docs/publicity/announce.txt

   1 Announcing wxWindows 2.3.4: a cross-platform GUI toolkit
   2 ----------------------------------------------------------------
   3
   4 September 16th, 2002 -- the wxWindows team is pleased to
   5 announce the release of a development snapshot of the mature
   6 cross-platform C++ application framework.
   7
   8 The following platforms are supported:
   9
  10 - Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP
  11 - Unix with GTK+ 1.x and 2.0
  12 - Unix with X11
  13 - Unix with Motif/Lesstif
  14 - VMS with GTK+ 1.x
  15 - MacOS 8.6, 9.x and 10.x
  16 - OS/2 (alpha)
  17
  18 To get wxWindows, go to the Download page at:
  19
  20   http://www.wxwindows.org
  21
  22 This is likely to be the last development snapshot in the
  23 2.3.x series, before the release of the stable 2.4.x series.
  24
  25 *** About wxWindows
  26
  27 wxWindows is a comprehensive open-source, multi-platform C++
  28 GUI framework, that can be used to build commercial and free
  29 software. It's used by many organisations all over the world,
  30 including the company that invented the GUI.
  31
  32 For most ports, wxWindows adopts the native look and feel of
  33 each platform since it uses the native widget sets. There is also
  34 a generic widget set, used for the wxX11 port - no other widget set
  35 is required, giving the potential for embedded use.
  36
  37 An extraordinary range of classes is provided - but don't be put
  38 off by this because most people find wxWindows easier to learn
  39 and use than MFC and other frameworks.
  40
  41 As well as comprehensive support for the usual widgets, advanced
  42 features include: HTML viewing/printing, wxImage class providing
  43 handlers for eading and writing many image types, resizeable panels
  44 and dialogs on all platforms, document/view, OpenGL support,
  45 HTML-based and context-sensitive help, wizards, drag and drop,
  46 a grid class, ODBC support, threads, sockets, container classes,
  47 and much more. An 1800-page reference manual is provided in HTML,
  48 MS HTML Help, WinHelp, wxWindows Help and PDF, and there are over
  49 70 samples and demos.
  50
  51 If you're an MFC user, you'll find many wxWindows concepts
  52 reassuringly familiar, while often clearer and more consistent.
  53 If you're not, you should still find it intuitive from the start.
  54
  55 wxWindows bindings for several other languages are available,
  56 including Python, Perl, Basic, Lua, JavaScript and Eiffel.
  57
  58 If you're considering wxWindows, do check out some of these links:
  59
  60     http://www.wxwindows.org/feedback.htm ; Comments from users
  61     http://www.wxwindows.org/screensh.htm ; Screenshots
  62     http://www.wxwindows.org/users.htm    ; A list of some of our
  63                                           ; users
  64
  65 Have fun!
  66
  67 Julian Smart and the wxWindows team
  68
  69 =====
  70
  71 A small selection of the comments from the Feedback page:
  72
  73 "wxWindows 2.xx has been an absolute dream; putting together a
  74 nice interface has been quite easy, and I'm especially pleased
  75 that I can do most of our development on *nix with confidence
  76 that only minor issues will have to get cleaned up when we build
  77 on Windows."
  78
  79 "I use wxWindows as a GUI Toolkit for Python. Its stability,
  80 flexibility and speed are the base of industrial strength
  81 cross-platform GUI application design with interpreted languages
  82 like Python. Porting is child's play. Thanks for this great
  83 piece of software!"
  84
  85 "Excellent, stable and intuitive API. Very straightforward to
  86 learn and easy to port Java, X11 and Win32 code to."
  87
  88 "Thanks heaps for the best piece of software I've ever come
  89 across (wxWindows)."
  90
  91 "I chose wxWindows for a very much Windows-only application
  92 because of the simplicity of the API compared to MFC and Win32
  93 GDI programming. Aside from some minor mistakes in the manual
  94 which confused me for a while, wxWin has been really easy to use
  95 and increased my productivity immensely compared to using
  96 another framework."
  97
  98 "wxWindows is a great product. One of its best features, IMHO,
  99 are all the language bindings. It's very easy to prototype your
 100 app in wxPython, then convert to a C/C++ app later."
 101
 102 "Porting to wxWindows is easy - I recently ported an MFC project
 103 at work to wxGTK on Solaris, and changing all the MFC calls to
 104 wxWindows calls only took a couple of hours for a 2 man-month
 105 project... I've never had an easier porting experience.
 106 wxWindows was intentially built to work like MFC to make it easy
 107 to port, and they most certainly succeeded, with the notable
 108 exception of OLE support. I ported a several man month project
 109 in a day or two, and none of it was hard or confusing, it just
 110 amounted to looking up the equivalent functions in the help. I
 111 could do the conversion much faster now because I wouldn't have
 112 to keep glancing at the web page."
 113
 114 "I'd like to take the opportunity and say a big thank you to all
 115 the wxWin developers and contributors. wxWindows is the best
 116 piece of software I have been using so far, and I can't believe
 117 that I haven't discovered it earlier. I never thought that
 118 cross-platform development could be so easy and simply cool.
 119 Great stuff :)"
 120
 121 "Just wanted to commend you on wxWindows. As I'm reading the
 122 code samples (the checklistbox right now), I'm realizing that
 123 this is so intuitive and so Java-like in some parts of it,
 124 especially with the way the layout works... Very good work and
 125 thank you."
 126
 127 "I have used wxWindows in the past very successfully on multiple
 128 projects, and think it's the bee's knees. Thanks for everything!"
 129
 130 "Well, I'm using wxWindows since 2 days and I'm already in love
 131 with it :) The sizers saved me from writing a complete layout
 132 solution myself. Great work! You guys rock!"
 133
 134 "wxWindows is jaw dropping amazing. Community support from the
 135 mailing list is extraordinary. Are you sure this is free?"
 136
 137 "I love wxWindows. I can program 10 times faster than with MFC,
 138 and almost everything works the first time. And unlike MFC,
 139 there are (useful) examples and documentation. Thanks to you
 140 guys who did all the work to develop this framework. Big kudos."
 141
 142 "ImageLinks now uses the Open Source version of wxWindows for
 143 all its current GUI development. Doing this ensures that
 144 everything interfaces cleanly and also makes it easier in the
 145 long run to add other GUIs along the way because ImageLinks has
 146 access to all the source code."
 147