If your gonna use a Win32 app you might need to know some windows programming if you plan on it handling how things are viewed, especially if your using OpenGl!!!
Since you are new at OpenGL, I would recommend using GLUT with a console application. That way, you can use printf or cout (assuming C/C++) for testing and debugging purposes. GLUT is easy to use, although the callback mechanism may seem tricky at first.
Later, it is trival to change your code that uses GLUT into a Win32 application, either by using gtada’s method or replacing the console app’s main() function with a simple WinMain() function:
int WINAPI WinMain (HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{
int argc = 1;
glutInit(&argc, &lpCmdLine);
// remainder of GLUT initialization
return 0;
}
Another way to use a Win32 app without having to write a WinMain which handles the cmd line to pass to glutInit is to use the compiler option /entry:mainCRTStartup in project settings->Link
This way you can use a plain old main() function in a win32 app and still use the same code on unix (you dont get your app-handle though, but you dont want that with glut anyway)