M

main (event) loop

The loop that an event-driven program enters after initializing its user interface and binding its handlers to events. The main loop occasionally asks the windowing system for new events to distribute to the handlers, draws widgets, and performs other miscellaneous tasks .

mark

An object that represents a position between two characters in a text buffer and that remains valid even when the text in the buffer changes. Marks have gravity.

markup language

A language that decorates text (for example, with a series of tags ) that give specific pieces of the text a meaning or style. XML is a prominent markup language.

marshaller

In GObject, a function that carries the parameters of a signal emission to the handler and transports the return value back. Every signature needs its own marshaller; you can generate a marshaller with the glib-genmarshal program.

memory chunk

A block of memory allocated at one time and then split into small pieces called atoms for use by a program. The GLib memory chunk data structure is GMemChunk ; it is useful for simultaneously allocating tiny pieces of evenly sized data.

method

A piece of code (a function) that works only with a particular object; methods declarations are in the class of an object.

MIME

Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions. A series of header extensions and encodings and a bundling style that allows email transmission of data that isn't necessarily plain text.

MIME type

A MIME file classification description (such as text/html ). Many desktop environments now use MIME types to make sense of file types.

modal

When an application opens a modal window, the user cannot operate any other window in the application until the modal window closes .

model

The M in MVC. An internal data structure displayed by the view that the user changes with the controller.

Motif

A GUI toolkit for the X Window System, written in C; it was at one time popular with commercial applications, but now is less popular due to an unpleasant programming interface and years of proprietary licensing.

multiple inheritance

A form of inheritance where a class has more than one parent class. GObject does not support multiple inheritance, but does have an interface system as a substitute.

MVC

Model/View/Controller. A way of thinking about software design (in particular, GUI applications) in which programs consist of models, views, and controllers.