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5<TITLE>wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ</TITLE>
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15<font size=+1 face="Arial, Lucida Sans, Helvetica" color="#FFFFFF">
16<b>wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ</b>
17</font>
18</td>
19</tr>
20</table>
21
22<P>
23
24See also <a href="faq.htm">top-level FAQ page</a>.
25<hr>
26<h3>List of questions in this category</h3>
27<ul>
28<li><a href="#platforms">Which Windows platforms are supported?</a></li>
29<li><a href="#wince">What about Windows CE?</a></li>
30<li><a href="#winxp">What do I need to do for Windows XP?</a></li>
31<li><a href="#compilers">What compilers are supported?</a></li>
32<li><a href="#bestcompiler">Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?</a></li>
33<li><a href="#unicode">Is Unicode supported?</a></li>
34<li><a href="#doublebyte">Does wxWindows support double byte fonts (Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc.)?</a></li>
35<li><a href="#dll">Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?</a></li>
36<li><a href="#exesize">How can I reduce executable size?</a></li>
37<li><a href="#mfc">Is wxWindows compatible with MFC?</a></li>
38<li><a href="#setuph">Why do I get errors about setup.h not being found?</a></li>
39<li><a href="#asuffix">Why do I get errors about FooBarA when I only use FooBar in my program?</a></li>
40<li><a href="#newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></li>
41<li><a href="#mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></li>
42<li><a href="#crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></li>
43<li><a href="#makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></li>
44<li><a href="#vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></li>
45<li><a href="#shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></li>
46<li><a href="#regconfig">Why can I not write to the HKLM part of the registry with wxRegConfig?</a></li>
47<li><a href="#access">Is MS Active Accessibility supported?</a></li>
48</ul>
49<hr>
50
51<h3><a name="platforms">Which Windows platforms are supported?</a></h3>
52
53wxWindows 2 can be used to develop and deliver applications on Windows 3.1, Win32s,
54Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. A Windows CE
55version is being looked into (see below).<P>
56
57wxWindows 2 is designed to make use of WIN32 features and controls. However, unlike Microsoft,
58we have not forgotten users of 16-bit Windows. Most features
59work under Windows 3.1, including wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl using the generic implementation.
60However, don&#39;t expect very Windows-95-specific classes to work, such as wxTaskBarIcon. The wxRegConfig
61class doesn&#39;t work either because the Windows 3.1 registry is very simplistic. Check out the 16-bit
62makefiles to see what other files have been left out.
63<P>
6416-bit compilation is supported under Visual C++ 1.5, and Borland BC++ 4 to 5.
65<P>
66
67wxWindows 2 for Windows will also compile on Unix with gcc using Wine from <a href="http://www.winehq.org" target=_top>WineHQ</a>.
68The resulting executables are Unix binaries that work with the Wine Windows API emulator.<P>
69
70You can also compile wxWindows 2 for Windows on Unix with Cygwin or Mingw32, resulting
71in executables that will run on Windows. So in theory you could write your applications
72using wxGTK or wxMotif, then check/debug your wxWindows for Windows
73programs with Wine, and finally produce an ix86 Windows executable using Cygwin/Mingw32,
74without ever needing a copy of Microsoft Windows. See the Technical Note on the Web site detailing cross-compilation.<P>
75
76<h3><a name="wince">What about Windows CE?</a></h3>
77
78This is under consideration, though we need to get wxWindows Unicode-aware first.
79There are other interesting issues, such as how to combine the menubar and toolbar APIs
80as Windows CE requires. But there&#39;s no doubt that it will be possible, albeit
81by mostly cutting down wxWindows 2 API functionality, and adding a few classes here
82and there. Since wxWindows for 2 produces small binaries (less than 300K for
83the statically-linked &#39;minimal&#39; sample), shoehorning wxWindows 2 into a Windows CE device&#39;s limited
84storage should not be a problem.<P>
85
86<h3><a name="winxp">What do I need to do for Windows XP?</a></h3>
87
88In the same directory as you have your executable (e.g. foo.exe) you
89put a file called foo.exe.manifest in which you have something like
90the following:
91
92<pre>
93&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?&gt;
94&lt;assembly
95 xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
96 manifestVersion="1.0"&gt;
97&lt;assemblyIdentity
98 processorArchitecture="x86"
99 version="5.1.0.0"
100 type="win32"
101 name="foo.exe"/&gt;
102 &lt;description&gt;Foo program&lt;/description&gt;
103 &lt;dependency&gt;
104 &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
105 &lt;assemblyIdentity
106 type="win32"
107 name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
108 version="6.0.0.0"
109 publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
110 language="*"
111 processorArchitecture="x86"/&gt;
112 &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
113 &lt;/dependency&gt;
114&lt;/assembly&gt;
115</pre>
116
117If you want to add it to your application permanently,
118you can also include it in your .rc file using this
119line:<P>
120
121<PRE>
122 1 24 "winxp.manifest"
123</PRE>
124
125In wxWindows 2.5, this will be in the wx/msw/wx.rc and
126so will happen automatically so long as you include wx.rc
127in your own .rc file.<P>
128
129For an explanation of this syntax, please see
130<a href="http://delphi.about.com/library/bluc/text/uc111601a.htm" target=_new>this
131article</a>.
132<P>
133
134<h3><a name="compilers">What compilers are supported?</a></h3>
135
136Please see the wxWindows 2 for Windows install.txt file for up-to-date information, but
137currently the following are known to work:<P>
138
139<ul>
140<li>Visual C++ 1.5, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0
141<li>Borland C++ 4.5, 5.0
142<li>Borland C++Builder 1.0, 3.0
143<li>Watcom C++ 10.6 (WIN32)
144<li>Cygwin b20
145<li>Mingw32
146<li>MetroWerks CodeWarrior 4
147</ul>
148<P>
149
150There is a linking problem with Symantec C++ which I hope someone can help solve.
151<P>
152
153<h3><a name="bestcompiler">Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?</a></h3>
154
155It&#39;s partly a matter of taste, but I (JACS) prefer Visual C++ since the debugger is very
156good, it&#39;s very stable, the documentation is extensive, and it generates small executables.
157Since project files are plain text, it&#39;s easy for me to generate appropriate project files
158for wxWindows samples.<P>
159
160Borland C++ is fine - and very fast - but it&#39;s hard (impossible?) to use the debugger without using project files, and
161the debugger is nowhere near up to VC++&#39;s quality. The IDE isn&#39;t great.<P>
162
163C++Builder&#39;s power isn&#39;t really used with wxWindows since it needs integration with its
164own class library (VCL). For wxWindows, I&#39;ve only used it with makefiles, in which case
165it&#39;s almost identical to BC++ 5.0 (the same makefiles can be used).<P>
166
167You can&#39;t beat Cygwin&#39;s price (free), and you can debug adequately using gdb. However, it&#39;s
168quite slow to compile since it does not use precompiled headers.<P>
169
170CodeWarrior is cross-platform - you can debug and generate Windows executables from a Mac, but not
171the other way around I think - but the IDE is, to my mind, a bit primitive.<P>
172
173Watcom C++ is a little slow and the debugger is not really up to today&#39;s standards.<P>
174
175Among the free compilers the best choice seem to be Borland C++ command line
176tools and mingw32 (port of gcc to Win32). Both of them are supported by
177wxWindows.
178
179<h3><a name="unicode">Is Unicode supported?</a></h3>
180
181Yes, Unicode is fully supported under Windows NT/2000 (Windows 9x don&#39;t
182have Unicode support anyhow).
183
184<h3><a name="doublebyte">Does wxWindows support double byte fonts (Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc.)?</a></h3>
185
186An answer from <a href="mailto:goedde@logosoft.de">Klaus Goedde</a>:<p>
187
188"For Japanese under Win2000, it seems that wxWindows has no problems to work with double byte char sets
189(I mean DBCS, that&#39;s not Unicode). First you have to install Japanese support on your Win2K system
190and choose for ANSI translation
191HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage=932 (default is 1252 for Western).
192Then you can see all the funny Japanese letters under wxWindows too.<P>
193
194In a wxTextCtrl control you have to set the window style "wxTE_RICH", otherwise this control shows the wrong
195letters.
196
197I don&#39;t now whether it works on non W2K systems, because I&#39;m just starting using wxWindows."
198<P>
199
200<h3><a name="dll">Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?</a></h3>
201
202Yes (using the Visual C++ or Borland C++ makefile), but be aware that distributing DLLs is a thorny issue
203and you may be better off compiling statically-linked applications, unless you&#39;re
204delivering a suite of separate programs, or you&#39;re compiling a lot of wxWindows applications
205and have limited hard disk space.<P>
206
207With a DLL approach, and with different versions and configurations of wxWindows
208needing to be catered for, the end user may end up with a host of large DLLs in his or her Windows system directory,
209negating the point of using DLLs. Of course, this is not a problem just associated with
210wxWindows!
211<P>
212
213<h3><a name="exesize">How can I reduce executable size?</a></h3>
214
215You can compile wxWindows as a DLL (see above, VC++/BC++ only at present). You should also
216compile your programs for release using non-debugging and space-optimisation options, but
217take with VC++ 5/6 space optimisation: it can sometimes cause problems.<P>
218
219If you want to distribute really small executables, you can
220use <a href="http://www.un4seen.com/petite/" target=_top>Petite</a>
221by Ian Luck. This nifty utility compresses Windows executables by around 50%, so your 500KB executable
222will shrink to a mere 250KB. With this sort of size, there is reduced incentive to
223use DLLs. Another good compression tool (probably better than Petite) is <a href="http://upx.sourceforge.net/" target=_top>UPX</a>.
224<P>
225
226Please do not be surprised if MinGW produces a statically-linked minimal executable of 1 MB. Firstly, gcc
227produces larger executables than some compilers. Secondly, this figure will
228include most of the overhead of wxWindows, so as your application becomes more
229complex, the overhead becomes proportionally less significant. And thirdly, trading executable compactness
230for the enormous increase in productivity you get with wxWindows is almost always well worth it.<P>
231
232If you have a really large executable compiled with MinGW (for example 20MB) then
233you need to configure wxWindows to compile without debugging information: see
234docs/msw/install.txt for details. You may find that using configure instead
235of makefile.g95 is easier, particularly since you can maintain debug and
236release versions of the library simultaneously, in different directories.
237Also, run 'strip' after linking to remove all traces of debug info.
238<P>
239
240<H3><a name="mfc">Is wxWindows compatible with MFC?</a></H3>
241
242There is a sample which demonstrates MFC and wxWindows code co-existing in the same
243application. However, don&#39;t expect to be able to enable wxWindows windows with OLE-2
244functionality using MFC.<P>
245
246<H3><a name="setuph">Why do I get errors about setup.h not being found?</a></H3>
247
248When you build the wxWindows library, setup.h is copied
249from include/wx/msw/setup.h to e.g. lib/mswd/wx/setup.h (the path
250depends on the configuration you're building). So you need to add
251this include path if building using the static Debug library:<P>
252
253lib/mswd<P>
254
255or if building the static Release library, lib/msw.<P>
256
257See also the <a href="http://wiki.wxwindows.org/wiki.pl?Table_Of_Contents">wxWiki Contents</a>
258for more information.<P>
259
260
261<H3><a name="asuffix">Why do I get errors about FooBarA when I only use FooBar in my program?</H3>
262
263If you get errors like
264<p>
265<center>
266<tt>no matching function for call to &#39;wxDC::DrawTextA(const char[5], int,
267int)&#39;</tt>
268</center>
269<p>
270or similar ones for the other functions, i.e. the compiler error messages
271mention the function with the <tt>&#39;A&#39;</tt> suffix while you didn&#39;t
272use it in your code, the explanation is that you had included
273<tt>&#60;windows.h&#062;</tt> header which redefines many symbols to have such
274suffix (or <tt>&#39;W&#39;</tt> in the Unicode builds).
275
276<p>
277The fix is to either not include <tt>&#60;windows.h&#62;</tt> at all or include
278<tt>"wx/msw/winundef.h"</tt> immediately after it.
279
280<H3><a name="newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></H3>
281
282The most common cause of this problem is the memory debugging settings in
283<tt>wx/msw/setup.h</tt>. You have several choices:
284
285<ul>
286 <li> Either disable overloading the global operator new completely by
287 setting <tt>wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS</tt> and
288 <tt>wxUSE_DEBUG_NEW_ALWAYS</tt> to 0 in this file
289 <li> Or leave them on but do <tt>#undef new</tt> after including any
290 wxWindows headers, like this the memory debugging will be still on
291 for wxWindows sources but off for your own code
292</ul>
293
294Notice that IMHO the first solution is preferable for VC++ users who can use
295the <a href="#vcdebug">VC++ CRT memory debugging features</a> instead.
296
297<H3><a name="mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></H3>
298
299Set up your interface from scratch using wxWindows (especially <a href="http://www.robeling.de" target=_top>wxDesigner</a>
300or <a href="http://www.anthemion.co.uk/dialogblocks/" target=_new>DialogBlocks</a> --
301it&#39;ll save you a <i>lot</i> of time) and when you have a shell prepared, you can start
302&#39;pouring in&#39; code from the MFC app, with appropriate
303modifications. This is the approach I have used, and I found
304it very satisfactory. A two-step process then - reproduce the bare
305interface first, then wire it up afterwards. That way you deal
306with each area of complexity separately. Don&#39;t try to think MFC
307and wxWindows simultaneously from the beginning - it is easier to
308reproduce the initial UI by looking at the behaviour of the MFC
309app, not its code.
310
311<H3><a name="crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></H3>
312
313Some crash problems can be due to inconsistent compiler
314options (and of course this isn&#39;t limited to wxWindows).
315If strange/weird/impossible things start to happen please
316check (dumping IDE project file as makefile and doing text comparison
317if necessary) that the project settings, especially the list of defined
318symbols, struct packing, etc. are exactly the same for all items in
319the project. After this, delete everything (including PCH) and recompile.<P>
320
321VC++ 5&#39;s optimization code seems to be broken and can
322cause problems: this can be seen when deleting an object Dialog
323Editor, in Release mode with optimizations on. If in doubt,
324switch off optimisations, although this will result in much
325larger executables. It seems possible that the library can be created with
326strong optimization, so long as the application is not strongly
327optimized. For example, in wxWindows project, set to &#39;Minimum
328Size&#39;. In Dialog Editor project, set to &#39;Customize: Favor Small
329Code&#39; (and no others). This will then work.<P>
330
331<H3><a name="makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></H3>
332
333As of wxWindows 2.1, there is a new system written by Vadim Zeitlin, that
334generates the makefiles from templates using tmake.<P>
335
336Here are Vadim&#39;s notes:<P>
337
338<blockquote>
339To use these new makefiles, you don&#39;t need anything (but see below).
340However, you should NOT modify them because these files will be
341rewritten when I regenerate them using tmake the next time. So, if
342you find a problem with any of these makefiles (say, makefile.b32)
343you&#39;ll need to modify the corresponding template (b32.t in this
344example) and regenerate the makefile using tmake.<P>
345
346tmake can be found at
347<a href="http://www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html" target=_new>www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html</a>.
348It&#39;s a Perl5 program and so it needs Perl (doh). There is a binary for
349Windows (available from the same page), but I haven&#39;t used it, so
350I don&#39;t know if it works as flawlessly as "perl tmake" does (note
351for people knowing Perl: don&#39;t try to run tmake with -w, it won&#39;t
352do you any good). Using it extremely simple: to regenerate makefile.b32
353just go to distrib/msw/tmake and type<P>
354
355<pre>tmake -t b32 wxwin.pro -o ../../src/msw/makefile.b32</pre><P>
356
357The makefiles are untested - I don&#39;t have any of Borland, Watcom or
358Symantec and I don&#39;t have enough diskspace to recompile even with
359VC6 using makefiles. The new makefiles are as close as possible to the
360old ones, but not closer: in fact, there has been many strange things
361(should I say bugs?) in some of makefiles, some files were not compiled
362without any reason etc. Please test them and notify me about any problems.
363Better yet, modify the template files to generate the correct makefiles
364and check them in.<P>
365
366The templates are described in tmake ref manual (1-2 pages of text)
367and are quite simple. They do contain some Perl code, but my Perl is
368primitive (very C like) so it should be possible for anybody to make
369trivial modifications to it (I hope that only trivial modifications
370will be needed). I&#39;ve tagged the ol makefiles as MAKEFILES_WITHOUT_TMAKE
371in the cvs, so you can always retrieve them and compare the new ones,
372this will make it easier to solve the problems you might have.<P>
373
374Another important file is filelist.txt: it contains the list of all
375files to be compiled. Some of them are only compiled in 16/32 bit mode.
376Some other are only compiled with some compilers (others can&#39;t compile
377them) - all this info is contained in this file.<P>
378
379So now adding a new file to wxWindows is as easy as modifying filelist.txt
380(and Makefile.ams for Unix ports) and regenerating the makefiles - no
381need to modify all files manually any more.<P>
382
383 Finally, there is also a file vc6.t which I use myself: this one
384generates a project file for VC++ 6.0 (I didn&#39;t create vc5.t because
385I don&#39;t need it and can&#39;t test it, but it should be trivial to create
386one from vc6.t - probably the only things to change would be the
387version number in the very beginning and the /Z option - VC5 doesn&#39;t
388support edit-and=continue). This is not an officially supported way
389of building wxWindows (that is, nobody guarantees that it will work),
390but it has been very useful to me and I hope it will be also for
391others. To generate wxWindows.dsp run<P>
392
393<pre>tmake -t vc6 wxwin.pro -o ../../wxWindows.dsp</pre><P>
394
395Then just include this project in any workspace or open it from VC IDE
396and it will create a new workspace for you.<P>
397
398If all goes well, I&#39;m planning to create a template file for Makefile.ams
399under src/gtk and src/motif and also replace all makefiles in the samples
400subdirectories with the project files from which all the others will be
401generated. At least it will divide the number of files in samples
402directory by 10 (and the number of files to be maintained too).
403</blockquote>
404
405<P>
406
407<H3><a name="vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></H3>
408
409Vadim Zeitlin:
410
411<pre>
412On the VC++ level, it&#39;s just the matter of calling _CrtSetDbgFlag() in the very
413beginning of the program. In wxWindows, this is done automatically when
414compiling with VC++ in debug mode unless wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS or
415__NO_VC_CRTDBG__ are defined - this check is done in wx/msw/msvcrt.h which
416is included from app.cpp which then calls wxCrtSetDbgFlag() without any
417ifdefs.
418
419This works quite well: at the end of the program, all leaked blocks with their
420malloc count are shown. This number (malloc count) can be used to determine
421where exactly the object was allocated: for this it&#39;s enough to set the variable
422_crtBreakAlloc (look in VC98\crt\srs\dbgheap.c line 326) to this number and
423a breakpoint will be triggered when the block with this number is allocated.
424
425For simple situations it works like a charm. For something more complicated
426like reading uninitialized memory a specialized tool is probably better...
427
428Regards,
429VZ
430</pre>
431
432<P>
433
434<H3><a name="shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></H3>
435
436This can happen if you have a child window intercepting EVT_CHAR events and swallowing
437all keyboard input. You should ensure that event.Skip() is called for all input that
438isn&#39;used by the event handler.<P>
439
440It can also happen if you append the submenu to the parent
441menu {\it before} you have added your menu items. Do the append {\it after} adding
442your items, or accelerators may not be registered properly.<P>
443
444<H3><a name="#regconfig">Why can I not write to the HKLM part of the registry with wxRegConfig?</a></H3>
445
446Currently this is not possible because the wxConfig family of classes is
447supposed to deal with per-user application configuration data, and HKLM is
448only supposed to be writeable by a user with Administrator privileges. In theory,
449only installers should write to HKLM. This is still a point debated by the
450wxWindows developers. There are at least two ways to work around it if you really
451need to write to HKLM.<P>
452
453First, you can use wxRegKey directly, for example:
454
455<pre>
456 wxRegKey regKey;
457
458 wxString idName(wxT("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\"));
459 idName += packid;
460
461 regKey.SetName(idName);
462
463 {
464 wxLogNull dummy;
465 if (!regKey.Create())
466 {
467 idName = wxT("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\");
468 idName += packid;
469 regKey.SetName(idName);
470 if (!regKey.Create())
471 return FALSE;
472 }
473 }
474
475 if (!regKey.SetValue(wxT("THING"), (long) thing)) err += 1;
476
477 regKey.Close();
478
479</pre>
480
481Or, you can employ this trick suggested by Istvan Kovacs:
482
483<pre>
484class myGlobalConfig : public wxConfig
485{
486 myGlobalConfig() :
487 wxConfig ("myApp", "myCompany", "", "", wxCONFIG_USE_GLOBAL_FILE)
488{};
489 bool Write(const wxString& key, const wxString& value);
490}
491
492bool myGlobalConfig::Write (const wxString& key, const wxString& value)
493{
494 wxString path = wxString ("SOFTWARE\\myCompany\\myApp\\") + wxPathOnly(key);
495 wxString new_path = path.Replace ("/", "\\", true);
496 wxString new_key = wxFileNameFromPath (key);
497 LocalKey().SetName (wxRegKey::HKLM, path);
498 return wxConfig::Write (new_key, value);
499}
500</pre>
501
502<H3><a name="#access">Is MS Active Accessibility supported?</a></H3>
503
504This is being worked on. Please see <a href="http://www.wxwindows.org/access.htm">this page</a>
505for the current status.
506
507<P>
508
509</font>
510
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