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[wxWidgets.git] / docs / wxQt.html

      $Id$
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    <H1>Proposal for a port of wxWindows to Qt - wxQt</H1>
    <p>
      Following the recent discussions
      and flamewars about KDE vs Gnome, we got worried that we'll see a
      repetition of the same damaging infighting from which Unix has
      suffered before. Competition is a good thing, but the current
      situation leaves application developers with a difficult decision to
      make: Write for KDE, using qt/harmony or write for Gnome, using GTK?
      Whatever happens to these projects, we will end up with a lot of
      duplicated efforts and a mix of applications written for either of the
      two environments. The result will not be the consistent look and feel
      that both projects aim for.
    <p>
      
      The people on the wxWindows developers team thought that we might have
      a solution for this problem, if we can get some outside help to get it
      done. Let us explain: wxWindows is a cross-platform development
      toolkit, a library of C++ classes which provide GUI concepts as well
      as other cross-platform issues such as container classes, debug
      features or configuration management. It has been around since 1992
      and started by supporting Motif, XView and MS-Windows, with a direct
      X11/Xt port added later. Last year, a major rewrite was started and we
      now have a much advanced library, available for MS Windows, with a
      Motif port under construction. Later last year, Robert Roebling set
      out on a one-man project to build wxGTK, a gtk-based implementation of
      wxWindows which in less than a year has become sufficiently stable to
      use it as the main development platform of rather large
      applications. The wxWindows license is a variant of the LGPL,
      which should meet no objections from the free software community. In
      fact, this has been an open source project long before the term became
      commonly used.
    <p>
      
      Our idea is, that if this is good enough to work across different
      operating systems (a MacOS port is under construction, too), it could
      easily bridge the gap between KDE and Gnome. The quick evolution of
      wxGTK has shown that a new port based on an existing widget set or
      toolkit can easily be created by a small team within a few
      months. Therefore, we would like to start a project for a Qt/Harmony
      based wxWindow library, wxQt. It would then be possible for
      application developers to write the same source and compile it either
      for KDE, Gnome or even any of the other supported systems.
    <p>
      
      But for this we need help. The core developers are all pretty busy on
      the existing ports, but we could provide significant help and support
      for any such effort. A wxQt port could also recycle lots of existing
      code from the other ports.

      Please, join us in this effort and, if you feel that you could
      contribute, join the wxWindows developers mailing list for further
      discussions. Just send a mail containing "<tt>subscribe</tt>" to
    <tt>wxwin-developers-request@wx.dent.med.uni-muenchen.de</tt>
    <p>
      You can find some more information about wxWindows at the following places:
<ul>
<li>The <a href="http://web.ukonline.co.uk/julian.smart/wxwin/">wxWindows homepage</a>.
<li>The <a href="http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~wxxt/">wxGTK homepage</a>
<li>The <a
	  href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/wxWindows/wxQt.html">wxQt
	  proposal</a>(this text)
<li>The <a href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/M/">home of <em>M</em></a>, an email client developed using wxGTK, showing several <a href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/M/screenshots/">screenshots</a> of how it actually looks like.
</ul>
<p>
    <hr>
    Karsten Ballueder <tt><a
	href="mailto:Ballueder@usa.net">Ballueder@usa.net</a> <a
    href="http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/">http://Ballueder.home.ml.org/</a></tt>