docs/doxygen/overviews/roughguide.h

   1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   2 // Name:        roughguide.h
   3 // Purpose:     topic overview
   4 // Author:      wxWidgets team
   5 // RCS-ID:      $Id$
   6 // Licence:     wxWindows licence
   7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   8
   9 /**
  10
  11 @page overview_roughguide A Quick Guide to Writing Applications
  12
  13 @tableofcontents
  14
  15 To set a wxWidgets application going, you will need to derive a wxApp class and
  16 override wxApp::OnInit.
  17
  18 An application must have a top-level wxFrame or wxDialog window. Each frame may
  19 contain one or more instances of classes such as wxPanel, wxSplitterWindow or
  20 other windows and controls.
  21
  22 A frame can have a wxMenuBar, a wxToolBar, a wxStatusBar, and a wxIcon for when
  23 the frame is iconized.
  24
  25 A wxPanel is used to place controls (classes derived from wxControl) which are
  26 used for user interaction. Examples of controls are wxButton, wxCheckBox,
  27 wxChoice, wxListBox, wxRadioBox, and wxSlider.
  28
  29 Instances of wxDialog can also be used for controls and they have the advantage
  30 of not requiring a separate frame.
  31
  32 Instead of creating a dialog box and populating it with items, it is possible
  33 to choose one of the convenient common dialog classes, such as wxMessageDialog
  34 and wxFileDialog.
  35
  36 You never draw directly onto a window - you use a <em>device context</em> (DC).
  37 wxDC is the base for wxClientDC, wxPaintDC, wxMemoryDC, wxPostScriptDC,
  38 wxMemoryDC, wxMetafileDC and wxPrinterDC. If your drawing functions have wxDC
  39 as a parameter, you can pass any of these DCs to the function, and thus use the
  40 same code to draw to several different devices. You can draw using the member
  41 functions of wxDC, such as wxDC::DrawLine and wxDC::DrawText. Control colour on
  42 a window (wxColour) with brushes (wxBrush) and pens (wxPen).
  43
  44 To intercept events, you add a DECLARE_EVENT_TABLE macro to the window class
  45 declaration, and put a BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE ... END_EVENT_TABLE block in the
  46 implementation file. Between these macros, you add event macros which map the
  47 event (such as a mouse click) to a member function. These might override
  48 predefined event handlers such as for wxKeyEvent and wxMouseEvent.
  49
  50 Most modern applications will have an on-line, hypertext help system; for this,
  51 you need wxHelp and the wxHelpController class to control wxHelp.
  52
  53 GUI applications aren't all graphical wizardry. List and hash table needs are
  54 catered for by wxList and wxHashMap. You will undoubtedly need some
  55 platform-independent @ref group_funcmacro_file, and you may find it handy to
  56 maintain and search a list of paths using wxPathList. There's many
  57 @ref group_funcmacro_misc of operating system methods and other functions.
  58
  59 @see @ref group_class
  60
  61 */