Okay, so I’m working on a modeling program and have been using GLUT to handle the window/mouse stuff. So far, it’s been great. I’m growing a little worried, tho, because I’ve read some things about GLUT that think maybe I’ll hit some problems later. I’ve already run into the problem with the “close window X” killing the program rather than just a single window. I’ve heard some things about input rates that make me think that GLUT may not be up to speed.
What do people use for cross-platform openGL development? I’ve used SDL, but it doesn’t seem to support mulitple windows. It’s very game oriented, whereas GLUT is very application oriented. How does GTK fit into this? I’m not at all familiar with its functionality.
GLUT is a way to get an app running without worrying about the platform, but there are others. You should really eliminate OpenGL from your thinking about the GUI/Windowing aspects of your application when selecting a candidate. OpenGL can be made to work with them all. So, something like GTK+ will be fine, but it only really has a second class port to Windows for now. KDE is probably a better choice for a pro app unless you are concerned about fees related to commercial development. Another approach is to use different windowing on different systems, but you’ll have to wrap your application code around stuff. Once you decide which one you want to use, you will either be able to use a simple container style class for OpenGL rendering, OR you will be able to develop some simple ‘glue’ yourself.
Note that windowing support is not GUI support, it is slightly worrying that you jumped from GLUT to GTK in your question. Be clear what you want, if it’s just a window that’s one thing, if it’s a sophisticated GUI that’s another and will affect your decision.
Hmm… I guess I sorta equate the two (GUI and Windowing system). I don’t know Windows Programming, I don’t know Mac programming, I don’t know whatever runs on Linux programming. I figure, if I learn an API, I might as well learn a cross platform one. I realize GLUT doesn’t have GUI support, so I’m sorta adding some basic GUI stuff to it. What I really need is something that handles the windows and the user interaction with them only.
I’m not sure what GTK really is, so that’s why I asked about it…
I think I’ll stick with GLUT for now since I don’t know anything else that does what I want it to.