Sets our main struct and passes it to the parent class
Starts updates for an animation. Until a matching call to gdk_frame_clock_end_updating() is made, the frame clock will continually request a new frame with the GDK_FRAME_CLOCK_PHASE_UPDATE phase. This function may be called multiple times and frames will be requested until gdk_frame_clock_end_updating() is called the same number of times.
Stops updates for an animation. See the documentation for gdk_frame_clock_begin_updating().
Gets the frame timings for the current frame.
A GdkFrameClock maintains a 64-bit counter that increments for each frame drawn.
Gets the time that should currently be used for animations. Inside the processing of a frame, it's the time used to compute the animation position of everything in a frame. Outside of a frame, it's the time of the conceptual "previous frame," which may be either the actual previous frame time, or if that's too old, an updated time.
GdkFrameClock internally keeps a history of GdkFrameTiming objects for recent frames that can be retrieved with gdk_frame_clock_get_timings(). The set of stored frames is the set from the counter values given by gdk_frame_clock_get_history_start() and gdk_frame_clock_get_frame_counter(), inclusive.
Using the frame history stored in the frame clock, finds the last known presentation time and refresh interval, and assuming that presentation times are separated by the refresh interval, predicts a presentation time that is a multiple of the refresh interval after the last presentation time, and later than base_time.
the main Gtk struct as a void*
Retrieves a GdkFrameTimings object holding timing information for the current frame or a recent frame. The GdkFrameTimings object may not yet be complete: see gdk_frame_timings_get_complete().
Asks the frame clock to run a particular phase. The signal corresponding the requested phase will be emitted the next time the frame clock processes. Multiple calls to gdk_frame_clock_request_phase() will be combined together and only one frame processed. If you are displaying animated content and want to continually request the GDK_FRAME_CLOCK_PHASE_UPDATE phase for a period of time, you should use gdk_frame_clock_begin_updating() instead, since this allows GTK+ to adjust system parameters to get maximally smooth animations.
the main Gtk struct
A GdkFrameClock tells the application when to update and repaint a window. This may be synced to the vertical refresh rate of the monitor, for example. Even when the frame clock uses a simple timer rather than a hardware-based vertical sync, the frame clock helps because it ensures everything paints at the same time (reducing the total number of frames). The frame clock can also automatically stop painting when it knows the frames will not be visible, or scale back animation framerates.
GdkFrameClock is designed to be compatible with an OpenGL-based implementation or with mozRequestAnimationFrame in Firefox, for example.
A frame clock is idle until someone requests a frame with gdk_frame_clock_request_phase(). At some later point that makes sense for the synchronization being implemented, the clock will process a frame and emit signals for each phase that has been requested. (See the signals of the GdkFrameClock class for documentation of the phases. GDK_FRAME_CLOCK_PHASE_UPDATE and the "update" signal are most interesting for application writers, and are used to update the animations, using the frame time given by gdk_frame_clock_get_frame_time().
The frame time is reported in microseconds and generally in the same timescale as g_get_monotonic_time(), however, it is not the same as g_get_monotonic_time(). The frame time does not advance during the time a frame is being painted, and outside of a frame, an attempt is made so that all calls to gdk_frame_clock_get_frame_time() that are called at a "similar" time get the same value. This means that if different animations are timed by looking at the difference in time between an initial value from gdk_frame_clock_get_frame_time() and the value inside the "update" signal of the clock, they will stay exactly synchronized.