Thank you!! The diversity of point of view and depth of knowledge of the participants of this group is truly phenomenal. A simple question (in essence "where should I start") yielded me not only an interesting variety of response to that question, but a road map, complete with pitfalls and milestones and a vision of where I should end-up.
Questions I would have never though to ask were answered, as the ping pong ball of opinion flew around. Why use a low level language like "C" for GUI applications -vs.- why not when one language will do the trick. The benefits of being able to allocate and access memory locations directly. Old standards -vs.- ANSI 99. Types, Classes, Portablilty!! . . . WOW I understand now why "C" was creating such a stir back in 1989 when I first started into programming. It's abilities both as a low level and high level language are, I believe, what make it so universally accepted. With "C" a programmer enjoys the flexibility to write a function many different ways, which means I don't think I would look forward to maintaining "C" code written by a bunch of programmers with diverse views (but I guess I sure would learn a lot). Thanks for your help, . . . all of you. I'll be sure to avoid the rest of Herb Schildts books (I got a small inexpensive programmers reference of "C" keywords & functions and some common "C++" functions that has comes in handy for figuring-out usage and syntax). After what you guys said, Ill bet his ears are ringing. I haven't found the Kernighan and Ritchie book in my local bookstore. I have been using a "C for Linux" book which seems to get right to the point and I appreciate the direct application to Linux and the gcc compiler. I wish I was a good enough programmer to contribute to this great project. Maybe one day when I understand more about Linux I could write a more user friendly help interface with clear syntax, option, and flag usage. Thanks again
