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I want to do Graphics programming in C. I had searched a lot about the compiler that provides a rich set of functions for doing GUI programming in C, but I couldn't find anything.
Basically I want to draw buttons and then accept the choice from the user and take an appropriate action. It would be helpful if you can suggest a C compiler, or a library that I can add to my compiler. I am working on the Windows operating system.
Presently, I am using TURBO C compiler that does not support direct methods for creating buttons. Any help would be appreciated.
This is guaranteed to have nothing to do with the compiler. All compilers do is compile the code that they are given. What you're looking for is a GUI library, which you can write code against using any compiler that you want.
Of course, that being said, your first order of business should be to ditch Turbo C. That compiler is about 20 years old and continuing to use it isn't doing you any favors. You can't write modern GUI applications, as it will only produce 16-bit code. All modern operating systems are 32-bit, and many are now 64-bit. It's also worth noting that 64-bit editions of Windows will not run 16-bit applications natively. You'll need an emulator for that; it's not really going to engender much feeling of accomplishment if you can only write apps that work in a DOS emulator. :-)
Microsoft's Visual Studio Express C++ is available as a free download. It includes the same compiler available in the full version of the suite. The C++ package also compiles pure C code.
And since you're working in Windows, the Windows API is a natural choice. It allows you to write native Windows applications that have access to the full set of GUI controls. You'll find a nice tutorial here on writing WinAPI applications in C. If you choose to go with Visual Studio, it also includes boilerplate code for a blank WinAPI application that will get you up and running quickly.
If you really care about learning to do this, Charles Petzold's Programming Windows is the canonical resource of the subject, and definitely worth a read. The entire Windows API was written in C, and it's entirely possible to write full-featured Windows applications in C. You don't need no stinkin' C++.
That's the way I'd do it, at least. As the other answers suggest, GTK is also an option. But the applications it generates are just downright horrible-looking on Windows.
EDIT: It looks like you're not alone in wanting to write "GUI" applications using an antiquated compiler. A Google search turns up the following library: TurboGUI: A GUI Framework for Turbo C/C++:
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If you're required use Turbo C, this might be an option.
The most famous library to create some GUI in C language is certainly GTK.
With this library you can easily create some buttons (for your example). When a user clicks on the button, a signal is emitted and you can write a handler to do some actions.
Use win APIs in your main function:
RegisterClassEx() note: you have to provide a pointer to a function (usually called WndProc) which handles windows messages such as WM_CREATE, WM_COMMAND etc
CreateWindowEx()
ShowWindow()
UpdateWindow()
Then write another function which handles win's messages (mentioned in #1). When you receive the message WM_CREATE you have to call CreateWindow(). The class is what control is that window, for example "edit" is a text box and "button" is a.. button :). You have to specify an ID for each control (of your choice but unique among all). CreateWindow() returns a handle to that control, which needs to be memorized. When the user clicks on a control you receive the WM_COMMAND message with the ID of that control. Here you can handle that event. You might find useful SetWindowText() and GetWindowText() which allows you to set/get the text of any control.
You will need only the win32 SDK. You can get it here.
C is more of a hardware programming language, there are easy GUI builders for C, GTK, Glade, etc. The problem is making a program in C that is the easy part, making a GUI that is a easy part, the hard part is to combine both, to interface between your program and the GUI is a headache, and different GUI use different ways, some threw global variables, some use slots. It would be nice to have a GUI builder that would bind easily your C program variables, and outputs. CLI programming is easy when you overcome memory allocation and pointers, GUI you can use a IDE that uses drag and drop. But all around I think it could be simpler.
A C compiler itself won't provide you with GUI functionality, but there are plenty of libraries for that sort of thing. The most popular is probably GTK+, but it may be a little too complicated if you are just starting out and want to quickly get a GUI up and running.
For something a little simpler, I would recommend IUP. With it, you can use a simple GUI definition language called LED to layout controls (but you can do it with pure C, if you want to).
Windows API and Windows SDK if you want to build everything yourself (or) Windows API and Visual C Express. Get the 2008 edition. This is a full blown IDE and a remarkable piece of software by Microsoft for Windows development.
All operating systems are written in C. So, any application, console/GUI you write in C is the standard way of writing for the operating system.
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Closed 12 years ago.
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Cross Platform C library for GUI Apps?
Is there any crossplatform GUI library for C language? (I mean at least win mac lin) If there is any XML-like GUI editing model, any GUI editing crossplatform visual programms it'l be grate!)
Take a look at the IUP Toolkit. It is written largely in C, and is also easily bound to Lua.
I use Gtk a lot it is consistent and nice to use. It was formerly used as a common platform for Gimp but became widely used and is the base toolkit for the Gnome desktop under Linux.
The GUI editor I use is Glade under Linux. The code generated can be recompiled without change under Windows. GLib is an underlying library that abstracts files, network, provides basic types and collections. As long as you use Glib, you are mostly OS independent.
I forgot to mention that glade stores the user interface in XML and generates code out of it. On the glade page I saw there is a windows version there but I cannot tell much about its behaviour. Under Linux it's fairly OK to use and quite stable.
Tk is a GUI library written in C. It comes with a scripting language named Tcl. These can be embedded in your C program. They are very mature and relatively lightweight. You can call the GUI toolkit from C, though it's much easier to do your GUI in Tcl and import it into your C program.
Applications written in Tcl, Tk and C are highly portable, and easy to distribute. The language is BSD style, which is a lot more liberal than GNU licenses.
On the Mac and Windows, Tk uses native widgets whenever possible, making your apps look right for each of those platforms.
GTK is a cross-platform GUI for C (not C++, though there are wrappers for it and many languages).
I've been tasked with porting an existing Windows GUI app to Linux. Ideally, I'd like to do this so the same code base can be used to build either the Windows version or the Linux version. I'll be doing my work on Ubuntu 9.04. After searching around, it's unclear to me what tools are best suited to help me with this.
A list of loose requirements would be:
The code is in C, not C++, and should compile to build both Windows and Linux versions. Since it's existing code, and fairly large, converting to a managed language like .NET is out of the question for now.
I would prefer if I can use the same dialogs in both systems. In Windows, putting up a dialog is pretty simple. You build the dialog in the Resource Editor in Visual Studio, then call DialogBox() API, and handle the event messages. I would really like to find something that can do the equivalent on the Linux side.
It would also be nice to have a good IDE similar to Visual Studio.
Any helps or hints would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Winelib should let you compile Win32 code under Linux with only a few modifications.
Since your code base is in C, I'd suggest using GTK+. It's a cross platform GUI toolkit. For instance, Pidgin instant messenger GUI is created with GTK+. Glade user interface designer can be used to graphically design UIs.
If you're on a tight budget, and don't mind taking time to work around a fair number of limitations, Winlib is an option. If you're shorter on time, and have a larger budget, you might want to look into Mainsoft instead. It's not exactly perfect, but I believe it supports a considerably larger part of the Win32 API (at a correspondingly higher price).
Until now I've been only writing console applications but I need to write a simple window application for a school assignment.
Could somebody point me to a good tutorial how to create windows and other ordinary windows elements such as buttons, 2d graphs etc in ANSI C? is there some good library I should use?
I tried googling but there are no tutorial websites devoted to C.
If you can, I would also appreciate some example code.
Thank you.
By the way, I use Dec C++.
GTK is a good library to use, but may provide non-native looks under Windows. It looks great under GNU/Linux, especially using GNOME.
It is implemented in just C (Using the GObject Type System, part of the GLib library), so it will work great for your needs. There is also a RAD tool called Glade.
There's nothing in the ANSI C standard about windows. If you want to make a windowed application, you'll have to use platform-specific libraries (e.g. Win32, Cocoa, or X11), or some sort of cross-platform library that encapsulates that (e.g. SDL, wxWidgets, or many more).
Common places to start are Charles Petzold's Programming Windows and theForger's Win32 API Programming Tutorial.
However in most cases C is no longer the preferred language for Windows development. Object oriented technology is far better suited to GUI development, and with the introduction of MFC, C++ became the preferred language, and later with .Net, C# and C++/CLI.
The Win32 API can be hard work, much of MFC is little better than a Win32 API wrapper, the .Net framework however was designed from the ground up, and is less encumbered by the legacy of the Win32 API monster, and working with it tends to result in far greater productivity.
Either way, Dev-C++ is not a great tool for GUI development.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829488 which also talks how to create
Windows application: Creates a simple
Microsoft Windows-based application.
The application files include a
ProjectName.cpp file that contains a
_tWinMain function. You can use this type of application to perform
graphical user interface (GUI) based
programming.
As for tutorials... use MSDN. Win32 API is C. You don't need "Win32 ANSI C tutorial" - you need Win32 tutorial (for example http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/start.html, http://www.functionx.com/win32/Lesson01.htm) - unless, of course, you don't know ANSI C but then you just look for ANSI C tutorial. These subjects are independent.
There are lots of good libraries—too many for there to be an obvious choice without starting a religious war. I recommend that for your first library you learn something that will work on Windows, Linux, or OSX. Here are two good choices, not necessarily the best, but widely used and personal favorites:
Tcl/Tk. You write most of your application in the Tcl scripting language, but you can easily integrate your own ANSI C code into Tcl, which was designed from the beginning with such integration in mind. The Tk toolkit is very easy to learn, and you can write many simple GUIs in pure Tcl when you are getting started. Interactive, easy, and very well supported.
If you want to write everything in ANSI C, I don't know of any really simple choices, but I've been fairly happy with wxwidgets. All these tools have a pretty steep learning curve, however.
There are not many plain C GUI libraries as the strengths of the language lie elsewhere. Perhaps you should think about using a language with C bindings so you can still do the number crunching in C, but use something less painful for GUI development?
If you really want to stick to C, you can either use the OS' native API or the only current cross-platform C GUI lib I'm aware of: GTK+. If you don't really need a GUI but just graphical output, I'd go with SDL.
I suggest you download Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition and use C#.Net.
As has been said, I suggest you use Winforms and switch to a .Net environment. It's 2009, and I think there are more suitable solutions to GUI's :P
Edit: Nvm, didn't see it was a school assignment.
However, here is a C++ guide on the Win32 API: http://www.relisoft.com/win32/index.htm
Good day folks, I'm in a need of a bit of guidance.
Basically, I'm a webdev who knows some C from the past, but I've only developed somewhat simple console apps for *nix.
Shortly, I want to develop a simple Win program with a GUI and not get my hands into any of the following technologies:
.NET C#
Java
C++ (especially this one)
Because I have nor the time nor the need for it currently.
1). Can I use wxWidgets without resorting to cpp (if not, what other native looking and lightweight widget toolkit would you suggest?)
2). Can I use OpenCV with strict C? (no templates, inline functions, etc)
3). Should I look for other options for a compiler besides MinGW? Is Intel one worth investigating? (AFAIK, it has a restrictive license).
4). What IDE of the following would you suggest for windows / c programming
Dev-C++
Eclipse with appropriate plugins (can't remember the exact one)
Any text editor + *.bat for compiling??
Thanks!
If you're interested in learning C-based Windows programming directly, and not using other intermediate tools:
There's a really good reference book by Charles Petzold called Programming Windows. It's definitely the way to get started. Absolutely everything is crystal clear, and you never need C++.
The Windows API, as a whole, is built for C programmers. All the fancy stuff like an actual application window is passed back as "HANDLE"s, which are more-or-less just pointers into the OS's object table. You as a programmer never have to deal with objects, just their HANDLEs.
Also, this particular book does a good job describing the Windows event-loop. If you're unfamiliar with it, it is described in generous detail.
Good luck!
For C Windows GUI programming the easiest thing is VC++ (any version since 6.0) and The Charles Petzold Programming Windows book.
The free Express version of the Microsoft compiler should work fine - I'm not sure if you'd have to download the Platform SDK or if it comes with one.
You can write Windows GUI programs in straight C. Download the Windows SDK and look at the "GENERIC" sample (I assume it's still in there). This is pretty much the minimal code required for a Win32 app, and it's in plain-ol' C.
Edit: Hmmm, it doesn't appear to be installed on this laptop. You can find it online here.
It might be worth reconsidering C#.NET. You could easily learn C# in a couple days, and be developing slick apps very quickly. Straight C-based windows libraries, particularly Win32, are BRUTAL in comparison. You'd spend a week just to write a simple app that would take minutes in C#.
The only C-based toolkit I can think of is the Windows port of GTK+. I have no experience using it in the Windows environment though. It is very mature on the Linux side though, and may be good enough if your needs are simple.
Learning the Win32 API is hard! But like others have stated, Petzold's book is the way to go if you insist on going down that path.
My opinion is that developing a Windows GUI using only C and the Win32 API would be harder to learn than picking up just enough C++ to utilize one of the C++-based frameworks. You could still do the majority of your work in plain C.
As for free IDEs, I would go with Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition.
You don't need anything.
Just use C and Win32 api , like real programmers, not kids..
See the VS Win32 wizard
Regarding wxWidgets, you can use https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxc
I never actually heavily used it, so I'm not aware of its maturity.
Mingw and Microsoft Visual C++ are my favorite compilers. Remember you can always use strict C and compile it using a C++ compiler, since valid C is almost always valid C++.
For windows, I've used Dev-C++ in the past, but nowadays Microsoft Visual C++ seems a better solution.
If you're going for text editor+bat, check out Notepad++.
EDIT: Just to clarify, using Microsoft Visual C++ does NOT mean learning C++. You can use C in it perfectly because - I repeat - valid C is often valid C++. Don't want C++? No problem. Just stay away from the C++-only features and you're still safe in a C++ compiler.
EDIT: Roger Lipscombe has noted in the comments that a pure C compiler is available in Microsoft's Visual C, using the /TC switch.
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
Taking advice from this post, I purchased a copy of 'The C Programming Language' and am happily reading my way through.
However, all the stuff I've written in the past has been interpreted, and I have no idea where to look for a good C compiler or an IDE (is there even one?). Google searches throw up a lot of results for C++ compilers, which I don't think is the same thing? Haha. I was wondering if there is a compiler or IDE for C that's regarded as an industry standard (kinda in the same way that Zend Studio is pretty much the IDE for PHP), or at least one that is generally considered to be a good quality product.
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Pelles C. Great little C IDE for Windows; includes an LCC-based compiler. That said, NetBeans 6.5 has decent support for C and C++, and Code::Blocks is well worth a whirl.
Well, Visual Studio is the standard on Windows, and there are free versions available. However it does have a bunch of Microsoft specific extensions.
For learning though, developing console apps are pretty easy and also fairly close to the standard K&R style C.
However, way back in the day I used to use Watcom, which was also pretty good for the time. It's a lot more sparse than Visual Studio, but that can be an advantage for a beginner.
I believe it's also available for free these days at http://www.openwatcom.org/index.php/Main_Page
I'd probably recommend starting with that, if your main O/S is Windows.
Edit: new live url
Most people use Microsoft Visual Studio for development on Windows. You can get a free version here:
http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/.
Usually GCC is used on Unix, and is typically included with the OS.
C and C++ are very similar, but C++ allows classes. Most C++ compilers will compile C code.
I used DevC++ almost exclusively while I was in University for C\C++ programming. It comes bundled with the MinGW compiler. It's pretty easy to get set up and rolling. Other than this, my only other recommendation would be Visual Studio.
Almost all C++ compilers will compile C code.
I would recommend using Microsoft Visual Studio. There is a free version of it.
Most C programmers like to have their own editor and choose a compiler that fits their project. That is why you can download multiple different compilers for C and not so many built into IDE's directly.
It is easy to use editors like Editplus or even Notepad. Some of the fancier editors have syntax highlighting and can run commands in a command window for you.
IDE's usually support multiple languages as well. So when you are tired of C and want to move on to Python, Java, C++, some IDE's can help you do that. I would look into these:
Eclipse :: http://www.eclipse.org/callisto/c-dev.php
Microsoft Visual Studio :: http://www.microsoft.com/express/
GCC (GNU Compiler) and vi/emacs (or pico for uber-newbies)
Addendum: remember C is NOT a subset of C++, so a c++ compiler is not necessarily appropriate.
I recommend Quincy when you are just learning to program in C/C++. Simple to use and created for easily trying out small C/C++ programs.
You can download the Digital Mars C compiler for Windows for free.
Another good IDE is CodeBlocks, and its cross platform. Give it a try you might like it. I used it for a while an it gave me good results for what i was doing ( an image editor in C ), but it had some bugs.
For unix developing i've always liked using gcc plus an editor... it just makes it fun ( after you get use to it ).
When it comes to c/c++ compilers on the Windows platform there are quite a few to choose from.
And when it comes to and IDE, the Zeus IDE can be easily configured to work with any of them.
I used DevC++ when learning C years ago. It was a great tool, although I haven't seen it in a while so I'm not sure what state it is in now.
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
For the record, I used TCC, the Tiny C Compiler, to quickly test small code. It can generate exe and DLLs.
You might need to download the Windows headers: it has a limited subset, you might want more.
Digital Mars also has a free C/C++ compiler of reasonable size.
GNU C is pretty much an industry standard, even if its a unixy compiler.
You can also use Visual Studio, but keep in mind it doesnt support C99 very well.
Other choices are out there, like pcc (I really like this one), llvm (also very interesting), etc, but those usually require some level of enthusiasm.
The free country website has a list of free C compilers. Many of which work on Windows.
You could use a C++ compiler, such as gcc, to compile your C code. Here's a good article with links to free C compilers/IDEs:
http://computerprogramming.suite101.com/article.cfm/freeprogrammingtools
Simply because the white book is influential, doesn't mean it's a good learning resource!
It is possibly the worst way to learn a language from that has ever existed. On top of that, last time I checked it was unreasonably expensive.
It's a complete language definition, and is good at that (which is why it truly is one of the most influential programming books). For a long time it actually was THE definition of C.
You might consider a second book on the subject.
That said, you should try quite a few different IDEs and see what you are happy with.
In fact, at first you might want to get used to vi/emacs/notepad/make and command-line compiling, this will get you a much stronger understanding of your environment (and if it's not understanding you're after, then you are barking up the wrong language-tree).
As you are investigating different IDEs, I'd give Eclipse or Netbeans with a c plugin a try. They are going to be the most complete and reliable IDEs (except, probably, for Microsoft's) and are platform independent so you won't be left in the cold when you decide to go to the Mac or Linux.