I want to make a GUI for a chess program, but in a way that will be quick but nice. Unfortunately I'm not acquainted with OpenGL [I know C/C++ programming fairly well] so unless someone knows a quick guide to learning OpenGL, I guess I would have to resort to another option. I know how to do TCL GUIs, but I was wondering whether anyone could give suggestions on other GUI languages on the Linux platform that I can program in? Any help would be appreciated.

I would say learn SDL, but that's for windows.

Anyway, there is a bunch of linux gui libraries (though i am not very familiar with any).
You could always go low (but simple) with ncurses.h for c/c++, but it's command line graphics and not windows stuff (correct me if i am wrong on this). Other than that, you could try out the GUI facilities found in other languages, like Perl (Tk), Python, Java, etc...

SDL is certainly not only for Windows. It's an abstraction layer working on top of many operating systems, including Linux and Windows. Because it abstracts from different underlying OS-specific code, it tends to be much easier to pick up and understand.

It is, however, not a GUI lib, it's a media lib. You might want to search for a GUI lib built on top of SDL (sorry, I've not used SDL and don't know any).

Yeah, i made a mistake in my orignal post. I meant to say GDI. Dunno why SDL even come to my mind. Thanks for the correction.

You could look at gtkmm (www.gtkmm.org) it is a c++ wrapper of gtk. Lots of documentation, so it shouldn't be too bad.

BTW, for the creation of a chess board, openGL would be really quite easy. A good book is 'OpenGL game programming'. Written for windows, but if you ignore the first two chapters it is OS Independant. Quick introduction to making stuff work, and then once you know the basics, it should be easy from there.
If you choose the OpenGL route, check out NeHe's website for tutorials and forums.

Cheers,

-tjm

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I will check on some of the things you mentioned. I checked Nehe's website, but, unless I downloaded the wrong stuff, the code examples are java. But I have found other links. I have decided to go for OpenGL. I'd like to know one more thing. I've seen something about a library called GLUT, apparently mostly used in Linux OpenGL apps/ something like that. Anybody who has more information on this? And roughly how long would it take for an average-experience C/C++ programmer acquainted with Linux take to learn what I'd need to learn for this ?

Most of Nehe's native tutes are not java but windows c++ with glut. You must've hooked one of the many ports of Nehe's demo code - quite groovy, you can look at the same code for linux c++ with SDL for some tutes, lots of source ports there on Nehe.

Track down the red book/blue book, they're downloadable and really useful.

I use SDL instead of glut - easy, nice helper functions too for non-graphical stuff ... I like it.

hi,
look at www.fltk.org
I think the fltk is a good and interface for C++/C. fltk is open source software multiplatform an da lot of examples ( checker for example)come with.
I have also some simple examples that I have written my self for beginners I can send them if you want

enjoy
best regard
bela