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  16 <b>wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ</b>
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  21
  22 <P>
  23
  24 See 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="#asuffix">Why do I get errors about FooBarA when I only use FooBar in my program?</a></li>
  39 <li><a href="#newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></li>
  40 <li><a href="#mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></li>
  41 <li><a href="#crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></li>
  42 <li><a href="#makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></li>
  43 <li><a href="#vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></li>
  44 <li><a href="#shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></li>
  45 <li><a href="#regconfig">Why can I not write to the HKLM part of the registry with wxRegConfig?</a></li>
  46 </ul>
  47 <hr>
  48
  49 <h3><a name="platforms">Which Windows platforms are supported?</a></h3>
  50
  51 wxWindows 2 can be used to develop and deliver applications on Windows 3.1, Win32s,
  52 Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. A Windows CE
  53 version is being looked into (see below).<P>
  54
  55 wxWindows 2 is designed to make use of WIN32 features and controls. However, unlike Microsoft,
  56 we have not forgotten users of 16-bit Windows. Most features
  57 work under Windows 3.1, including wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl using the generic implementation.
  58 However, don&#39;t expect very Windows-95-specific classes to work, such as wxTaskBarIcon. The wxRegConfig
  59 class doesn&#39;t work either because the Windows 3.1 registry is very simplistic. Check out the 16-bit
  60 makefiles to see what other files have been left out.
  61 <P>
  62 16-bit compilation is supported under Visual C++ 1.5, and Borland BC++ 4 to 5.
  63 <P>
  64
  65 wxWindows 2 for Windows will also compile on Unix with gcc using TWIN32 from <a href="http://www.willows.com" target=_top>Willows</a>,
  66 although TWIN32 is still in a preliminary state. The resulting executables are
  67 Unix binaries that work with the TWIN32 Windows API emulator.<P>
  68
  69 You can also compile wxWindows 2 for Windows on Unix with Cygwin or Mingw32, resulting
  70 in executables that will run on Windows. So in theory you could write your applications
  71 using wxGTK or wxMotif, then check/debug your wxWindows for Windows
  72 programs with TWIN32, and finally produce an ix86 Windows executable using Cygwin/Mingw32,
  73 without ever needing a copy of Microsoft Windows. See the Technical Note on the Web site detailing cross-compilation.<P>
  74
  75 <h3><a name="wince">What about Windows CE?</a></h3>
  76
  77 This is under consideration, though we need to get wxWindows Unicode-aware first.
  78 There are other interesting issues, such as how to combine the menubar and toolbar APIs
  79 as Windows CE requires. But there&#39;s no doubt that it will be possible, albeit
  80 by mostly cutting down wxWindows 2 API functionality, and adding a few classes here
  81 and there. Since wxWindows for 2 produces small binaries (less than 300K for
  82 the statically-linked &#39;minimal&#39; sample), shoehorning wxWindows 2 into a Windows CE device&#39;s limited
  83 storage should not be a problem.<P>
  84
  85 <h3><a name="winxp">What do I need to do for Windows XP?</a></h3>
  86
  87 In the same directory as you have your executable (e.g. foo.exe) you
  88 put a file called foo.exe.manifest in which you have something like
  89 the following:
  90
  91 <pre>
  92 &lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?&gt;
  93 &lt;assembly
  94    xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
  95    manifestVersion="1.0"&gt;
  96 &lt;assemblyIdentity
  97     processorArchitecture="x86"
  98     version="5.1.0.0"
  99     type="win32"
 100     name="foo.exe"/&gt;
 101     &lt;description&gt;Foo program&lt;/description&gt;
 102     &lt;dependency&gt;
 103     &lt;dependentAssembly&gt;
 104     &lt;assemblyIdentity
 105          type="win32"
 106          name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
 107          version="6.0.0.0"
 108          publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
 109          language="*"
 110          processorArchitecture="x86"/&gt;
 111     &lt;/dependentAssembly&gt;
 112     &lt;/dependency&gt;
 113 &lt;/assembly&gt;
 114 </pre>
 115
 116 <h3><a name="compilers">What compilers are supported?</a></h3>
 117
 118 Please see the wxWindows 2 for Windows install.txt file for up-to-date information, but
 119 currently the following are known to work:<P>
 120
 121 <ul>
 122 <li>Visual C++ 1.5, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0
 123 <li>Borland C++ 4.5, 5.0
 124 <li>Borland C++Builder 1.0, 3.0
 125 <li>Watcom C++ 10.6 (WIN32)
 126 <li>Cygwin b20
 127 <li>Mingw32
 128 <li>MetroWerks CodeWarrior 4
 129 </ul>
 130 <P>
 131
 132 There is a linking problem with Symantec C++ which I hope someone can help solve.
 133 <P>
 134
 135 <h3><a name="bestcompiler">Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?</a></h3>
 136
 137 It&#39;s partly a matter of taste, but I (JACS) prefer Visual C++ since the debugger is very
 138 good, it&#39;s very stable, the documentation is extensive, and it generates small executables.
 139 Since project files are plain text, it&#39;s easy for me to generate appropriate project files
 140 for wxWindows samples.<P>
 141
 142 Borland C++ is fine - and very fast - but it&#39;s hard (impossible?) to use the debugger without using project files, and
 143 the debugger is nowhere near up to VC++&#39;s quality. The IDE isn&#39;t great.<P>
 144
 145 C++Builder&#39;s power isn&#39;t really used with wxWindows since it needs integration with its
 146 own class library (VCL). For wxWindows, I&#39;ve only used it with makefiles, in which case
 147 it&#39;s almost identical to BC++ 5.0 (the same makefiles can be used).<P>
 148
 149 You can&#39;t beat Cygwin&#39;s price (free), and you can debug adequately using gdb. However, it&#39;s
 150 quite slow to compile since it does not use precompiled headers.<P>
 151
 152 CodeWarrior is cross-platform - you can debug and generate Windows executables from a Mac, but not
 153 the other way around I think - but the IDE is, to my mind, a bit primitive.<P>
 154
 155 Watcom C++ is a little slow and the debugger is not really up to today&#39;s standards.<P>
 156
 157 Among the free compilers the best choice seem to be Borland C++ command line
 158 tools and mingw32 (port of gcc to Win32). Both of them are supported by
 159 wxWindows.
 160
 161 <h3><a name="unicode">Is Unicode supported?</a></h3>
 162
 163 Yes, Unicode is fully supported under Windows NT/2000 (Windows 9x don&#39;t
 164 have Unicode support anyhow).
 165
 166 <h3><a name="doublebyte">Does wxWindows support double byte fonts (Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc.)?</a></h3>
 167
 168 An answer from <a href="mailto:goedde@logosoft.de">Klaus Goedde</a>:<p>
 169
 170 "For Japanese under Win2000, it seems that wxWindows has no problems to work with double byte char sets
 171 (I mean DBCS, that&#39;s not Unicode). First you have to install Japanese support on your Win2K system
 172 and choose for ANSI translation
 173 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage=932 (default is 1252 for Western).
 174 Then you can see all the funny Japanese letters under wxWindows too.<P>
 175
 176 In a wxTextCtrl control you have to set the window style "wxTE_RICH", otherwise this control shows the wrong
 177 letters.
 178
 179 I don&#39;t now whether it works on non W2K systems, because I&#39;m just starting using wxWindows."
 180 <P>
 181
 182 <h3><a name="dll">Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?</a></h3>
 183
 184 Yes (using the Visual C++ or Borland C++ makefile), but be aware that distributing DLLs is a thorny issue
 185 and you may be better off compiling statically-linked applications, unless you&#39;re
 186 delivering a suite of separate programs, or you&#39;re compiling a lot of wxWindows applications
 187 and have limited hard disk space.<P>
 188
 189 With a DLL approach, and with different versions and configurations of wxWindows
 190 needing to be catered for, the end user may end up with a host of large DLLs in his or her Windows system directory,
 191 negating the point of using DLLs. Of course, this is not a problem just associated with
 192 wxWindows!
 193 <P>
 194
 195 <h3><a name="exesize">How can I reduce executable size?</a></h3>
 196
 197 You can compile wxWindows as a DLL (see above, VC++/BC++ only at present). You should also
 198 compile your programs for release using non-debugging and space-optimisation options, but
 199 take with VC++ 5/6 space optimisation: it can sometimes cause problems.<P>
 200
 201 Statically-linked wxWindows 2 programs are smaller than wxWindows 1.xx programs, because of the way
 202 wxWindows 2 has been designed to reduce dependencies between classes, and other
 203 techniques. The linker will not include code from the library that is not (directly or
 204 indirectly) referenced
 205 by your application. So for example, the &#39;minimal&#39; sample is less than 500KB using VC++ 6
 206 (note that this figure may be greater for the latest version of wxWindows).<P>
 207
 208 If you want to distribute really small executables, you can
 209 use <a href="http://www.un4seen.com/petite/" target=_top>Petite</a>
 210 by Ian Luck. This nifty utility compresses Windows executables by around 50%, so your 500KB executable
 211 will shrink to a mere 250KB. With this sort of size, there is reduced incentive to
 212 use DLLs. Another good compression tool is <a href="http://upx.sourceforge.net/" target=_top>UPX</a>.
 213 <P>
 214
 215 Please do not be surprised if MinGW produces a statically-linked minimal executable of 1 MB. Firstly, gcc
 216 produces larger executables than some compilers. Secondly, this figure will
 217 include most of the overhead of wxWindows, so as your application becomes more
 218 complex, the overhead becomes proportionaly less significant. And thirdly, trading executable compactness
 219 for the enormous increase in productivity you get with wxWindows is almost always well worth it.
 220
 221 <H3><a name="mfc">Is wxWindows compatible with MFC?</a></H3>
 222
 223 There is a sample which demonstrates MFC and wxWindows code co-existing in the same
 224 application. However, don&#39;t expect to be able to enable wxWindows windows with OLE-2
 225 functionality using MFC.<P>
 226
 227 <H3><a name="asuffix">Why do I get errors about FooBarA when I only use FooBar in my program?</H3>
 228
 229 If you get errors like
 230 <p>
 231 <center>
 232 <tt>no matching function for call to &#39;wxDC::DrawTextA(const char[5], int,
 233 int)&#39;</tt>
 234 </center>
 235 <p>
 236 or similar ones for the other functions, i.e. the compiler error messages
 237 mention the function with the <tt>&#39;A&#39;</tt> suffix while you didn&#39;t
 238 use it in your code, the explanation is that you had included
 239 <tt>&#60;windows.h&#062;</tt> header which redefines many symbols to have such
 240 suffix (or <tt>&#39;W&#39;</tt> in the Unicode builds).
 241
 242 <p>
 243 The fix is to either not include <tt>&#60;windows.h&#62;</tt> at all or include
 244 <tt>"wx/msw/winundef.h"</tt> immediately after it.
 245
 246 <H3><a name="newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></H3>
 247
 248 The most common cause of this problem is the memory debugging settings in
 249 <tt>wx/msw/setup.h</tt>. You have several choices:
 250
 251 <ul>
 252     <li> Either disable overloading the global operator new completely by
 253          setting <tt>wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS</tt> and
 254          <tt>wxUSE_DEBUG_NEW_ALWAYS</tt> to 0 in this file
 255     <li> Or leave them on but do <tt>#undef new</tt> after including any
 256          wxWindows headers, like this the memory debugging will be still on
 257          for wxWindows sources but off for your own code
 258 </ul>
 259
 260 Notice that IMHO the first solution is preferable for VC++ users who can use
 261 the <a href="#vcdebug">VC++ CRT memory debugging features</a> instead.
 262
 263 <H3><a name="mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></H3>
 264
 265 Set up your interface from scratch using wxWindows (especially wxDesigner --
 266 it&#39;ll save you a <i>lot</i> of time) and when you have a shell prepared, you can start
 267 &#39;pouring in&#39; code from the MFC app, with appropriate
 268 modifications. This is the approach I have used, and I found
 269 it very satisfactory. A two-step process then - reproduce the bare
 270 interface first, then wire it up afterwards. That way you deal
 271 with each area of complexity separately. Don&#39;t try to think MFC
 272 and wxWindows simultaneously from the beginning - it is easier to
 273 reproduce the initial UI by looking at the behaviour of the MFC
 274 app, not its code.
 275
 276 <H3><a name="crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></H3>
 277
 278 Some crash problems can be due to inconsistent compiler
 279 options (and of course this isn&#39;t limited to wxWindows).
 280 If strange/weird/impossible things start to happen please
 281 check (dumping IDE project file as makefile and doing text comparison
 282 if necessary) that the project settings, especially the list of defined
 283 symbols, struct packing, etc. are exactly the same for all items in
 284 the project. After this, delete everything (including PCH) and recompile.<P>
 285
 286 VC++ 5&#39;s optimization code seems to be broken and can
 287 cause problems: this can be seen when deleting an object Dialog
 288 Editor, in Release mode with optimizations on. If in doubt,
 289 switch off optimisations, although this will result in much
 290 larger executables. It seems possible that the library can be created with
 291 strong optimization, so long as the application is not strongly
 292 optimized. For example, in wxWindows project, set to &#39;Minimum
 293 Size&#39;. In Dialog Editor project, set to &#39;Customize: Favor Small
 294 Code&#39; (and no others). This will then work.<P>
 295
 296 <H3><a name="makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></H3>
 297
 298 As of wxWindows 2.1, there is a new system written by Vadim Zeitlin, that
 299 generates the makefiles from templates using tmake.<P>
 300
 301 Here are Vadim&#39;s notes:<P>
 302
 303 <blockquote>
 304 To use these new makefiles, you don&#39;t need anything (but see below).
 305 However, you should NOT modify them because these files will be
 306 rewritten when I regenerate them using tmake the next time. So, if
 307 you find a problem with any of these makefiles (say, makefile.b32)
 308 you&#39;ll need to modify the corresponding template (b32.t in this
 309 example) and regenerate the makefile using tmake.<P>
 310
 311 tmake can be found at
 312 <a href="http://www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html" target=_new>www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html</a>.
 313 It&#39;s a Perl5 program and so it needs Perl (doh). There is a binary for
 314 Windows (available from the same page), but I haven&#39;t used it, so
 315 I don&#39;t know if it works as flawlessly as "perl tmake" does (note
 316 for people knowing Perl: don&#39;t try to run tmake with -w, it won&#39;t
 317 do you any good). Using it extremely simple: to regenerate makefile.b32
 318 just go to distrib/msw/tmake and type<P>
 319
 320 <pre>tmake -t b32 wxwin.pro -o ../../src/msw/makefile.b32</pre><P>
 321
 322 The makefiles are untested - I don&#39;t have any of Borland, Watcom  or
 323 Symantec and I don&#39;t have enough diskspace to recompile even with
 324 VC6 using makefiles. The new makefiles are as close as possible to the
 325 old ones, but not closer: in fact, there has been many strange things
 326 (should I say bugs?) in some of makefiles, some files were not compiled
 327 without any reason etc. Please test them and notify me about any problems.
 328 Better yet, modify the template files to generate the correct makefiles
 329 and check them in.<P>
 330
 331 The templates are described in tmake ref manual (1-2 pages of text)
 332 and are quite simple. They do contain some Perl code, but my Perl is
 333 primitive (very C like) so it should be possible for anybody to make
 334 trivial modifications to it (I hope that only trivial modifications
 335 will be needed). I&#39;ve tagged the ol makefiles as MAKEFILES_WITHOUT_TMAKE
 336 in the cvs, so you can always retrieve them and compare the new ones,
 337 this will make it easier to solve the problems you might have.<P>
 338
 339 Another important file is filelist.txt: it contains the list of all
 340 files to be compiled. Some of them are only compiled in 16/32 bit mode.
 341 Some other are only compiled with some compilers (others can&#39;t compile
 342 them) - all this info is contained in this file.<P>
 343
 344 So now adding a new file to wxWindows is as easy as modifying filelist.txt
 345 (and Makefile.ams for Unix ports) and regenerating the makefiles - no
 346 need to modify all files manually any more.<P>
 347
 348  Finally, there is also a file vc6.t which I use myself: this one
 349 generates a project file for VC++ 6.0 (I didn&#39;t create vc5.t because
 350 I don&#39;t need it and can&#39;t test it, but it should be trivial to create
 351 one from vc6.t - probably the only things to change would be the
 352 version number in the very beginning and the /Z option - VC5 doesn&#39;t
 353 support edit-and=continue). This is not an officially supported way
 354 of building wxWindows (that is, nobody guarantees that it will work),
 355 but it has been very useful to me and I hope it will be also for
 356 others. To generate wxWindows.dsp run<P>
 357
 358 <pre>tmake -t vc6 wxwin.pro -o ../../wxWindows.dsp</pre><P>
 359
 360 Then just include this project in any workspace or open it from VC IDE
 361 and it will create a new workspace for you.<P>
 362
 363 If all goes well, I&#39;m planning to create a template file for Makefile.ams
 364 under src/gtk and src/motif and also replace all makefiles in the samples
 365 subdirectories with the project files from which all the others will be
 366 generated. At least it will divide the number of files in samples
 367 directory by 10 (and the number of files to be maintained too).
 368 </blockquote>
 369
 370 <P>
 371
 372 <H3><a name="vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></H3>
 373
 374 Vadim Zeitlin:
 375
 376 <pre>
 377 On the VC++ level, it&#39;s just the matter of calling _CrtSetDbgFlag() in the very
 378 beginning of the program. In wxWindows, this is done automatically when
 379 compiling with VC++ in debug mode unless wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS or
 380 __NO_VC_CRTDBG__ are defined - this check is done in wx/msw/msvcrt.h which
 381 is included from app.cpp which then calls wxCrtSetDbgFlag() without any
 382 ifdefs.
 383
 384 This works quite well: at the end of the program, all leaked blocks with their
 385 malloc count are shown. This number (malloc count) can be used to determine
 386 where exactly the object was allocated: for this it&#39;s enough to set the variable
 387 _crtBreakAlloc (look in VC98\crt\srs\dbgheap.c line 326) to this number and
 388 a breakpoint will be triggered when the block with this number is allocated.
 389
 390 For simple situations it works like a charm. For something more complicated
 391 like reading uninitialized memory a specialized tool is probably better...
 392
 393 Regards,
 394 VZ
 395 </pre>
 396
 397 <P>
 398
 399 <H3><a name="shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></H3>
 400
 401 This can happen if you have a child window intercepting EVT_CHAR events and swallowing
 402 all keyboard input. You should ensure that event.Skip() is called for all input that
 403 isn&#39;used by the event handler.<P>
 404
 405 It can also happen if you append the submenu to the parent
 406 menu {\it before} you have added your menu items. Do the append {\it after} adding
 407 your items, or accelerators may not be registered properly.<P>
 408
 409 <H3><a name="#regconfig">Why can I not write to the HKLM part of the registry with wxRegConfig?</a></H3>
 410
 411 Currently this is not possible because the wxConfig family of classes is
 412 supposed to deal with per-user application configuration data, and HKLM is
 413 only supposed to be writeable by a user with Administrator privileges. In theory,
 414 only installers should write to HKLM. This is still a point debated by the
 415 wxWindows developers. There are at least two ways to work around it if you really
 416 need to write to HKLM.<P>
 417
 418 First, you can use wxRegKey directly, for example:
 419
 420 <pre>
 421     wxRegKey regKey;
 422
 423     wxString idName(wxT("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\"));
 424     idName += packid;
 425
 426     regKey.SetName(idName);
 427
 428     {
 429         wxLogNull dummy;
 430         if (!regKey.Create())
 431         {
 432             idName = wxT("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\");
 433             idName += packid;
 434             regKey.SetName(idName);
 435             if (!regKey.Create())
 436                 return FALSE;
 437         }
 438     }
 439
 440     if (!regKey.SetValue(wxT("THING"), (long) thing)) err += 1;
 441
 442     regKey.Close();
 443
 444 </pre>
 445
 446 Or, you can employ this trick suggested by Istvan Kovacs:
 447
 448 <pre>
 449 class myGlobalConfig : public wxConfig
 450 {
 451     myGlobalConfig() :
 452         wxConfig ("myApp", "myCompany", "", "", wxCONFIG_USE_GLOBAL_FILE)
 453 {};
 454     bool Write(const wxString& key, const wxString& value);
 455 }
 456
 457 bool myGlobalConfig::Write (const wxString& key, const wxString& value)
 458 {
 459     wxString path = wxString ("SOFTWARE\\myCompany\\myApp\\") + wxPathOnly(key);
 460     wxString new_path = path.Replace ("/", "\\", true);
 461     wxString new_key = wxFileNameFromPath (key);
 462     LocalKey().SetName (wxRegKey::HKLM, path);
 463     return wxConfig::Write (new_key, value);
 464 }
 465 </pre>
 466
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