=== chriadam is now known as chriadam|away [17:57] Hello === nhandler_ is now known as nhandler [19:41] hello, I'd like to write some GUI programs on/for Linux. I've done a little bit of GUI on Windows so understand the basic concepts. But when I approach Linux I feel lost, can't figure out where to start reading. there is X and Mosaic, and OpenGL, and GTK, QT, etc. Then there are an infinite number of window managers. It is unclear to me how all of these fit together. Where can I find some good docs on this subject? thanks. [20:03] em22_, it's actually pretty simple: you pick your favourite language and a toolkit and start coding.. no need to care about wm, display servers or anything unless you really need to mess with them [20:04] em22_: most applications use either Gtk or Qt [20:05] then there’s Gtk2 and Gtk3… devs tend to switch to Gtk3 progressively [20:05] em22_, the most widespread UI toolkits are GTK and Qt. GTK offers UI only and many languages, Qt is c++ and python and has many utilities beyond UI elements only [20:05] that's the brief explanation [22:47] c10ud: thanks, what do you mean when you say that GTK is UI only? what I am hoping to find are some docs that explain how the different pieces fit togehter and what the trade-offs are of GTK vs QT vs X... what I really don't get is how you talk to the window managers, especially when there are so many different ones. [22:49] oh, well, perhaps I should explain, that I am a crazyman who prefers to write stuff in assembly. I try to avoid heavy (and usually buggy) libraries as much as possible. [22:59] em22_, unless you want to start yet another toolkit I suggest you take a brief look at GTK and Qt documentation and then you decide what's best for you. Everything else like window managers etc. you can ignore it for now [23:38] em22_: as c10ud said, you don’t care about window managers. [23:39] if you want to use asm I think Qt is out of the question… [23:39] it’s a bit strange to use asm and limit yourself to a single arch though. [23:39] for a gui app… [23:45] stqn: well, actually I do care about window managers, Im trying to understand the whole process.... and yes, I might just end up writing my own toolkit.... yeah, using asm is strange... but I guess Im just a strange guy... Im actually writing my own programming language and I have a very strong dislike of C. I want as little between me and the cpu as possible. Ive read most of petzold, so have a grasp of how things work ove [23:45] r on that side of the fence, but I have not yet found anything (docs) similar to give me a grasp of the linuxey side of things. [23:47] so bottom line of what Im searching for is the linux equivlent of petzold. any ideas? === chriadam|away is now known as chriadam [23:49] I don’t know who or what petzold is. [23:50] What we said is when you write a GUI application, you don’t care about the window manager. [23:52] (well for my SDL game I had to disable fullscreen when under Unity because Unity is bugged, but that’s a special case…) [23:58] petzold is the bible of windows programming, he explains all the APIs for creating and managing Windows and more... I've looked at SDL, it's a very interesting approach. how do you like it? how buggy is it? My number one concern is bugs. I tried some demos with GTK and it was crash city, a throughly underwhelming experience, especially for a DEMO. My general impression of QT is that it is encumbered with a lot of baggage, [23:58] both codewise and polotical. so it would not be my first choice. I've heard that X is pretty ugly to interface with but dont have any specifics. And none of what I've seen so far gives me a clue how to talk to the window managers.