From:	"John M. Aldrich" <fighteer AT cs DOT com>
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: Help !!
Date:	Mon, 12 Jan 1998 18:58:38 -0500
Organization:	Two pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt.
Lines:	68
Message-ID:	<34BAAE2E.4D79@cs.com>
References:	<69e2ca$hk3$1 AT titania DOT telstra DOT net DOT nz>
NNTP-Posting-Host:	ppp213.cs.com
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
DJ-Gateway:	from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp

Richard Chappell wrote:
> 
> Hi, im 12 yrs old and have been programming C/C++ using Turbo C++ for Windows for
> just over a year. I've just recently downloaded DJGPP, but I dont know how to
> program in DOS as well as i do in Windows. I do know the basics however, but if
> anyone has any advice i would be happy to hear it!
> Im also wondering what that UNIX curses toolkit thing u can get using the
> ZIP-PICKER is.
> Also, im not sure how to do graphics in DOS yet, so if anyone feels like telling
> me the basics that would be great! But I'll probably find out once ive read all
> the help things and everything!

Hello!  It's good to see young programmers getting involved with DJGPP.

"Advice" is a fairly general topic.  Using DJGPP should not be too hard
for anybody who knows how to use basic DOS commands, you just have to be
able to unzip the files properly, make a couple of changes in your
'autoexec.bat', and run the compiler tools from the command line.

If you're asking about how well your code will work, then that depends
almost entirely on what your code is doing.  If you use pure ANSI C/C++,
then you will have no problems getting your code to work with DJGPP. 
But there are a number of things where programming in Turbo C vs.
programming in DJGPP makes a big difference.  The biggest, obviously, is
graphics.  Each compiler has its own approach to graphics, and because
DJGPP is a true 32-bit compiler, you'll have to get used to a completely
different way of doing things.  Also, some of DJGPP's library functions
work differently from the same or similar functions in Borland/Turbo C.

By far the best reference for people switching to DJGPP is the
Frequently Asked Questions list.  This should have been recommended to
you by the Zip Picker; you can also read it online on DJ Delorie's web
site (http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/v2faq/).  Quite often, most questions
people ask on this newsgroup/mailing list are already answered in the
FAQ, so it's best to look there first.

The "curses" toolkit is a cross-platform library for text-mode
interfaces.  You can (theoretically) write a text-mode program using
curses, and it will compile on any other platform that supports curses,
like Unix.  However, curses is much slower than, for example, the conio
interface, so if you plan to program solely in DOS/Windows, you won't
need to use it.

You can program graphics "manually" in DJGPP; it's quite a bit different
from the Borland Graphics Interface, but once you learn how, you'll
probably find it a lot easier.  If you don't want to reinvent the wheel,
DJGPP has several user-developed graphics libraries that I highly
recommend.  The two major ones are GRX, which is designed to be familiar
to BGI users (and there is an addon package named 'bccgrx20' which can
be used to port BGI code directly to GRX); and Allegro, a
professional-quality graphics/sound/game library that is very popular. 
Both of these are available from the same place you got DJGPP.

If you have any questions that aren't covered by 'readme.1st', the FAQ,
or the other online documentation, or if something in there isn't clear,
please ask us here and we'll do our best to help you.  Remember, the
more specific your question is, the more specific we can make our
answers.

Good luck!

-- 
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| John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I  |     mailto:fighteer AT cs DOT com     |
| "Starting flamewars since 1993"  |   http://www.cs.com/fighteer   |
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