by Hello all - I'm new here so please be gentle with me <smile>.
I'm tired of Windows/DOS (except Word 6.0 of course <smile>) and want
a fater, smoother, and more customizable platform. Enter Linux (I think).
People say its great, wonderful, I have to have it.
I am embarking upon an adventure to control external hardware devices
through my Serial Port using a serial port interface device (this cool
hardware setup by Dr. Bruce Chubb called the Universal Cumputer Interface
System. Anyway, my question is this:
I'm assuming it is possible to address the serial I/O ports under Linux.
I cannot do it in DOS yet, but I have QBasic code and it looks pretty
easy in C as well. So I just need someone to verify that I can send info to
and read from the serial port at some address. Ok.
The second question is: I will eventually wish to program graphical
interfaces for my hardware control system (it'll be a home automation
program - both a C programming / C++ programming and hardware learning
excercise). Now, I'll need just basic button support, some nice line
and font drawing capabilities, etc. Basic scrolling menus, etc, etc, etc.
I've seen XForms do some of this but I'm a bit fuzzy on the whoel idea.
Is it possible to program graphical interface systems pretty easily and
with something freely downloadable? I'm not looking to spend millions
on Motif yet for Linux. Would X-Windows work? TCL/TK? What's all this stuff
about.
ANy and all help would be much appreciated. I'm a bit overwhelmed by all this
but I want to learn as much as possible. I'm a good C programmer and I have
quite a bit of application development experience under Windows/DOS/UNIX.
Thanks! Looking forward to hearing from you gurus out there! E-mail
is cool or reply to the news group!
Carl Swanson
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