docs/doxygen/mainpages/introduction.h

   1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   2 // Name:        introduction.h
   3 // Purpose:     Introduction page of the Doxygen manual
   4 // Author:      wxWidgets team
   5 // RCS-ID:      $Id$
   6 // Licence:     wxWindows licence
   7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   8
   9 /**
  10
  11 @page page_introduction Introduction
  12
  13 @tableofcontents
  14
  15
  16
  17 @section page_introduction_whatis What is wxWidgets?
  18
  19 wxWidgets is a C++ framework providing GUI (Graphical User
  20 Interface) and other facilities on more than one platform.  Version 2 and higher
  21 currently support all desktop versions of MS Windows, Unix with GTK+ 1.x or 2.x,
  22 Unix with Motif, Unix with just X11, Unix with DirectFB, Mac OS X, OS/2.
  23
  24 wxWidgets was originally developed at the Artificial Intelligence
  25 Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, for internal use,
  26 and was first made publicly available in 1992.
  27 Version 2 is a vastly improved version written and maintained by
  28 Julian Smart, Robert Roebling, Vadim Zeitlin, Vaclav Slavik and many others.
  29
  30 This manual contains a class reference and topic overviews.
  31 For a selection of wxWidgets tutorials, please see the documentation page
  32 on the wxWidgets web site: http://www.wxwidgets.org.
  33
  34 Please note that in the following, "MS Windows" often refers to all
  35 platforms related to Microsoft Windows, including 32-bit and 64-bit
  36 variants, unless otherwise stated. All trademarks are acknowledged.
  37
  38
  39
  40 @section page_introduction_why Why another cross-platform development tool?
  41
  42 wxWidgets was developed to provide a cheap and flexible way to maximize
  43 investment in GUI application development.  While a number of commercial
  44 class libraries already existed for cross-platform development,
  45 none met all of the following criteria:
  46
  47 @li low price;
  48 @li source availability;
  49 @li simplicity of programming;
  50 @li support for a wide range of compilers.
  51
  52 Since wxWidgets was started, several other free or almost-free
  53 GUI frameworks have emerged. However, none has the range of
  54 features, flexibility, documentation and the well-established
  55 development team that wxWidgets has.
  56
  57 As open source software, wxWidgets has benefited from comments,
  58 ideas, bug fixes, enhancements and the sheer enthusiasm of
  59 users. This gives wxWidgets a certain advantage over its
  60 commercial competitors (and over free libraries without an
  61 independent development team), plus a robustness against the
  62 transience of one individual or company. This openness and
  63 availability of source code is especially important when the
  64 future of thousands of lines of application code may depend upon
  65 the longevity of the underlying class library.
  66
  67 Version 2 goes much further than previous versions in terms of
  68 generality and features, allowing applications to be produced
  69 that are often indistinguishable from those produced using
  70 single-platform toolkits such as Motif, GTK+ and MFC.
  71
  72 The importance of using a platform-independent class library
  73 cannot be overstated, since GUI application development is very
  74 time-consuming, and sustained popularity of particular GUIs
  75 cannot be guaranteed. Code can very quickly become obsolete if
  76 it addresses the wrong platform or audience.  wxWidgets helps to
  77 insulate the programmer from these winds of change. Although
  78 wxWidgets may not be suitable for every application (such as an
  79 OLE-intensive program), it provides access to most of the
  80 functionality a GUI program normally requires, plus many extras
  81 such as network programming, PostScript output, and HTML
  82 rendering; and it can of course be extended as needs dictate.
  83 As a bonus, it provides a far cleaner and easier programming
  84 interface than the native APIs. Programmers may find it
  85 worthwhile to use wxWidgets even if they are developing on only
  86 one platform.
  87
  88 It is impossible to sum up the functionality of wxWidgets in a few paragraphs, but
  89 here are some of the benefits:
  90
  91 @li Low cost (free, in fact!)
  92 @li You get the source.
  93 @li Available on a variety of popular platforms.
  94 @li Works with almost all popular C++ compilers and Python.
  95 @li Over 70 example programs.
  96 @li Over 1000 pages of printable and on-line documentation.
  97 @li Simple-to-use, object-oriented API.
  98 @li Flexible event system.
  99 @li Graphics calls include lines, rounded rectangles, splines, polylines, etc.
 100 @li Constraint-based and sizer-based layouts.
 101 @li Print/preview and document/view architectures.
 102 @li Toolbar, notebook, tree control, advanced list control classes.
 103 @li PostScript generation under Unix, normal MS Windows printing on the PC.
 104 @li MDI (Multiple Document Interface) support.
 105 @li Can be used to create DLLs under Windows, dynamic libraries on Unix.
 106 @li Common dialogs for file browsing, printing, colour selection, etc.
 107 @li Under MS Windows, support for creating metafiles and copying them to the clipboard.
 108 @li An API for invoking help from applications.
 109 @li Ready-to-use HTML window (supporting a subset of HTML).
 110 @li Network support via a family of socket and protocol classes.
 111 @li Support for platform independent image processing.
 112 @li Built-in support for many file formats (BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, XPM, PNM, PCX).
 113
 114
 115 @section page_introduction_requirements wxWidgets Requirements
 116
 117 To make use of wxWidgets, you currently need one of the following setups.
 118
 119 (a) MS-Windows:
 120
 121 @li A 32-bit or 64-bit PC running MS Windows.
 122 @li A Windows compiler: MS Visual C++ (embedded Visual C++ for wxWinCE
 123     port), Borland C++, Watcom C++, Cygwin, MinGW, Digital Mars C++.
 124     See @c install.txt for details about compiler version supported.
 125
 126 (b) Unix:
 127
 128 @li Almost any C++ compiler, including GNU C++ and many Unix vendors
 129     compilers such as Sun CC, HP-UX aCC or SGI mipsPro.
 130 @li Almost any Unix workstation, and one of: GTK+ 2.6 or higher (GTK+ 1.2.10
 131     may still be supported but wxGTK1 port is not maintained any longer and lacks
 132     many features of wxGTK2; GTK+ 3 is supported but is still experimental),
 133     Motif 1.2 or higher or Lesstif. If using the wxX11 port, no such widget set
 134     is required.
 135
 136 (c) Mac OS/Mac OS X:
 137
 138 @li A PowerPC or Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
 139 @li The Apple Developer Tools (eg. GNU C++)
 140
 141 Under all platforms it's recommended to have large amounts of free hard disk
 142 space. The exact amount needed depends on the port, compiler and build
 143 configurations but to give an example, a debug build of the library may take up
 144 to 500MB.
 145
 146
 147
 148 @section page_introduction_where Availability and location of wxWidgets
 149
 150 wxWidgets is available by anonymous FTP and World Wide Web
 151 from ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub and/or http://www.wxwidgets.org.
 152
 153 You can also buy a CD-ROM using the form on the Web site.
 154
 155
 156
 157 @section page_introduction_acknowledgements Acknowledgements
 158
 159 The following is the list of the core, active developers of wxWidgets which keep
 160 it running and have provided an invaluable, extensive and high-quality amount of
 161 changes over the many of years of wxWidgets' life:
 162
 163 @li Julian Smart
 164 @li Vadim Zeitlin
 165 @li Robert Roebling
 166 @li Robin Dunn
 167 @li Stefan Csomor
 168 @li Vaclav Slavik
 169 @li Paul Cornett
 170 @li Wlodzimierz `ABX' Skiba
 171 @li Chris Elliott
 172 @li David Elliott
 173 @li Kevin Hock
 174 @li Stefan Neis
 175 @li Michael Wetherell
 176
 177 We would particularly like to thank the following peoples for their contributions
 178 to wxWidgets, and the many others who have been involved in the project over the years.
 179 Apologies for any unintentional omissions from this alphabetic list:
 180
 181 Yiorgos Adamopoulos, Jamshid Afshar, Alejandro Aguilar-Sierra, AIAI,
 182 Patrick Albert, Karsten Ballueder, Mattia Barbon, Michael Bedward,
 183 Kai Bendorf, Yura Bidus, Keith Gary Boyce, Chris Breeze, Pete Britton,
 184 Ian Brown, C. Buckley, Marco Cavallini, Dmitri Chubraev, Robin Corbet, Cecil Coupe,
 185 Andrew Davison, Gilles Depeyrot, Neil Dudman, Hermann Dunkel, Jos van Eijndhoven,
 186 Tom Felici, Thomas Fettig, Matthew Flatt, Pasquale Foggia, Josep Fortiana, Todd Fries,
 187 Dominic Gallagher, Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia, Wolfram Gloger, Norbert Grotz,
 188 Stefan Gunter, Bill Hale, Patrick Halke, Stefan Hammes, Guillaume Helle,
 189 Harco de Hilster, Cord Hockemeyer, Markus Holzem, Olaf Klein, Leif Jensen,
 190 Bart Jourquin, Guilhem Lavaux, Ron Lee, Jan Lessner, Nicholas Liebmann,
 191 Torsten Liermann, Per Lindqvist, Francesco Montorsi, Thomas Runge, Tatu M&auml;nnist&ouml;,
 192 Scott Maxwell, Thomas Myers, Oliver Niedung, Ryan Norton, Hernan Otero,
 193 Ian Perrigo, Timothy Peters, Giordano Pezzoli, Harri Pasanen, Thomaso Paoletti,
 194 Garrett Potts, Marcel Rasche, Dino Scaringella, Jobst Schmalenbach, Arthur Seaton,
 195 Paul Shirley, Stein Somers, Petr Smilauer, Neil Smith, Kari Syst&auml;, George Tasker,
 196 Arthur Tetzlaff-Deas, Jonathan Tonberg, Jyrki Tuomi, Janos Vegh, Andrea Venturoli,
 197 David Webster, Otto Wyss, Xiaokun Zhu, Edward Zimmermann.
 198
 199 Many thanks also to AIAI for being willing to release the original version of
 200 wxWidgets into the public domain, and to our patient partners.
 201
 202 `Graphplace', the basis for the wxGraphLayout library, is copyright Dr. Jos
 203 T.J. van Eijndhoven of Eindhoven University of Technology. The code has
 204 been used in wxGraphLayout (not in wxWidgets anymore) with his permission.
 205
 206 We also acknowledge the author of XFIG, the excellent Unix drawing tool,
 207 from the source of which we have borrowed some spline drawing code.
 208 His copyright is included below.
 209
 210 <em>
 211 XFig2.1 is copyright (c) 1985 by Supoj Sutanthavibul. Permission to
 212 use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its
 213 documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided
 214 that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
 215 copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
 216 documentation, and that the name of M.I.T. not be used in advertising or
 217 publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific,
 218 written prior permission.  M.I.T. makes no representations about the
 219 suitability of this software for any purpose.  It is provided ``as is''
 220 without express or implied warranty.
 221 </em>
 222
 223 */