
What programming languages to develop X program ?
Beginning GTK+/Gnome Programming by Peter Write ISBN 1-861003-81-1 has been
very useful to me. That's if you go the GTK+ route which works quite well
for me especially if you are new to it (Like me). There is also a RAD tool
called glade which I have dabbled with but prefer writing it in emacs or
someother editor.
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
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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