X Windows Documentation

Question

I am planning to develop a couple of small applications using X on Ubuntu 10.4. Does anyone know where I might find any documentation on the subject, including the widget set Ubuntu uses (I'm used to Motif, and they don't look like Motif widgets to me)?

Also, does anyone know where I might find some tools to help out with this (something along the lines of X Designer)?

Alternatively, if you consider X to be on a par with cave-painting, could you suggest any other possibilities?

(I don't have the excellent O'Reilly series to hand, sadly).

Answer 1

You could use Motif if you want. I think the lesstif-dev package would be what you're looking for, but that would look pretty alien on Ubuntu.

The widget set used in Ubuntu is GTK (specifically, GTK2). There are a couple of UI designers around, such as Glade.

http://www.gtk.org/ http://glade.gnome.org/

You could also use Qt, which comes with Qt Designer (or Qt Creator). Qt applications use GTK themes, so look nearly (but not quite) the same as GTK applications.

http://qt.nokia.com/

Answer 2

Look for KDevelop and friends. Doing direct X calls might prove to be unsustainable, as the X api might change. By using either GTk or KDE/QT you add an extra "safety" net