Linux GUI programming

VirusScanner · Post by **VirusScanner** » Feb 28, 2006 2:48

I've just switched to linux, and have been wondering, what is a good GUI library to learn? I'm using Ubuntu with GNOME, and I've heard of GTK. But I've also heard that GTK is ugly and bad. I'd like to use C and FB, so something with headers already translated would be nice, thanks.

Sterling Christensen · Post by **Sterling Christensen** » Feb 28, 2006 5:56

GTK 1.x is ugly. GNOME uses GTK 2.x (this is the one FB has headers for), and so does Firefox on Linux. GTK 2.x has a weird clunky File Open/Save dialog box, but other than that it's fine.

There's also wx-c. FB headers for a C wrapper around a C++ library that uses GTK 2.x (on Linux) anyway. Dumbledore wrote a visual designer for it:
http://vwx-cdev.sourceforge.net/

red_Marvin · Post by **red_Marvin** » Feb 28, 2006 9:34

I'm learning GTK+ 2.0, and while I've never understood winAPI, GTK seems
easy to grasp (might be because of me, getting more ready)

If you want to make it even easier you could download glade, which is a visual
forms designer, that saves your layout in xml format which libglade
(included in fB with an example) can load and display.

VirusScanner · Post by **VirusScanner** » Feb 28, 2006 15:53

I've got wxGtk now, and I think I'll learn wxWindows since it's cross platform, and FB will be able to support it (hopefully) once the GCC backend is used and classes are implemented.

Thanks.

jofers · Post by **jofers** » Feb 28, 2006 19:09

You might as well use GTK. Wx-c you have to include a huge runtime with your programs as well as with GTK.

VirusScanner · Post by **VirusScanner** » Feb 28, 2006 21:47

I'm looking for something like WinAPI is for windows, where you don't have to distribute any runtimes. That's why I didn't want to use wx-c.

But to argue against that, it's much quicker to use a prebuilt library than straight APIs. I could write a GUI app with IBasic's GUI lib much faster than I could with FB and the windows API. But I am thinking about making an IBasic style GUI library for FreeBASIC.

If I can get wxWidgets to install correctly I'm going to try to learn it, since I could be much faster than straight API and be cross platform too. And I think it's possible to link static libraries that way and not distribute huge DLLs.

tunginobi · Post by **tunginobi** » Mar 01, 2006 0:13

GTK is only ugly under Windows, whose default style tries to match the surrounding windows, but fails with extraneous blocks and lines. GTK under any other OS looks mighty fine.