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