# Programming in X11



## sbussy89 (Aug 26, 2007)

I am a CS student who knows a bit of C++ (I've gone as far as pointers, recursion, classes, pass by reference). I'm going to be helping out on a project to create a GUI for a new operating system. I want to look into programming a window manager in X11, but I can't find any good tutorials online for my level of experience. Does anyone know of a book or a website where I can find information on how to get started with X11 window programming? I'm also running Vista (keep your comments to yourself), and I need to know what compilers, debuggers, etc. I will need to run any programs. Thank you


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## shuuhen (Sep 4, 2004)

I can't help much with what compilers you'd need on Vista (I rarely even use XP myself, so I can't quickly answer it). You might initially look at Cygwin or DevC++ (which includes MinGW). I don't have much experience with either, but there may be some limitations with one or the other (like Cygwin can't use free() properly in C and can't use ncurses).

You could consider using Qt or wxWidgets for a graphics library. You could start by browsing the KDE (or another desktop environment) developer's documentation. fluxbox might be a small enough window manager that you could look over its code, although it may be in pure C. KDE and Qt may be a good bet since I think both are geared towards C++. I think you can also do KDE/Qt stuff on Windows, so you may be able to experiment and work with those from within Windows.

Here's a link to the documentation area for KDE: http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Development

I don't think I ever had much luck with finding pure X11 programming documentation, but I haven't done huge amounts of GUI programming.


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