Hai,
i am new to linux. I want to create a gui or an interface in c. From that interface i want to take the values from the user and i want to store that values in a file for later processing. I want to know what are various libraries availlable in linux to develop such interfaces.

Thanx in advance.
rajesh.

The most primitive library for GUI development (known as a “widget set” or “widget toolkit”) is Xlib. It's fast but it's quite hard to use (or find good non-expensive documentation on).

The most common widget set in C in the gtk library, originallally used as the toolkit for the GNU Image Manipulator Program, now also used for the GNOME project.

If you're prepared to try C++ then you might want to look at Qt or the higher-level libkde (which is built on Qt) that is used by KDE. Java is also a nice language for built-in GUI support.

There's also ncurses, which is a terminal-based (text) widget library for creating user interfaces that work very much like windowed interfaces.

That's all that springs to mind; I know I've left quite a few out.

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee

Robert thanx for u reply. It provided me some information. And one more help i needed from u. I want to know which one is better option i.e. either ncurses or xlibc.

rajesh.

Ncurses isn't really graphical. Instead it provides a framework which lets you work
with text based windows in a shell. In other words: Will work with any decent
linux box *without* X server installed.
Xlib is graphical, and if you chose it you have the advantage that you don't need
GTK or QT or any other library installed, *but* doesn't provide you with windows,
widgets and the like (it's more like DirectDraw, you can open a screen, draw lines,
points or arcs on it and move/copy rectangular areas, but that's it). It will take
you months or even years, if you go to develop a gui with Xlib only.

IMHO if you just want to provide a user with a means to graphically enter a set of
values, GTK is the fastest way to go.

If you can do without graphics and stick to text only, take ncurses (not very hard
to understand, either)