Good site for C tutorials esp. GUIs?

Amaru

Exactly as it says up top. I have to develop a GUI in C(just c, not ++) and i've never written anything in it before. Anybody got a good tutorial site that can help out?

scojones

Move this thread to the programming board.

bringitdown

http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/CE.html - C programming ... great site.

GUI's in C: what platform? Why C? There are 'easier' languages to develop GUI's in than C. If it must be C GTK is a great toolkit.

http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ - GTK - Gimp Toolkit (GUI Widgets) Tutorials.

Amaru

I have to program in C because its part of a project i'm doing. The language has to be procedural, so i figured C was the easiest to program in out of the few choices there are.

rsynnott

What OS and GUI toolkit do you want to use? GTK is probably a good bet if you're on Linux or Windows.

Amaru

Well i only really know windows, so thats probably what i'm going with. And do i definitely have to use a toolkit? I'd actually prefer to hard code it, because i have to write a report on using the language. Is that a lot harder than using a toolkit(obviously it'll be harder, but is it a major hassle to program GUIs in C?)?

bringitdown

Hard - code?

You don't seem to know what you are doing tbh... to get a simple window to display you will have to use some sort of API or toolkit, simple as.

Amaru

You don't seem to know what you are doing tbh

That should have been obvious from the start! Its pretty much why i need a tutorial! And yeah hard code, as in build the code for the GUI yourself, instead of having a program write it for you while you basically just draw what you want(the same way as Dreamweaver would do for you instead of hard coding in HTML). Like in Java you can just write the code for the GUI, or you can get a program that'll do it for you. You're saying its different in C?

bringitdown

Okay that is a little clearer, try the GTK then, you don't 'draw' the GUI you code it - calling the toolkit API to create a window for example.

e.g.

 button = gtk_button_new_with_label ("Hello World"); 

That creates a new button object with the text Hello World:
http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/ch-gettingstarted.html#SEC-HELLOWORLD

It is all code baby no drawing at all.

/edit:
Java has a built in GUI toolkit called Swing which is more or less the standard. C has no equivalent. So there are many 'vendors' / 'publishers' of toolkits and APIs that allow you to do it.

rsynnott

Amaru wrote:

That should have been obvious from the start! Its pretty much why i need a tutorial! And yeah hard code, as in build the code for the GUI yourself, instead of having a program write it for you while you basically just draw what you want(the same way as Dreamweaver would do for you instead of hard coding in HTML). Like in Java you can just write the code for the GUI, or you can get a program that'll do it for you. You're saying its different in C?

It's different in that Java is a language with a large library collection, including AWT and SWING which do GUI (you can, incidentally, have a JRE that lacks those, and conversely you can have those and still use a third party toolkit like SWT). C is a language with only a small set of libraries as standard. That means that to do GUI stuff, or networking, or nuclear power plant control, or whatever, you have to use external toolkits. GTK is one of many such toolkits for doing GUI.

Incidentally, if you don't know C, then this is not the best way to learn it. Do you know any language?
Rob

aaf

Slightly off topic but I'm selling a few programming books on this thread

Amaru

rsynnott wrote:

Incidentally, if you don't know C, then this is not the best way to learn it. Do you know any language?
Rob

I know Java, and basic C++, but thats it. I don't really need to learn the language, just develop this GUI in it for my project, and then i'll more than likely never need to use it again, as i can't think why i'd need to(instead of C++).

Just to be sure, GTK is definitely C and not C++ yeah?

rsynnott

Amaru wrote:

I know Java, and basic C++, but thats it. I don't really need to learn the language, just develop this GUI in it for my project, and then i'll more than likely never need to use it again, as i can't think why i'd need to(instead of C++).

Just to be sure, GTK is definitely C and not C++ yeah?

Erm, why not use Java? Surely when they say procedural they just want the PROGRAM to be procedural.

You might well have cause to use C again. It's standard for driver development for Linux, for a lot of UNIX app development, and a lot of game development (including Playstation).

Yep, GTK++ is C. There's a C++ binding (ironically called GTK-- IIRC)

Amaru

rsynnott wrote:

Erm, why not use Java? Surely when they say procedural they just want the PROGRAM to be procedural.

I don't follow?