Alternatives to graphics.h

Question

We have an introductory course to Computer Graphics this semester in college. There is no recommended way on how to go about the Lab exercises. Most of the students are resorting to Turbo C and the inbuilt graphics.h header file.

I'm a little apprehensive about this, Turbo C is a thing of the 70's and to learn stuff on it seems pointless to me. I can set up the graphics.h for Bloodshed Dev-C++ compiler too or maybe the libgraph on linux systems.

Are there some alternatives to the Borland graphics.h ? I'm looking for relatively modern solutions that are relatively simple in the sense that they don't add too much boilerplate code etc and yet implement the same functionality.

To give a little more information about the tasks that we'd be doing, We'll be implementing basic Graphics Algorithms like the DDA algorithm, Bresenham's Algorithms, Scan Conversion etc. So I need to be able to plot pixels on the screen, I don't need a really high level library that can draw the primitives like lines and circles on its own. If it can its great but to learn I should be able to plot raw pixels on the screen.

Solution

Allegro or SDL libraries may be for you.

I would also suggest not to use Bloodshed Dev-C++ as it is also a little outdated. You may use MS VC++ Express or Code::Blocks which are both free.

Comments

[nikhil]

Unfortunately we are tied to C++ so JavaScript won't work for us.

[Ray Toal]

I kinda figured, but thought I would plug it anyway. I've dabbled in Tk for Perl a while back.... there is port to C++: cpptk.sourceforge.net.

[Yankes]

alternative MinGW with NetBeans or Eclipse IDE