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  15 wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ
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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="#compilers">What compilers are supported?</a></li>
  30 <li><a href="#bestcompiler">Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?</a></li>
  31 <li><a href="#unicode">Is Unicode supported?</a></li>
  32 <li><a href="#dll">Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?</a></li>
  33 <li><a href="#exesize">How can I reduce executable size?</a></li>
  34 <li><a href="#mfc">Is wxWindows compatible with MFC?</a></li>
  35 <li><a href="#newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></li>
  36 <li><a href="#mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></li>
  37 <li><a href="#crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></li>
  38 <li><a href="#makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></li>
  39 <li><a href="#vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></li>
  40 <li><a href="#shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></li>
  41 </ul>
  42 <hr>
  43
  44 <h3><a name="platforms">Which Windows platforms are supported?</a></h3>
  45
  46 wxWindows 2 can be used to develop and deliver applications on Windows 3.1, Win32s,
  47 Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. A Windows CE version is being looked into (see below).<P>
  48
  49 wxWindows 2 is designed to make use of WIN32 features and controls. However, unlike Microsoft,
  50 we have not forgotten users of 16-bit Windows. Most features
  51 work under Windows 3.1, including wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl using the generic implementation.
  52 However, don&#39;t expect very Windows-95-specific classes to work, such as wxTaskBarIcon. The wxRegConfig
  53 class doesn&#39;t work either because the Windows 3.1 registry is very simplistic. Check out the 16-bit
  54 makefiles to see what other files have been left out.
  55 <P>
  56 16-bit compilation is supported under Visual C++ 1.5, and Borland BC++ 4 to 5.
  57 <P>
  58
  59 wxWindows 2 for Windows will also compile on Unix with gcc using TWIN32 from <a href="http://www.willows.com" target=_top>Willows</a>,
  60 although TWIN32 is still in a preliminary state. The resulting executables are
  61 Unix binaries that work with the TWIN32 Windows API emulator.<P>
  62
  63 You can also compile wxWindows 2 for Windows on Unix with Cygwin or Mingw32, resulting
  64 in executables that will run on Windows. So in theory you could write your applications
  65 using wxGTK or wxMotif, then check/debug your wxWindows for Windows
  66 programs with TWIN32, and finally produce an ix86 Windows executable using Cygwin/Mingw32,
  67 without ever needing a copy of Microsoft Windows. See the Technical Note on the Web site detailing cross-compilation.<P>
  68
  69 <h3><a name="wince">What about Windows CE?</a></h3>
  70
  71 This is under consideration, though we need to get wxWindows Unicode-aware first.
  72 There are other interesting issues, such as how to combine the menubar and toolbar APIs
  73 as Windows CE requires. But there&#39;s no doubt that it will be possible, albeit
  74 by mostly cutting down wxWindows 2 API functionality, and adding a few classes here
  75 and there. Since wxWindows for 2 produces small binaries (less than 300K for
  76 the statically-linked &#39;minimal&#39; sample), shoehorning wxWindows 2 into a Windows CE device&#39;s limited
  77 storage should not be a problem.<P>
  78
  79 <h3><a name="compilers">What compilers are supported?</a></h3>
  80
  81 Please see the wxWindows 2 for Windows install.txt file for up-to-date information, but
  82 currently the following are known to work:<P>
  83
  84 <ul>
  85 <li>Visual C++ 1.5, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0
  86 <li>Borland C++ 4.5, 5.0
  87 <li>Borland C++Builder 1.0, 3.0
  88 <li>Watcom C++ 10.6 (WIN32)
  89 <li>Cygwin b20
  90 <li>Mingw32
  91 <li>MetroWerks CodeWarrior 4
  92 </ul>
  93 <P>
  94
  95 There is a linking problem with Symantec C++ which I hope someone can help solve.
  96 <P>
  97
  98 <h3><a name="bestcompiler">Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?</a></h3>
  99
 100 It&#39;s partly a matter of taste, but I (JACS) prefer Visual C++ since the debugger is very
 101 good, it&#39;s very stable, the documentation is extensive, and it generates small executables.
 102 Since project files are plain text, it&#39;s easy for me to generate appropriate project files
 103 for wxWindows samples.<P>
 104
 105 Borland C++ is fine - and very fast - but it&#39;s hard (impossible?) to use the debugger without using project files, and
 106 the debugger is nowhere near up to VC++&#39;s quality. The IDE isn&#39;t great.<P>
 107
 108 C++Builder&#39;s power isn&#39;t really used with wxWindows since it needs integration with its
 109 own class library (VCL). For wxWindows, I&#39;ve only used it with makefiles, in which case
 110 it&#39;s almost identical to BC++ 5.0 (the same makefiles can be used).<P>
 111
 112 You can&#39;t beat Cygwin&#39;s price (free), and you can debug adequately using gdb. However, it&#39;s
 113 quite slow to compile since it does not use precompiled headers.<P>
 114
 115 CodeWarrior is cross-platform - you can debug and generate Windows executables from a Mac, but not
 116 the other way around I think - but the IDE is, to my mind, a bit primitive.<P>
 117
 118 Watcom C++ is a little slow and the debugger is not really up to today&#39;s standards.<P>
 119
 120 Among the free compilers the best choice seem to be Borland C++ command line
 121 tools and mingw32 (port of gcc to Win32). Both of them are supported by
 122 wxWindows.
 123
 124 <h3><a name="unicode">Is Unicode supported?</a></h3>
 125
 126 Yes, Unicode is fully supported under Windows NT/2000 (Windows 9x don&#39;t
 127 have Unicode support anyhow).
 128
 129 <h3><a name="dll">Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?</a></h3>
 130
 131 Yes (using the Visual C++ or Borland C++ makefile), but be aware that distributing DLLs is a thorny issue
 132 and you may be better off compiling statically-linked applications, unless you&#39;re
 133 delivering a suite of separate programs, or you&#39;re compiling a lot of wxWindows applications
 134 and have limited hard disk space.<P>
 135
 136 With a DLL approach, and with different versions and configurations of wxWindows
 137 needing to be catered for, the end user may end up with a host of large DLLs in his or her Windows system directory,
 138 negating the point of using DLLs. Of course, this is not a problem just associated with
 139 wxWindows!
 140 <P>
 141
 142 <h3><a name="exesize">How can I reduce executable size?</a></h3>
 143
 144 You can compile wxWindows as a DLL (see above, VC++/BC++ only at present). You should also
 145 compile your programs for release using non-debugging and space-optimisation options, but
 146 take with VC++ 5/6 space optimisation: it can sometimes cause problems.<P>
 147
 148 Statically-linked wxWindows 2 programs are smaller than wxWindows 1.xx programs, because of the way
 149 wxWindows 2 has been designed to reduce dependencies between classes, and other
 150 techniques. The linker will not include code from the library that is not (directly or
 151 indirectly) referenced
 152 by your application. So for example, the &#39;minimal&#39; sample is less than 300KB using VC++ 6.<P>
 153
 154 If you want to distribute really small executables, you can
 155 use <a href="http://www.icl.ndirect.co.uk/petite/" target=_top>Petite</a>
 156 by Ian Luck. This nifty utility compresses Windows executables by around 50%, so your 500KB executable
 157 will shrink to a mere 250KB. With this sort of size, there is reduced incentive to
 158 use DLLs.<P>
 159
 160 <H3><a name="mfc">Is wxWindows compatible with MFC?</a></H3>
 161
 162 There is a sample which demonstrates MFC and wxWindows code co-existing in the same
 163 application. However, don&#39;t expect to be able to enable wxWindows windows with OLE-2
 164 functionality using MFC.<P>
 165
 166 <H3><a name="newerrors">Why my code fails to compile with strange errors about new operator?</a></H3>
 167
 168 The most common cause of this problem is the memory debugging settings in
 169 <tt>wx/msw/setup.h</tt>. You have several choices:
 170
 171 <ul>
 172     <li> Either disable overloading the global operator new completely by
 173          setting <tt>wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS</tt> and
 174          <tt>wxUSE_DEBUG_NEW_ALWAYS</tt> to 0 in this file
 175     <li> Or leave them on but do <tt>#undef new</tt> after including any
 176          wxWindows headers, like this the memory debugging will be still on
 177          for wxWindows sources but off for your own code
 178 </ul>
 179
 180 Notice that IMHO the first solution is preferable for VC++ users who can use
 181 the <a href="#vcdebug">VC++ CRT memory debugging features</a> instead.
 182
 183 <H3><a name="mfcport">How do I port MFC applications to wxWindows?</a></H3>
 184
 185 Set up your interface from scratch using wxWindows (especially wxDesigner --
 186 it&#39;ll save you a <i>lot</i> of time) and when you have a shell prepared, you can start
 187 &#39;pouring in&#39; code from the MFC app, with appropriate
 188 modifications. This is the approach I have used, and I found
 189 it very satisfactory. A two-step process then - reproduce the bare
 190 interface first, then wire it up afterwards. That way you deal
 191 with each area of complexity separately. Don&#39;t try to think MFC
 192 and wxWindows simultaneously from the beginning - it is easier to
 193 reproduce the initial UI by looking at the behaviour of the MFC
 194 app, not its code.
 195
 196 <H3><a name="crash">Why do I sometimes get bizarre crash problems using VC++ 5/6?</a></H3>
 197
 198 Some crash problems can be due to inconsistent compiler
 199 options (and of course this isn&#39;t limited to wxWindows).
 200 If strange/weird/impossible things start to happen please
 201 check (dumping IDE project file as makefile and doing text comparison
 202 if necessary) that the project settings, especially the list of defined
 203 symbols, struct packing, etc. are exactly the same for all items in
 204 the project. After this, delete everything (including PCH) and recompile.<P>
 205
 206 VC++ 5&#39;s optimization code seems to be broken and can
 207 cause problems: this can be seen when deleting an object Dialog
 208 Editor, in Release mode with optimizations on. If in doubt,
 209 switch off optimisations, although this will result in much
 210 larger executables. It seems possible that the library can be created with
 211 strong optimization, so long as the application is not strongly
 212 optimized. For example, in wxWindows project, set to &#39;Minimum
 213 Size&#39;. In Dialog Editor project, set to &#39;Customize: Favor Small
 214 Code&#39; (and no others). This will then work.<P>
 215
 216 <H3><a name="makefiles">How are the wxWindows makefiles edited under Windows?</a></H3>
 217
 218 As of wxWindows 2.1, there is a new system written by Vadim Zeitlin, that
 219 generates the makefiles from templates using tmake.<P>
 220
 221 Here are Vadim&#39;s notes:<P>
 222
 223 <blockquote>
 224 To use these new makefiles, you don&#39;t need anything (but see below).
 225 However, you should NOT modify them because these files will be
 226 rewritten when I regenerate them using tmake the next time. So, if
 227 you find a problem with any of these makefiles (say, makefile.b32)
 228 you&#39;ll need to modify the corresponding template (b32.t in this
 229 example) and regenerate the makefile using tmake.<P>
 230
 231 tmake can be found at
 232 <a href="http://www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html" target=_new>www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html</a>.
 233 It&#39;s a Perl5 program and so it needs Perl (doh). There is a binary for
 234 Windows (available from the same page), but I haven&#39;t used it, so
 235 I don&#39;t know if it works as flawlessly as "perl tmake" does (note
 236 for people knowing Perl: don&#39;t try to run tmake with -w, it won&#39;t
 237 do you any good). Using it extremely simple: to regenerate makefile.b32
 238 just go to distrib/msw/tmake and type<P>
 239
 240 <pre>tmake -t b32 wxwin.pro -o ../../src/msw/makefile.b32</pre><P>
 241
 242 The makefiles are untested - I don&#39;t have any of Borland, Watcom  or
 243 Symantec and I don&#39;t have enough diskspace to recompile even with
 244 VC6 using makefiles. The new makefiles are as close as possible to the
 245 old ones, but not closer: in fact, there has been many strange things
 246 (should I say bugs?) in some of makefiles, some files were not compiled
 247 without any reason etc. Please test them and notify me about any problems.
 248 Better yet, modify the template files to generate the correct makefiles
 249 and check them in.<P>
 250
 251 The templates are described in tmake ref manual (1-2 pages of text)
 252 and are quite simple. They do contain some Perl code, but my Perl is
 253 primitive (very C like) so it should be possible for anybody to make
 254 trivial modifications to it (I hope that only trivial modifications
 255 will be needed). I&#39;ve tagged the ol makefiles as MAKEFILES_WITHOUT_TMAKE
 256 in the cvs, so you can always retrieve them and compare the new ones,
 257 this will make it easier to solve the problems you might have.<P>
 258
 259 Another important file is filelist.txt: it contains the list of all
 260 files to be compiled. Some of them are only compiled in 16/32 bit mode.
 261 Some other are only compiled with some compilers (others can&#39;t compile
 262 them) - all this info is contained in this file.<P>
 263
 264 So now adding a new file to wxWindows is as easy as modifying filelist.txt
 265 (and Makefile.ams for Unix ports) and regenerating the makefiles - no
 266 need to modify all files manually any more.<P>
 267
 268  Finally, there is also a file vc6.t which I use myself: this one
 269 generates a project file for VC++ 6.0 (I didn&#39;t create vc5.t because
 270 I don&#39;t need it and can&#39;t test it, but it should be trivial to create
 271 one from vc6.t - probably the only things to change would be the
 272 version number in the very beginning and the /Z option - VC5 doesn&#39;t
 273 support edit-and=continue). This is not an officially supported way
 274 of building wxWindows (that is, nobody guarantees that it will work),
 275 but it has been very useful to me and I hope it will be also for
 276 others. To generate wxWindows.dsp run<P>
 277
 278 <pre>tmake -t vc6 wxwin.pro -o ../../wxWindows.dsp</pre><P>
 279
 280 Then just include this project in any workspace or open it from VC IDE
 281 and it will create a new workspace for you.<P>
 282
 283 If all goes well, I&#39;m planning to create a template file for Makefile.ams
 284 under src/gtk and src/motif and also replace all makefiles in the samples
 285 subdirectories with the project files from which all the others will be
 286 generated. At least it will divide the number of files in samples
 287 directory by 10 (and the number of files to be maintained too).
 288 </blockquote>
 289
 290 <P>
 291
 292 <H3><a name="vcdebug">How do you use VC++&#39;s memory leak checking instead of that in wxWindows?</a></H3>
 293
 294 Vadim Zeitlin:
 295
 296 <pre>
 297 On the VC++ level, it&#39;s just the matter of calling _CrtSetDbgFlag() in the very
 298 beginning of the program. In wxWindows, this is done automatically when
 299 compiling with VC++ in debug mode unless wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS or
 300 __NO_VC_CRTDBG__ are defined - this check is done in wx/msw/msvcrt.h which
 301 is included from app.cpp which then calls wxCrtSetDbgFlag() without any
 302 ifdefs.
 303
 304 This works quite well: at the end of the program, all leaked blocks with their
 305 malloc count are shown. This number (malloc count) can be used to determine
 306 where exactly the object was allocated: for this it&#39;s enough to set the variable
 307 _crtBreakAlloc (look in VC98\crt\srs\dbgheap.c line 326) to this number and
 308 a breakpoint will be triggered when the block with this number is allocated.
 309
 310 For simple situations it works like a charm. For something more complicated
 311 like reading uninitialized memory a specialized tool is probably better...
 312
 313 Regards,
 314 VZ
 315 </pre>
 316
 317 <P>
 318
 319 <H3><a name="shortcutproblem">Why are menu hotkeys or shortcuts not working in my application?</a></H3>
 320
 321 This can happen if you have a child window intercepting EVT_CHAR events and swallowing
 322 all keyboard input. You should ensure that event.Skip() is called for all input that
 323 isn&#39;used by the event handler.
 324
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