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basic UI programming in linux

Hi all,

Perhaps a stupid question. Some time ago, I received a rpi zeroW as a gift, but as I did not have any use for ii I passed it to somebody else in our electronics-group. Now, that person has had a +30 year carreer as self-taught programmer -starting out with BASIC on DOS machines- so he showed of some of his old BASIC applications in dosbox on the pi.

So far so good, but he had an interesting question: Years ago, I wrote a library in BASIC for screen / window applications in DOS. (you know, pop-up text-windows and so on). How do I do that on linux (in C)?

As I myself only do ‘backend’ coding (so no UI), I have to admit I did not have any answer to that.

So, question, For somebody who has mostly coded in BASIC (first DOS and later Visual Basic) and now switched to C and python, what is the best / most easy tool to write a basic UI application with window-function on linux/unix. I know there exist things like QT and ncurses, but I never used these, so I have no idea.

Any advice?

Kr.

nickb333 ,
@nickb333@fedia.io avatar

I class myself as having similar experience to your friend having used Power Basic and Turbo Pascal mainly under DOS. I was able to use tkinter to produce some simple gui front-ends to produce dialogue boxes, process data and feed it to GnuPlot.

INeedMana ,
@INeedMana@lemmy.world avatar

wrote a library in BASIC for screen / window applications in DOS. (you know, pop-up text-windows and so on). How do I do that on linux (in C)?
(…)
I know there exist things like QT and ncurses

So it’s graphical interface we are after or text based?

For text, I agree with others, ncurses

For graphical

  • pyGTK
    basically everything you need, some learnig curve as it’s big and versatile. But to be honest, when trying to achieve something I’d suggest to start from GTK reference to me it somehow conveys the logic better than the PyGTK reference
  • Kivy
    haven’t used it, but might be fun to use
  • wxWidgets
    very cross-platform. Not only you can use it to write UI that will require minor fixes to have the same code for Windows and Linux at the same time, you can also tell it whether the toolkit used under the hood on Linux should be QT or GTK
  • Tk
    old, simple (more fancy things need some gymnastics) but simple (easy to use) and supported in Python out of the box (you don’t even need to install anything)
  • QT
    I’m putting it here just for fairness. I don’t like it, don’t like its signal-slot design, I think it’s hogging up too much resources. But last time I used it was ~10 years ago and in the end, it does in fact work
kristoff OP ,

Wauw! So many answers in such a short time. Thanks all! 👍 (I will not spam the channel by sending a thank you to all but this is really greatly apriciated)

Concerning ncurses. I did hear of it but never looked at it myself. What is not completely clear for me. I know you can use it for ‘low-level’ things, but does it also include ‘high-level’ concepts like windows, input fields and so?

The blog mentioned in one of the other posts only shows low-level things.

MyNameIsRichard ,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

but does it also include ‘high-level’ concepts like windows, input fields and so

Yes, it allows you build full on TUIs.

Eheran ,

ChatGPT will easily make you a basic GUI in Python using tkinter in my case. Can only recommend. It can also explain how those things work etc.

Diplomjodler3 ,

tkinter is pretty powerful but not exactly easy to use. I’d use something simpler to get started.

Eheran ,

Hence GPT to help. I build a fairly big GUI that way, far bigger than GPTs context window (about 3’500 lines), but as always we can break things into smaller pieces that are easy to manage.

kristoff OP ,

Hmmm … 🤔 The best way not to make friends with somebody with over 30 years of coding experience: suggest him to use ChatGPT to write a computerprogram 🤣🤣

Eheran ,

It is far more efficient to ask specific questions instead of reading the whole documentation. Asking those with relevant knowledge of the field is usually not an option. Asking GPT is an option we now have. Why would you not like it? It is like having Excel instead of a calculator and paper.

0x0 ,

I’d go for ncurses.

MyNameIsRichard ,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

If you want a terminal gui, then ncurses may be suitable which you can also use in c++. Qt and Gtk have c++ bindings.

damnthefilibuster ,

I’ve used pyTK to make some apps for personal use. Good stuff, somewhat easy to use once you follow some tutorials.

sirico ,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

FOr me the quickest and basic way would be python and tkinter or pyqt. Failing that, push it to a web app with something like Flask or React

Max_P ,
@Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me avatar

Both GTK and Qt have good Python bindings.

GTK example: github.com/Taiko2k/GTK4PythonTutorial

There’s also PyQt but it looks more complicated and I couldn’t find as nice and straightforward of an example as GTK but I found this: realpython.com/qt-designer-python/

If you want to go to C, GTK works about the same way. If you want C++, Qt is pretty good there.

Otherwise you can go SDL and just put whatever pixels you want on the screen on your own.

FQQD ,
@FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz avatar

I’m not that deep into the topic, but I experimented with GTK and tkinter as a kid

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