users of GTK+ and GTK+ programs, who may want to learn how to customise it, or diagnose and report bugs
  2. developers of programs who are using the GTK+ library. Really a second kind of user.
  3. developers of GTK+ itself

I think the third category is being treated the same as the second, presently.

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