Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31064717

by leakbang • 4 years ago

17 25 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm on the journey of developing a web-browser from scratch in C and I keep coming across niche questions on how certain libraries function (Xlib). I did some searches, but I couldn't find any forum or community that was recently active. Do you know of active communities that have Knowledge of C/Xlib?

mc4ndr3• 4 years ago

The C++ Slack team has much C knowledge.

leakbang12• 4 years ago

It's a shame that they are on Slack, but thanks I will check them out!

tus666• 4 years ago

What is the background of this project? Is it a learning exercise or aiming for some functional benefit?

leakbang12• 4 years ago

The aim of the project is to create a useful, minimal, and fast web browser. But we all are learning as we are developing it :D

0x20cowboy• 4 years ago

Would love to contribute. Especially if it’s Javascript free. Any plans to open source?

zzo38computer2• 4 years ago

If it is FOSS, I think it will be necessary, since many modern web browsers have many problems. Will you be able to write extensions to the browser in C? Would have many feature assuming advanced users only? If so, that would be an improvement, I think.

21432• 4 years ago

It's cool that you're doing this.

Why not Rust?

sigstoat2• 4 years ago

what conceivable use could you have for xlib?

you’re going to have ten thousand hard problems related to just CSS. do yourself a favor and at least use a high level cross platform gui library.

leakbang12• 4 years ago

The high level GUI toolkits that I looked at (GTK+ and Qt) were very bloated with features that would not come in handy for my use case, and frankly, they were difficult to use. Doing simple tasks in Xlib was simpler. But I did quickly notice a lot of limitations with Xlib such as no transparent pixels which means no Anti aliasing and the lack of ability to load in True type and Open type fonts. I did come across the Xrender library (also by XOrg) but couldn't find any documentation for it. Also doesn't really help that pretty much any documentation for Xlib is dozens of years old. Which (C) GUI libraries do you have in mind?

zzo38computer2• 4 years ago

I agree; I really dislike GTK+. However, you could use Xt and/or Xaw, which are OK in my opinion (although there are no transparent pixels, etc; but if you need them, then you might possibly draw your own stuff in the document area).

chadcmulligan• 4 years ago

Cairo may help - https://www.cairographics.org

sigstoat2• 4 years ago

Also doesn't really help that pretty much any documentation for Xlib is dozens of years old.

it hasn't changed in dozens of years! what do you expect? somebody sitting around refreshing graphical design for docs on a library you shouldn't use, so that people feel better about using it? you shouldn't be using it!

frankly, they were difficult to use

try making a combo box with Xlib.

Doing simple tasks in Xlib was simpler

pro-tip: simple tasks are simple. worry about how difficult the difficult tasks will be.

emmo• 4 years ago

Handmade Network[1] is probably where you want to be. They have a semi-active forum, and a very active Discord.

[1] http://handmade.network

leakbang12• 4 years ago

This looks great! Thanks a lot!

rurban• 4 years ago

GitHub has some, but there are also gitlab, codeberg, srt, a.s.o.

C folks prefer to talk in code.

leakbang12• 4 years ago

That's a good insight! I'll definitely try to look for them on Github and similar platforms. Thanks!

janekg• 4 years ago

comp.lang.c ;-)

leakbang12• 4 years ago

Thanks +1 I did't know Google Groups were still around!

Ask HN: Know some Good C programming communities?

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