Thread: GUI programming in C

Hi,

I have learned the basics of C, and now I want to code GUI's in C. I want to do it for both Windows and Linux.

Can someone tell me how it can be done?

Thanks.

Ben

As you may have already observed, the C standard doesn't provide any functionality to handle graphical interfaces. This needs all platform-specific code which is not even comparable with each other. I strongly recommend you to use a 3rd party GUI library that already wrapped all those platform code into a unified API.

Thanks.

Which 3rd party GUI libraries can you recommend?

I don't do GUI programming. In the only little GUI programs I ever wrote I used pure Win32 API which is for masochists
Others here might be more experienced though.
In the meanwhile have a look at List of widget toolkits - Wikipedia
You may find that not too many C libs exist. It's semantically more logical treating GUI components as objects where object-oriented languages suit better.

Thanks for pointing me in this direction.

If someone has more info please let me know.

Originally Posted by daYz

Thanks.

Which 3rd party GUI libraries can you recommend?

I don't do GUI programming myself either, but I would look at GTK and QT, the most common for GUI programming in Linux.

I can't comment on Windows GUI programming other than I try very hard to stay away from Mickey$oft as much as possible! ;^)

Originally Posted by rstanley

I don't do GUI programming myself either, but I would look at GTK and QT, the most common for GUI programming in Linux.

I can't comment on Windows GUI programming other than I try very hard to stay away from Mickey$oft as much as possible! ;^)

GTK and QT both work on Windows, Linux and MacOS. GTK also works on UNIX. QT does not, if I am right. QT also does run on Android and embedded systems.

If anyone has more information, please let me know. I am curious about the most common libraries for Windows.