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  16 <b>wxWindows 2 FAQ: General</b>
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  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="#whatis">What is wxWindows?</a></li>
  29 <li><a href="#licence">Can I use wxWindows 2 for both proprietary projects, and GPL&#39;ed projects?</a></li>
  30 <li><a href="#support">Is there support?</a></li>
  31 <li><a href="#users">Who uses wxWindows?</a></li>
  32 <li><a href="#platforms">What platforms are supported by wxWindows?</a></li>
  33 <li><a href="#specific">How does wxWindows support platform-specific features?</a></li>
  34 <li><a href="#stl">Does wxWindows use STL? or the standard string class?</a></li>
  35 <li><a href="#richedit">Is there a rich edit/markup widget for wxWindows?</a></ li>
  36 <li><a href="#exceptions">How to use C++ exceptions with wxWindows?</a></ li>
  37 <li><a href="#dev">How is wxWindows being developed?</a></li>
  38 <li><a href="#distrib">How is wxWindows distributed?</a></li>
  39 <li><a href="#future">What are the plans for the future?</a></li>
  40 <li><a href="#base">What is wxBase?</a></li>
  41 <li><a href="#univ">What is wxUniversal?</a></li>
  42 <li><a href="#jave">What about Java?</a></li>
  43 <li><a href="#dotnet">What about .NET/Mono?</a></li>
  44 <li><a href="#help">How can I help the project?</a></li>
  45 </ul>
  46 <hr>
  47
  48 <H3><a name="whatis">What is wxWindows?</a></H3>
  49
  50 wxWindows is a class library that allows you to compile graphical C++ programs on a range of
  51 different platforms. wxWindows defines a common API across platforms, but uses the native graphical user interface (GUI) on each platform,
  52 so your program will take on the native &#39;look and feel&#39; that users are familiar with.<P>
  53
  54 Although GUI applications are mostly built programmatically, there is a dialog editor to help
  55 build attractive dialogs and panels. Robert Roebling&#39;s <a href="http://www.roebling.com">wxDesigner</a>
  56 makes light work of resizable, portable dialogs.<P>
  57
  58 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,
  59 and also a <a href="http://wxperl.sourceforge.net" target=_top>Perl interface</a>.
  60 <P>
  61
  62 <h3><a name="licence">Can I use wxWindows 2 for both proprietary (commercial) projects, and GPL&#39;ed projects?</a></h3>
  63
  64 Yes. Please see the <a href="newlicen.htm">licence</a> for details, but basically
  65 you can distribute proprietary binaries without distributing any source code, and neither will wxWindows
  66 conflict with GPL code you may be using or developing with it.
  67 <P>
  68 The conditions for using wxWindows 2 are the same whether you are a personal, academic
  69 or commercial developer.
  70 <P>
  71
  72 <h3><a name="support">Is there support?</a></h3>
  73
  74 No official support, but the mailing list is very helpful and some people say that
  75 wxWindows support is better than for much commercial software. The developers are
  76 keen to fix bugs as soon as possible, though obviously there are no guarantees.
  77 <P>
  78
  79 <H3><a name="users">Who uses wxWindows?</a></H3>
  80
  81 Many organisations - commercial, government, and academic - across the
  82 world. It&#39;s impossible to estimate the true number of users, since
  83 wxWindows is obtained by many different means, and we cannot monitor
  84 distribution. The mailing list contains around 300-400 entries which is
  85 quite large for a list of this type.<P>
  86
  87 See <a href="users.htm">Users</a> for a list of some users and their applications, and
  88 also <A href="feedback.htm">Feedback</a> for comments.<P>
  89 Our highest-profile user yet is industry veteran and Lotus Corp. founder Mitch Kapor
  90 and his <a href="http://www.osafoundation.org" target=_new>Open Source Applications Foundation</a>.
  91 <P>
  92
  93 <H3><a name="platforms">What platforms are supported by wxWindows 2?</a></H3>
  94
  95 <ul>
  96 <li>Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows ME.
  97 <li>Linux and other Unix platforms with GTK+.
  98 <li>Unix with Motif or the free Motif clone Lesstif.
  99 <li>Mac OS.
 100 <li>Embedded platforms are being investigated. See the <a href="wxuniv.htm">wxUniversal</a> project.
 101 <li>An OS/2 port is in progress, and you can also compile wxWindows for GTK+ or Motif
 102 on OS/2.
 103 </ul>
 104 <P>
 105
 106 <H3><a name="specific">How does wxWindows 2 support platform-specific
 107 features?</a></H3>
 108
 109 This is a hotly-debated topic amongst the developers. My own philosophy
 110 is to make wxWindows as platform-independent as possible, but allow in a
 111 few classes (functions, window styles) that are platform-specific.
 112 For example, Windows metafiles and Windows 95 taskbar icons have
 113 their own classes on Windows, but nowhere else. Because these classes
 114 are provided and are wxWindows-compatible, it doesn&#39;t take much
 115 coding effort for an application programmer to add support for
 116 some functionality that the user on a particular platform might otherwise
 117 miss. Also, some classes that started off as platform-specific, such
 118 as the MDI classes, have been emulated on other platforms. I can imagine
 119 that even wxTaskBarIcon may be implemented for Unix desktops one day.
 120 <P>
 121
 122 In other words, wxWindows is not a &#39;lowest common denominator&#39; approach,
 123 but it will still be possible to write portable programs using the
 124 core API. Forbidding some platform-specific classes would be a stupid
 125 approach that would alienate many potential users, and encourage
 126 the perception that toolkits such as wxWindows are not up to the demands
 127 of today&#39;s sophisticated applications.<P>
 128
 129 Currently resources such as bitmaps and icons are handled in a platform-specific
 130 way, but it is hoped to reduce this dependence in due course.<P>
 131
 132 Another reason why wxWindows 2 is not a &#39;lowest common denominator&#39; toolkit is that
 133 some functionality missing on some platform has been provided using generic,
 134 platform-independent code, such as the wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl classes.<P>
 135
 136 <H3><a name="stl">Does wxWindows use STL? or the standard string class?</a></H3>
 137
 138 No. This is a much-discussed topic that has (many times) ended with the conclusion that it is in
 139 wxWindows&#39; best interests to avoid use of templates. Not all compilers can handle
 140 templates adequately so it would dramatically reduce the number of compilers
 141 and platforms that could be supported. It would also be undersirable to make
 142 wxWindows dependent on another large library that may have to be downloaded and installed.
 143 In addition, use of templates can lead to executable bloat, which is something
 144 wxWindows 2 is strenously trying to avoid.<P>
 145
 146 The standard C++ string class is not used, again because it is not available to all compilers,
 147 and it is not necessarily a very efficient implementation. Also, we retain more flexibility
 148 by being able to modify our own string class. Some compatibility with the string class
 149 has been built into wxString.<P>
 150
 151 There is nothing to stop an application using templates or the string class for its own
 152 purposes. With wxWindows debugging options on, you may find you get errors when including
 153 STL headers. You can work around it either by switching off memory checking,
 154 or by adding this to a header before you include any STL files:<P>
 155
 156 <PRE>
 157 &#35;ifdef new
 158 &#35;undef new
 159 &#35;endif
 160 </PRE>
 161
 162 <P>
 163
 164
 165 <H3><a name="richedit">Is there a rich edit/markup widget for wxWindows 2?</a></H3>
 166
 167 These are the possibilities so far:<P>
 168
 169 <ul>
 170 <li>See <a href="http://www.scintilla.org" target=_top>www.scintilla.org</a> for
 171 a very nice syntax-highlighting editor widget. Robin Dunn has written a wxWindows wrapper
 172 for this widget, available in the wxWindows distribution under contrib/src/stc.
 173 <li>If you only need to display marked-up information, rather than edit it,
 174 then wxHTML will suit your needs. wxHTML is built into wxWindows - please see the reference
 175 manual for details, and samples/html.
 176 <li>There are rich edit widgets in both WIN32 and GTK+, but there is currently
 177 no wxWindows wrapper for these (but text attribute functions are being added in the wxWindows 2.3.x series).
 178 </ul>
 179
 180 <P>
 181
 182 <h3><a name="exceptions">How to use C++ exceptions with wxWindows?</a></h3>
 183
 184 wxWindows library itself is unfortunately <i>not</i> exception-safe (as its
 185 initial version predates, by far, the addition of the exceptions to the C++
 186 language). However you can still use the exceptions in your own code and use
 187 the other libraries using the exceptions for the error reporting together with
 188 wxWindows.
 189
 190 <p>
 191 There are a few issues to keep in mind, though:
 192 <ul>
 193     <li>You shouldn&#39;t let the exceptions propagate through wxWindows code,
 194         in particular you should always catch the exceptions thrown by the
 195         functions called from an event handler in the handler itself and not
 196         let them propagate upwards to wxWindows.
 197
 198     <li>You may need to ensure that the compiler support for the exceptions is
 199         enabled as, considering that wxWindows itself doesn&#39;t use the
 200         exceptions and turning their support on results in the library size
 201         augmentation of 10% to 20%, it is turned off by default for a few
 202         compilers. Moreover, for gcc (or at least its mingw version) you must
 203         also turn on the RTTI support to be able to use the exceptions, so you
 204         should use <tt>--disable-no_rtti --disable-no_exceptions</tt> options
 205         when configuring the library (attention to the double negation).
 206 </ul>
 207
 208 <p>
 209
 210 <H3><a name="dev">How is wxWindows being developed?</a></H3>
 211
 212 We are using the <a href="cvs.htm">CVS</a> system to develop and maintain wxWindows. This allows
 213 us to make alterations and upload them instantly to the server, from
 214 which others can update their source.<P>
 215
 216 To build source from CVS, see the file BuildCVS.txt in the top-level wxWindows distribution
 217 directory.<P>
 218
 219 <H3><a name="distrib">How is wxWindows distributed?</a></H3>
 220
 221 By ftp, and via the <a href="cdrom2.htm">wxWindows CD-ROM</a>.
 222 <P>
 223 If you are feeling adventurous, you may also check out the sources directly
 224 from <a href="cvs.htm">cvs</a>.
 225 <p>
 226
 227 <H3><a name="future">What are the plans for the future?</a></H3>
 228
 229 Currently we&#39;re working too hard on getting wxWindows finished (are GUI toolkits ever
 230 finished?) to think very far ahead. However, we know we want to make wxWindows as robust
 231 and well-publicised as possible. We also want to aim for better platform-independence of
 232 resources such as icons and bitmaps, standardising on PNG and XPM for all platforms.<P>
 233
 234 Other possibilities include: DCOM/CORBA compatibility; a wxWindows book;
 235 <a href="http://wxworkshop.sourceforge.net/">wxWorkshop</a>, an IDE;
 236 other platforms, especially embedded systems; other interface abilities such as speech output.<P>
 237
 238 We will investigate the possibility of compiler or operating system vendors bundling wxWindows with
 239 their product.<P>
 240
 241 The high-level goal of wxWindows is to be thought of as the number one C++ framework,
 242 for virtually any platform. Move over, MFC!<P>
 243
 244 <h3><a name="base">What is wxBase?</a></h3>
 245
 246 wxBase is a subset of wxWindows comprised by the non-GUI classes. It includes
 247 wxWindows container and primitive data type classes (including wxString,
 248 wxDateTime and so on) and also useful wrappers for the operating system objects
 249 such as files, processes, threads, sockets and so on. With very minor
 250 exceptions wxBase may be used in exactly the same way as wxWindows but it
 251 doesn&#39;t require a GUI to run and so is ideal for creating console mode
 252 utilities or server programs. It is also possible to create a program which can
 253 be compiled either as a console application (using wxBase) or a GUI one (using
 254 a full featured wxWindows port).
 255
 256 <H3><a name="univ">What is wxUniversal?</a></H3>
 257
 258 The main difference between wxUniversal-based ports (such as wxX11, wxMGL) and other ports (such as wxMSW, wxGTK+, wxMac)
 259 is that wxUniversal implements all controls (or widgets) in
 260 wxWindows itself thus allowing to have much more flexibility (for example, support for
 261 themes even under MS Windows). It also means that it is now much easier to
 262 port wxWindows to a new platform as only the low-level classes must be ported
 263 which make for a small part of the library.
 264 <p>
 265 You may find more about wxUniversal <a href=wxuniv.htm>here</a>.
 266
 267 <H3><a name="jave">What about Java?</a></H3>
 268
 269 The Java honeymoon period is over :-) and people are realising that it cannot
 270 meet all their cross-platform development needs. We don&#39;t anticipate a major threat
 271 from Java, and the level of interest in wxWindows is as high as ever.<P>
 272
 273 <H3><a name="dotnet">What about .NET/Mono?</a></H3>
 274
 275 Microsoft is spending a lot on promoting the .NET initiative, which
 276 is a set of languages, APIs and web service components for Windows.
 277 Ximian has started an open source version of .NET, mostly for Linux.
 278 C&#35; is Microsoft's alternative to Java, supporting 'managed code',
 279 garbage collection and various other Java-like language features.<P>
 280
 281 Although this may be attractive to some developers, there
 282 is a variety of reasons why the .NET/Mono combination is unlikely
 283 to make wxWindows redundant. Please note that the following comments
 284 are Julian Smart's opinions.<P>
 285
 286 <ol>
 287 <li>Not everyone wants or needs net services.
 288 <li>C++ will be used for a long time to come; compared with C++, C&#35; is a recent development and its future is not certain.
 289 <li>Mono Forms may only target Winelib (at least to begin with), so the end result is not as native as
 290 wxWindows (I'm aware there is GTK&#35; for use with the C&#35; language).
 291 <li>C&#35; is usually byte-compiled and therefore slower. Plus, .NET adds a layer of overhead to the client computer
 292 that wxWindows does not require.
 293 <li>Mono hasn't proven its long-term viability yet (it's a complex system of components); wxWindows is ready now.
 294 <li>You may not wish to buy into Microsoft marketing spin and APIs.
 295 <li>.NET might never be implemented on some platforms, especially Mac and embedded variants of Linux.
 296 <li>wxPython and other language variants provide further reasons for wxWindows to continue.
 297 <li>The same issue exists for Qt: if Qt sales remain strong, it's a good indication that
 298 the market for a C++-based approach is still there. (Either that, or everyone's turning to wxWindows!)
 299 </ol>
 300
 301 There is nothing to stop folk from developing a C&#35; version of the wxWindows API;
 302 we already have bindings to Python, Perl, JavaScript, Lua, Basic, and Eiffel.
 303 Update: a <a href="http://wxnet.sourceforge.net/" target=_new>wx.NET</a> project is now in progress.
 304
 305 <P>
 306
 307 <H3><a name="help">How can I help the project?</a></H3>
 308
 309 Please check out the <a href="http://www.wxwindows.org/develop2.htm">Community</a> pages,
 310 in particular the <a href="projects.htm">suggested projects</a>, and
 311 mail the developers&#39; mailing list with your own suggestions.<P>
 312
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