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  15 <b>wxWindows 2 FAQ: General</b>
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  20
  21 <P>
  22
  23 See also <a href="faq.htm">top-level FAQ page</a>.
  24 <hr>
  25 <h3>List of questions in this category</h3>
  26 <ul>
  27 <li><a href="#whatis">What is wxWindows?</a></li>
  28 <li><a href="#users">Who uses wxWindows?</a></li>
  29 <li><a href="#platforms">What platforms are supported by wxWindows 2?</a></li>
  30 <li><a href="#specific">How does wxWindows 2 support platform-specific features?</a></li>
  31 <li><a href="#stl">Does wxWindows use STL? or the standard string class?</a></li>
  32 <li><a href="#richedit">Is there a rich edit/markup widget for wxWindows 2?</a></ li>
  33 <li><a href="#exceptions">How to use C++ exceptions with wxWindows?</a></ li>
  34 <li><a href="#dev">How is wxWindows 2 being developed?</a></li>
  35 <li><a href="#distrib">How is wxWindows 2 distributed?</a></li>
  36 <li><a href="#future">What are the plans for the future?</a></li>
  37 <li><a href="#univ">What is wxUniversal?</a></li>
  38 <li><a href="#jave">What about Java?</a></li>
  39 <li><a href="#help">How can I help the project?</a></li>
  40 </ul>
  41 <hr>
  42
  43 <H3><a name="whatis">What is wxWindows?</a></H3>
  44
  45 wxWindows is a class library that allows you to compile graphical C++ programs on a range of
  46 different platforms. wxWindows defines a common API across platforms, but uses the native graphical user interface (GUI) on each platform,
  47 so your program will take on the native &#39;look and feel&#39; that users are familiar with.<P>
  48
  49 Although GUI applications are mostly built programmatically, there is a dialog editor to help
  50 build attractive dialogs and panels. Robert Roebling&#39;s <a href="http://www.roebling.com">wxDesigner</a>
  51 makes light work of resizable, portable dialogs.<P>
  52
  53 You don&#39;t have to use C++ to use wxWindows: there is a <a href="http://wxpython.org">Python interface</a> for wxWindows 2,
  54 and also a <a href="http://wxperl.sourceforge.net" target=_top>Perl interface</a>.
  55 <P>
  56
  57 <h3>Can I use wxWindows 2 for both proprietary (commercial) projects, and GPL&#39;ed projects?</h3>
  58
  59 Yes. Please see the <a href="newlicen.htm">licence</a> for details, but basically
  60 you can distribute proprietary binaries without distributing any source code, and neither will wxWindows
  61 conflict with GPL code you may be using or developing with it.
  62 <P>
  63 The conditions for using wxWindows 2 are the same whether you are a personal, academic
  64 or commercial developer.
  65 <P>
  66
  67 <h3>Is there support?</h3>
  68
  69 No official support, but the mailing list is very helpful and some people say that
  70 wxWindows support is better than for much commercial software. The developers are
  71 keen to fix bugs as soon as possible, though obviously there are no guarantees.
  72 <P>
  73
  74 <H3><a name="users">Who uses wxWindows?</a></H3>
  75
  76 Many organisations - commercial, government, and academic - across the
  77 world. It&#39;s impossible to estimate the true number of users, since
  78 wxWindows is obtained by many different means, and we cannot monitor
  79 distribution. The mailing list contains around 300-400 entries which is
  80 quite large for a list of this type.<P>
  81
  82 See <a href="users.htm">Users</a> for a list of some users and their applications, and
  83 also <A href="feedback.htm">Feedback</a> for comments.<P>
  84
  85 <H3><a name="platforms">What platforms are supported by wxWindows 2?</a></H3>
  86
  87 <ul>
  88 <li>Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows ME.
  89 <li>Linux and other Unix platforms with GTK+.
  90 <li>Unix with Motif or the free Motif clone Lesstif.
  91 <li>Mac OS.
  92 <li>Embedded platforms are being investigated. See the <a href="wxuniv.htm">wxUniversal</a> project.
  93 <li>An OS/2 port is in progress, and you can also compile wxWindows for GTK+ or Motif
  94 on OS/2.
  95 </ul>
  96 <P>
  97
  98 <H3><a name="specific">How does wxWindows 2 support platform-specific
  99 features?</a></H3>
 100
 101 This is a hotly-debated topic amongst the developers. My own philosophy
 102 is to make wxWindows as platform-independent as possible, but allow in a
 103 few classes (functions, window styles) that are platform-specific.
 104 For example, Windows metafiles and Windows 95 taskbar icons have
 105 their own classes on Windows, but nowhere else. Because these classes
 106 are provided and are wxWindows-compatible, it doesn&#39;t take much
 107 coding effort for an application programmer to add support for
 108 some functionality that the user on a particular platform might otherwise
 109 miss. Also, some classes that started off as platform-specific, such
 110 as the MDI classes, have been emulated on other platforms. I can imagine
 111 that even wxTaskBarIcon may be implemented for Unix desktops one day.
 112 <P>
 113
 114 In other words, wxWindows is not a &#39;lowest common denominator&#39; approach,
 115 but it will still be possible to write portable programs using the
 116 core API. Forbidding some platform-specific classes would be a stupid
 117 approach that would alienate many potential users, and encourage
 118 the perception that toolkits such as wxWindows are not up to the demands
 119 of today&#39;s sophisticated applications.<P>
 120
 121 Currently resources such as bitmaps and icons are handled in a platform-specific
 122 way, but it is hoped to reduce this dependence in due course.<P>
 123
 124 Another reason why wxWindows 2 is not a &#39;lowest common denominator&#39; toolkit is that
 125 some functionality missing on some platform has been provided using generic,
 126 platform-independent code, such as the wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl classes.<P>
 127
 128 <H3><a name="stl">Does wxWindows use STL? or the standard string class?</a></H3>
 129
 130 No. This is a much-discussed topic that has (many times) ended with the conclusion that it is in
 131 wxWindows&#39; best interests to avoid use of templates. Not all compilers can handle
 132 templates adequately so it would dramatically reduce the number of compilers
 133 and platforms that could be supported. It would also be undersirable to make
 134 wxWindows dependent on another large library that may have to be downloaded and installed.
 135 In addition, use of templates can lead to executable bloat, which is something
 136 wxWindows 2 is strenously trying to avoid.<P>
 137
 138 The standard C++ string class is not used, again because it is not available to all compilers,
 139 and it is not necessarily a very efficient implementation. Also, we retain more flexibility
 140 by being able to modify our own string class. Some compatibility with the string class
 141 has been built into wxString.<P>
 142
 143 There is nothing to stop an application using templates or the string class for its own
 144 purposes. With wxWindows debugging options on, you may find you get errors when including
 145 STL headers. You can work around it either by switching off memory checking,
 146 or by adding this to a header before you include any STL files:<P>
 147
 148 <PRE>
 149 &#35;ifdef new
 150 &#35;undef new
 151 &#35;endif
 152 </PRE>
 153
 154 <P>
 155
 156
 157 <H3><a name="richedit">Is there a rich edit/markup widget for wxWindows 2?</a></H3>
 158
 159 These are the possibilities so far:<P>
 160
 161 <ul>
 162 <li>The richedit sample has a text editor that does markup.
 163 <li>See <a href="http://www.scintilla.org" target=_top>www.scintilla.org</a> for
 164 a very nice syntax-highlighting editor widget. Robin Dunn is writing a wxWindows wrapper
 165 for this widget.
 166 <li>If you only need to display marked-up information, rather than edit it,
 167 then wxHTML will suit your needs. wxHTML is built into wxWindows - please see the reference
 168 manual for details, and samples/html.
 169 <li>There are rich edit widgets in both WIN32 and GTK+, but there is currently
 170 no wxWindows wrapper for these (but text attribute functions are being added in the wxWindows 2.3.x series).
 171 </ul>
 172
 173 <P>
 174
 175 <h3><a name="exceptions">How to use C++ exceptions with wxWindows?</a></h3>
 176
 177 wxWindows library itself is unfortunately <i>not</i> exception-safe (as its
 178 initial version predates, by far, the addition of the exceptions to the C++
 179 language). However you can still use the exceptions in your own code and use
 180 the other libraries using the exceptions for the error reporting together with
 181 wxWindows.
 182
 183 <p>
 184 There are a few issues to keep in mind, though:
 185 <ul>
 186     <li>You shouldn&#39;t let the exceptions propagate through wxWindows code,
 187         in particular you should always catch the exceptions thrown by the
 188         functions called from an event handler in the handler itself and not
 189         let them propagate upwards to wxWindows.
 190
 191     <li>You may need to ensure that the compiler support for the exceptions is
 192         enabled as, considering that wxWindows itself doesn&#39;t use the
 193         exceptions and turning their support on results in the library size
 194         augmentation of 10% to 20%, it is turned off by default for a few
 195         compilers. Moreover, for gcc (or at least its mingw version) you must
 196         also turn on the RTTI support to be able to use the exceptions, so you
 197         should use <tt>--disable-no_rtti --disable-no_exceptions</tt> options
 198         when configuring the library (attention to the double negation).
 199 </ul>
 200
 201 <p>
 202
 203 <H3><a name="dev">How is wxWindows 2 being developed?</a></H3>
 204
 205 We are using the <a href="cvs.htm">CVS</a> system to develop and maintain wxWindows. This allows
 206 us to make alterations and upload them instantly to the SourceForge server, from
 207 which others can update their source.<P>
 208
 209 To build source from CVS, see the file BuildCVS.txt in the top-level wxWindows distribution
 210 directory.<P>
 211
 212 <H3><a name="distrib">How is wxWindows 2 distributed?</a></H3>
 213
 214 By ftp, and via the <a href="cdrom2.htm">wxWindows CD-ROM</a>.
 215 <P>
 216 If you are feeling adventurous, you may also check out the sources directly
 217 from the <a href="cvs.htm">cvs</a>
 218 <p>
 219
 220 <H3><a name="future">What are the plans for the future?</a></H3>
 221
 222 Currently we&#39;re working too hard on getting wxWindows 2 finished (are GUI toolkits ever
 223 finished?) to think very far ahead. However, we know we want to make wxWindows as robust
 224 and well-publicised as possible. We also want to aim for better platform-independence of
 225 resources such as icons and bitmaps, standardising on the PNG for all platforms.<P>
 226
 227 Other possibilities include: DCOM/CORBA compatibility; a wxWindows book;
 228 <a href="http://wxworkshop.sourceforge.net/">wxWorkshop</a>, an IDE;
 229 other platforms, especially embedded systems; other interface abilities such as speech output.<P>
 230
 231 We will investigate the possibility of compiler or operating system vendors bundling wxWindows with
 232 their product.<P>
 233
 234 The high-level goal of wxWindows is to be thought of as the number one C++ framework,
 235 for virtually any platform. Move over, MFC!<P>
 236
 237 <H3><a name="univ">What is wxUniversal?</a></H3>
 238
 239 wxUniversal is a new port of wxWindows being currently actively developed. The
 240 main difference is that wxUniversal implements all controls (or widgets) in
 241 wxWindows itself thus allowing to have much more flexibility (i.e. support for
 242 themes even under MS Windows!). It also means that it is now much easier to
 243 port wxWindows to a new platform as only the low-level classes must be ported
 244 which make for a small part of the library.
 245 <p>
 246 You may find more about wxUniversal <a href=wxuniv.htm>here</a>.
 247
 248 <H3><a name="jave">What about Java?</a></H3>
 249
 250 The Java honeymoon period is over :-) and people are realising that it cannot
 251 meet all their cross-platform development needs. We don&#39;t anticipate a major threat
 252 from Java, and the level of interest in wxWindows is as high as ever.<P>
 253
 254 <H3><a name="help">How can I help the project?</a></H3>
 255
 256 Please check out the <a href="http://www.wxwindows.org/develop2.htm">Community</a> pages,
 257 in particular the <a href="projects.htm">suggested projects</a>, and
 258 mail <a href="mailto:julian.smart@btopenworld.com">Julian Smart</a> or the developers&#39; mailing list with your own suggestions.<P>
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