OpenGL Programming for Windows

I've written games for a lot of various different pieces of hardware, but I haven't done a whole lot on my PC, save the occasional Java2D game. However, I don't want to program in Java- I'd really like to use C, my language of choice (though C++ would be tolerable).

That being said, I would really like to learn OpenGL to write games for Windows. Is it necessary to learn the Win32
API to do this? I've searched for Petzold's book and I can't find it anywhere except online, and I'm too much of a poorfag to buy it. Also, any recommended sources for a complete newbie to OpenGL? Books preferred.

>>1
You need to learn a small subset of the Win32 API, but not all of it. Just how to create a Window, get a handle to its draw context or HDC, and pass that to the WGL calls. Then you need to use Win32 to get user input events. It's no different than learning the stuff in X11 relevant to setting up a GL display via GLX. You'll also want to download and build the GLEW library to get access to all of the OpenGL 2.x/3.x/4.x features and extensions.

You could also just use SDL to bootstrap yourself, but no real game programmer uses SDL for Windows or XBox 360 development.