Thread: I need help beggining GUI prgramming in c/c++

Hi after using java for a while i have decided to look into c and c++, but i'm having a problem with the GUI part.

Ideally i would like to be able to distribute/sell GUI based applications made in c or c++ over the internet.

Currently I'm running Mac sox 10.6 (Snow leopard) and wish to continue doing so although i am willing to use windows
as a last resort.

I have been using the netbeans IDE for Java and i have used it a bit for C just the basic command line IO. And i would like to continue using netbeans , i'm not bothered about coding GUI's by hand although i don't mind GUI builders long and they don't suck. I am also willing to use a different IDE like xcode or another alternative, just not eclipse.

I would like to make my applications including the GUI Cross platform so mac/windows/linux. So i would like to use the same GUI toolkit for all of them if possible.

From what i know though i may be wrong the following fit my criteria

FLTK - I've not really looked into it that much

GTK+ - I've spent hours trying to get this to work in Snow leopard but it seems to have a problem when it comes to GLIB. Some thing
about libiconv and iconv.h being included and not used. Not sure if its OS specific i have asked on the GTK+ forum but no reply

Wxwidgets - Again i don't know much about it

Qt - This i believe this is C++ only and it cost's about £1000 for a single user license and i don't have that kind of money. Although there is an Open source version but all my applications have to be open source as well. Which isn't the road i want to be able to go down.

Now after wasting so much time trying to get GTK+ to work i don't want to start looking at another toolkit to end up in the same situation. I spent ages trying to compile it maybe i did it wrong but i couldn't find any good info on installing it.

In short i would like to make multi plat GUI apps in c or c++ but i don't know what toolkit to use or even where i should start

Thanks for taking the time to read my problem sorry if its in the wrong place or has already been answered i'm just getting frustrated with this so i appreciate any help you can give.

You have Xcode on your mac os X install disk. Just install it and try it out, it has an app called interface builder that does what you want, and does it very well. For portability I think your best bet is to stick to the MVC model as closely as possible then make the interface in different apps for each targeted platform. But for mac os, Xcode is great for this purpose.

QT is LGPL nowadays, so you don't have to share your code unless you make changes to QT itself.