What programming language would be best for a C++ programmer to write X app
in linux ?    Thanks in advance

Try Qt - it's a C++ framework/API, available for other platforms as well.

http://www.trolltech.com

-Jan

--
Jan Schaumann <http://www.netmeister.org>

If you write something wrong enough, I'll be glad to make up a new
witticism just for you.   -- Larry Wall

wxWindows, no doubt!

http://www.wxwindows.org  (then follow the link to wxGTK)

HTH,

Carlos
--

Ummm... C or C++?

This must be the most FAQ'd question in this group.

First, since you wrote that you were a C++ programmer, I assume you
mean which toolkit or library.

You have lots of choices.

You can use X and Xt and roll you own classes. Not the quickest way
in, but you will end up as a guru in X programming ;)

You can use Athena widgets, Xaw or Xaw3d. These are C but you can wrap
them in your own classes to give you app a personal look and feel.

Similarly, there is Motif and its alternate free version Lesstif.
Again, these are C, but its dead easy to wrap some classes around
them. Like all of these libraries, there are a myriad options that you
can set for each widget. By using your own class wrappers you can get
a standard look and feel for all of your applications.

For some light weight C++ libraries, there is FLTK, which I have been
using quite successfully over the last few months, and V [see
www.objectcentral.com] which was developed to aid students. V is very
well documented.

One of the those last two I would recommend as a starting point for
some simple programs. Not sure how they would handle something
technically complex.

Another one that I have heard about, but never seen, is XForms.

The two main Linux libraries for GUI development are KDE and Gnome.
KDE uses the Qt library [C++]. Gnome uses GTK, [C] or GTK-- [C++].

Then there is wxWindows, which many claim as being very good.

All, except Athena, Motif and [I think] Gnome claim cross platform
support.

Personnaly, I have a problem with toolkits that try to do too much.
This seems to apply to Qt, GTK and wxWindows. They all suffer from
what might be called MFC disease in that they try to wrap the entire
operating system, not just the GUI stuff.

To make the best use of any of them, you will need to get you hands on
a good book on basic X Window System programming. Unfortunately, I've
not seen any in the book stores for a long time - anyone have a
recommendation?

Hope this helps
Brenton

IIRC, GNOME actually wants to implement a Windows port, but I don't know
how far that has gone.

-Jan

--
Jan Schaumann <http://www.netmeister.org>

We are Microsoft.  Unix is irrelevant.  Openness is futile.  Prepare
to be assimilated.

Not open source.

Means the usual nightmare when you have problem.

i.e.: application using it Lyx

As a non-gui programmer, I have an occasional need to have a GUI
interface. Is there any library that will let me descibe a form, much like
you can do for HTML. I've seem a glimpse of the XML that gladedev stores
its forms in, which looks sort of what I would like.

I program in C mostly, but like to script in sh and maybe a little python.

Another thing I'm often left wanting is some sort of form description
language that can produce code for either Athena, GTK, Qt, etc. Is there
such a miracle tool available. I hate the code bloat that results in
installing GNOME and KDE (especially when I use neither, I just try to
install GTK and some other stuff like gdm.

--
Cameron Kerr -- cameron.kerr @ paradise.net.nz
Praise Slackware, our baud and saviour!
--

[...]

Did you look at glade? It can generate either XML (that could be loaded then
to your application using libglade), or it can generate C (backends for some
other languages are available).

Glade could be used with GTK only (without GNOME).

One of the projects on my impossibly long todo list is along these
lines.

The idea is to use XML to specify the layout of the GUI and the
interface to the program logic. Then use this to define the
relationships between a set of abstract classes. Finally, implement
these using one, or more, of the tool kits - possibly dynamically
loading this implementation according to user preferences.

I looked around to see what else was going on, and it seems like a
quite common idea - lots of research papers. Also found XUL in Mozilla
and a project called Azure that seem to have similar approach.

Brenton

Secondly I have used GTK+ and embedded it into my C++ code and it runs fine
don't know if it is the right thing to do though.

Ian

news:66728128.0106232136.57e01dd2@posting.google.com...
<news:9gubdm$17bk@r02n01.cac.psu.edu>...

This must be the most FAQ'd question in this group.

First, since you wrote that you were a C++ programmer, I assume you
mean which toolkit or library.

You have lots of choices.

You can use X and Xt and roll you own classes. Not the quickest way
in, but you will end up as a guru in X programming ;)

You can use Athena widgets, Xaw or Xaw3d. These are C but you can wrap
them in your own classes to give you app a personal look and feel.

Similarly, there is Motif and its alternate free version Lesstif.
Again, these are C, but its dead easy to wrap some classes around
them. Like all of these libraries, there are a myriad options that you
can set for each widget. By using your own class wrappers you can get
a standard look and feel for all of your applications.

For some light weight C++ libraries, there is FLTK, which I have been
using quite successfully over the last few months, and V [see
www.objectcentral.com] which was developed to aid students. V is very
well documented.

One of the those last two I would recommend as a starting point for
some simple programs. Not sure how they would handle something
technically complex.

Another one that I have heard about, but never seen, is XForms.

The two main Linux libraries for GUI development are KDE and Gnome.
KDE uses the Qt library [C++]. Gnome uses GTK, [C] or GTK-- [C++].

Then there is wxWindows, which many claim as being very good.

All, except Athena, Motif and [I think] Gnome claim cross platform
support.

Personnaly, I have a problem with toolkits that try to do too much.
This seems to apply to Qt, GTK and wxWindows. They all suffer from
what might be called MFC disease in that they try to wrap the entire
operating system, not just the GUI stuff.

To make the best use of any of them, you will need to get you hands on
a good book on basic X Window System programming. Unfortunately, I've
not seen any in the book stores for a long time - anyone have a
recommendation?

Hope this helps
Brenton

If Xlib and Xt don't cause you enough pain, you can drop down a
layer and just open a socket and write X11 protocol commands to
the server.

--
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                                  at              
                               visi.com            

See Ruby/X11 as an example implementation of this.

--
Q. How many thought police does it take to{*filter*}in a light bulb?
A. None, there never was any light bulb.