Chapter 28 . Programming Environments and Interfaces 777 (Web site management)
Chapter 28 . Programming Environments and Interfaces 777 programming languages, such as Perl, C++, and Python, so you can use GTK+ features in many programming environments. Because of the limited space available, this chapter does not show examples of Qt and GTK+ applications. For more information about GTK+, visit the GTK+ Web site at www.gtk.org. You can find information about the Qt framework at www.trolltech.no. Although Qt and GTK+ are the big hammers of Linux graphical development, there are many other toolkits, frameworks, and libraries that you can use to develop GUIbased applications for Linux. The following list, arranged alphabetically, describes some of the most common ones. Most of these toolkits and frameworks describe widget sets, which are implemented in one or more programming libraries. Widget is the term applied to a user interface abstraction, such as a scrollbar or a button, created using the toolkit. . Athena The Athena library was one of the earliest widget libraries available for the X Window System. It was a thin layer of abstraction on top of raw Xlib calls that made it slightly less painful to create scrollbars, text entry boxes, and other typical GUI elements. It is part of the standard X11 distribution. . 3-D Athena Toolkit The 3D Athena Toolkit was a 3D version of the original Athena toolkit. It gave Athena a 3D look and was a considerable visual improvement over plain vanilla Athena. The 3D Athena toolkit, although no longer widely used, is still available on the Web at http://directory.fsf.org/ graphics/3d/xaw3d.html. . FLTK FLTK, which is pronounced full tick, is an acronym for the Fast Light Toolkit. FLTK is a GUI for X, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Written in C++, FLTK makes it possible to write GUIs that look almost identical regardless of the platform on which the GUI runs. FLTK also supports OpenGL graphics. You can find more information about FLTK on the Web at www.fltk.org. . XForms XForms is a GUI toolkit based on Xlib. It isn t highly configurable like the other GUI toolkits discussed in this section, but its simplicity makes XForms easier to use than the other graphical toolkits. It comes with a GUI builder that makes it fast and easy to get working application up and running. More information about XForms can be found on the Web at http://world.std.com/~xforms/. . OpenGL OpenGL is the industry-standard 3D graphics toolkit. It provides the most realistic and lifelike graphics currently available for the X Window System. It is generally available as part of XFree86. More information about OpenGL is available on the Web at www.opengl.org. . Motif Motif was one of the first widget or interface toolkits available for the X Window System that combined both an interface toolkit and a window manager. Originally available only as a commercial product, it is now available in an open source version at www.openmotif.org. Note
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