[ILUG] Linux API

[John P. Looney]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2000 at 03:08:15AM -0800, Vinayak Risbud mentioned:
> Can anybody tell me,  is there any API (Application Programming Interface)
> for Linux ? (As we have WIN32 API for Windows)
>  
> If yes ,  is there any Documentation/Tutorial for it ?  Please tell me

 Because Linux wasn't made by a single organisation, but tens of thousands
of people in small groups, there is no one single API.

 The "core" API would be the GNU C Library, which you can download here:
        http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/

 The source code package contains the C library manual pages. Last count,
there were about 80 languages actively developed/supported on Linux, and
each has it's own API, but most provide hooks to all the basic
functionality that the GNU C library provides (string handling,
networking, file I/O etc).

 For visual development, there is a great choice of APIs. The most common
are "Motif" (availible for commerical unixen, see http://www.lesstif.org
for details), GTK for generic programming (http://www.gtk.org), and Qt
(http://www.troll.no), which seems to be the favourite of C++ programmers.
There seems to be about 20 availible currently. Both GTK and Qt also work
on Windows, if you intend porting to windows eventually.

 However, this is an excellent page for finding out about linux
development: http://www.linux.com/development/

John

-- 
Microsoft. The best reason in the world to drink beer.
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~valen