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15b6757b 1/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
c6e29550 2// Name: roughguide.h
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3// Purpose: topic overview
4// Author: wxWidgets team
5// RCS-ID: $Id$
6// Licence: wxWindows license
7/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
8
880efa2a 9/**
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880efa2a 11@page overview_roughguide A Quick Guide to Writing Applications
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13To set a wxWidgets application going, you will need to derive a wxApp class and
14override wxApp::OnInit.
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16An application must have a top-level wxFrame or wxDialog window. Each frame may
17contain one or more instances of classes such as wxPanel, wxSplitterWindow or
18other windows and controls.
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20A frame can have a wxMenuBar, a wxToolBar, a wxStatusBar, and a wxIcon for when
21the frame is iconized.
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23A wxPanel is used to place controls (classes derived from wxControl) which are
24used for user interaction. Examples of controls are wxButton, wxCheckBox,
25wxChoice, wxListBox, wxRadioBox, and wxSlider.
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27Instances of wxDialog can also be used for controls and they have the advantage
28of not requiring a separate frame.
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29
30Instead of creating a dialog box and populating it with items, it is possible
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31to choose one of the convenient common dialog classes, such as wxMessageDialog
32and wxFileDialog.
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33
34You never draw directly onto a window - you use a <em>device context</em> (DC).
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35wxDC is the base for wxClientDC, wxPaintDC, wxMemoryDC, wxPostScriptDC,
36wxMemoryDC, wxMetafileDC and wxPrinterDC. If your drawing functions have wxDC
37as a parameter, you can pass any of these DCs to the function, and thus use the
38same code to draw to several different devices. You can draw using the member
39functions of wxDC, such as wxDC::DrawLine and wxDC::DrawText. Control colour on
40a window (wxColour) with brushes (wxBrush) and pens (wxPen).
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41
42To intercept events, you add a DECLARE_EVENT_TABLE macro to the window class
43declaration, and put a BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE ... END_EVENT_TABLE block in the
44implementation file. Between these macros, you add event macros which map the
45event (such as a mouse click) to a member function. These might override
721a49c7 46predefined event handlers such as for wxKeyEvent and wxMouseEvent.
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47
48Most modern applications will have an on-line, hypertext help system; for this,
721a49c7 49you need wxHelp and the wxHelpController class to control wxHelp.
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50
51GUI applications aren't all graphical wizardry. List and hash table needs are
721a49c7 52catered for by wxList and wxHashMap. You will undoubtedly need some
409e6ce4 53platform-independent @ref group_funcmacro_file, and you may find it handy to
721a49c7 54maintain and search a list of paths using wxPathList. There's many
409e6ce4 55@ref group_funcmacro_misc of operating system methods and other functions.
a2968d85 56
adcb6f88 57@see
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409e6ce4 59@li @ref group_class
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60
61*/
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