Professional Linux® Programming

Chapter 13. Graphics and Audio

Many facets of professional programming require advanced graphics and audio support. Everything from creating mathematical models to writing the latest action game requires the ability to draw (and often animate) complex geometric objects. Likewise, with today's multimedia craze, many applications are required to handle audio files, both as digital files and directly from audio music CDs. Unfortunately, the standard programming tools included with most Linux systems do not provide methods for developing these advanced graphics and audio programs. This chapter describes two tools that can be added to your programming toolbox that help you create programs that add advanced graphics and audio to your Linux applications.

Linux and Graphics

Most Linux distributions today are graphics based. When you boot the system, you are greeted by a graphical login screen that often contains a fancy background image and a graphical list of users and options. Once you log in to the Linux system, your are presented with a graphical desktop environment that contains various icons for programs and devices, as well as a menu icon for selecting applications. Launching programs is as easy as clicking a desktop icon or selecting the appropriate option from a menu.

To get to this point though, the Linux system has to do a lot of things behind the scenes. There is a lot of program code used to display graphics on a Linux system. Graphics programming is one of the most complicated ...