Where can I learn how to use window formatting and menu items with C++?

I want to make it so it can be used on all unix systems, so I guess this would involve xwindows? Not sure how to communicate with the operating system to make my own top bar, and I guess I would need to have a way to make a scroll bar too. There must be a s开发者_JS百科imple way to do these things.

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Folks are (rightfully) mentioning the Qt toolkit. This is what's used by KDE.

The other popular one is GTK+. The primary language for this is C, not C++. But there are C++ wrappers, such as gtkmm ("GTK minus minus"). This grew out of the GIMP and is the toolkit for GNOME. If you're running Firefox, that's using GTK+.

wXWidgets is another one.

FLTK is another.

The older ones are Xlib, Xaw, and Motif. Only use these if you are a masochist. XCB is an Xlib replacement for low-level scenarios, where you need closeness to the X protocol.

If you don't want X altogether there is svgalib (wow, I haven't thought of that thing in a long time), directfb, or simply calling mmap on a framebuffer device. I don't recommend any of these. X works fine and is better than a lot of folks give it credit for.

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If you want to use the X Window System from C++, the easiest way is to use a "widget tooklit". Qt is a very popular one.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits for some information

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I would hardly call this simple, but Qt is a cross-platform UI framework for C++. You could look into that as it seems like that is what you are looking for.

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I don't know what "it" is that you refer to, but X is not simple. It's also not at the OS level, but that's not really the point.

There are a number of script toolkits that include GUI facilities. One of the most common is Tk, which has binding in TCL, Perl, and other scripting languages. Depending on what "it" really is, there are shell wrappers that can toss up a window with a scrolling text area and some buttons.

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You can also use wxWidgets, which is cross-platfrom and uses the native widgets, has a very large widget library, but is sometimes unstable (not completely cross-platform) because every platform has different widgets. I think Qt is more stable because it emulates all widgets (not on KDE, KDE uses Qt internally). Qt works on all platforms, even on Nokia and Android phones!