Thread: API Question

  1. #1
    Banned Troll_King's Avatar
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    API Question

    You know how MS Windows has the Win32 System API that is used for building Windows Applications. What does Linux have instead that is used to build XWindows applications in say GNOME or KDE?

  2. #2
    Fingerstyle Guitarist taylorguitarman's Avatar
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    Motif, GTK and QT are some popular ones (higher level).
    If you want lower level there's xlib and xt.

    Check out here:
    http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/programming.html
    If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?

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    Banned Troll_King's Avatar
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    Are there any real books? Any recommedations? Also what is a good distribution to use now?

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    Fingerstyle Guitarist taylorguitarman's Avatar
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    Many of those links are to actual printed material, like the OpenGL "Red Book." There are several books on GTK and QT programming at the bookstores and O'Reilly has a whole line of books on X11 programming. Since there's so much info online I'd start with there. Then just pick up a reference book.

    Distros: There are tons. I roll with Red Hat 7.2, SuSE is good too and I've also heard good things recently about Caldera.
    If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?

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    Registered User rohit's Avatar
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    henry spencer said ::

    Programming in x is like finding sqrt(pi) using roman numerals



    but it's no longer true . i have exp. with qt programming and it really is very easy and kicks ass and more over the development environment that kde give (kdevelop) is too good .it's interface is quite like VC++ is really something cool .

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    does anyone here have experience with wxWindows? is it now defunct, slow or what...

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    Banned Troll_King's Avatar
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    It would be nice if the C++ standard definition provided a GUI library that worked on all Linux implimentations.

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    Registered User rohit's Avatar
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    i am not 100% sure cause i was very small at that time

    i think the time C++ was developed and had a governing body like ANSI there weren't used to be any XWindows or GUI enviornment interfaces and moreover GNU/Linux came much more later somewhere in 1997 if i am not wrong.so there weren't any established API's to do & a year ago linux was not good in probing graphics cards even those which were quite common but as the community is growing things are turning good.

    see what linux has done to Sun & M$oft.Linux kicks ass.



    cheers
    Rohit

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    geek SilentStrike's Avatar
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    Stroustroup actually has a note about a platform independant GUI as on the agenda for the next C++ standard, but no one (especially Microsoft) would like to see that happen, and he doesn't have much hope for it.

    "A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it"

    Actually, I ran a solid 500 feet today, and caught a bus (although, I did get to run straight to the stop, while the bus had to follow the road), because I thought I would be late if I missed it, only to be 30 minutes early.
    Prove you can code in C++ or C# at TopCoder, referrer rrenaud
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    Banned Troll_King's Avatar
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    Maybe he can work with Linux instead of Microsoft on that issue. If they did that and OEM's sold Linux and Windows set up under duel boot than I would suddenly feel a lot better about investing in C++ and Linux. I need that GUI! And a guarantee that I can reach it on all distributions with the same code.

  11. #11
    &TH of undefined behavior Fordy's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Troll_King
    Maybe he can work with Linux instead of Microsoft on that issue.
    Doubt that would happen.......you would then have a Standard that has elements that are dependant on a specific platform....and surely that would be totally against the point of a "Standard"

  12. #12
    junior member mix0matt's Avatar
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    wxWindows is the way to go

    troll_king,



    take a look at wxWindows. i've recently been reading about it. It's a cross platform library written in C++ that interacts with native system calls whatever they may be, GTK+, Motif, Mac, Windows 3.1,95/98/ME, NT/2k, and XP and several other platforms and libraries. so there you go. you can write a GUI based application in Linux, and your program will compile on your Windows box with little or no tweaking. go here www.wxwindows.org...

    i should also add that it is largely compiler independent also...
    Last edited by mix0matt; 02-21-2002 at 09:20 AM.

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