Question

My c++ application needs to display a message via a popup window or an alternative. My application is running on Ubuntu 12.04 version. Can I program the application to open a Ubuntu type popup window? If possible, how?

Do I need to use gnome window or something like that?

Answer 1

The simplest way to display a popup from a program that doesn’t otherwise use a GUI, is probably just execute a command-line tool that does the work:

• to display a notification with no buttons, you can use notify-send

  system("/usr/bin/notify-send MessageSubject \"message body here\"");
  

• if you want buttons so the user can give a response, you could use the (much uglier) xmessage

  system("/usr/bin/xmessage")
  

(see each tool’s manpage for all their options)

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The alternative is really to use a full GUI framework (probably gtk+), and that’s not typically a small change.

For example, you can use libnotify directly (giving you the same basic capabilities as notify-send, but more control), but this also depends on glib. So, now you’ve added two external dependencies when you could just have run system.