docs/univ/readme.txt

   1                               wxUniversal README
   2                               ==================
   3
   4  Welcome to wxUniversal!
   5
   6  Acknowledgements: wxUniversal wouldn't have been written without the
   7 generous support of SciTech Software. Many thanks to Kendall Bennett and
   8 Tom Ryan!
   9
  10 0. Introduction
  11 ---------------
  12
  13  wxUniversal is a port of wxWindows which implements the various GUI controls
  14 by drawing them itself (using low level wxWindows classes). Please see
  15
  16                      http://www.wxwindows.org/wxuniv.htm
  17
  18 for more details about it.
  19
  20  The advantage of wxUniversal is that you have precise control over the
  21 controls' appearance (it is not always possible to change all aspects of the
  22 native controls) and the theme support: the same program may be changed to
  23 look completely differently without changing a single line of its code but
  24 just changing the theme.
  25
  26  Another advantage is that it makes writing ports of wxWindows for other
  27 platforms (such as OS/2, BeOS or QNX) much simpler, so it is of special
  28 interest to people interested in porting wxWindows to another platform.
  29
  30  However, wxUniversal doesn't have a 100% native look and feel unlike the
  31 other wxWindows ports - this is the price to pay for the extra flexibility.
  32
  33 1. Requirements and supported platforms
  34 ---------------------------------------
  35
  36  wxUniversal is used together with another wxWindows port which provides the
  37 "low level classes" mentioned above. Currently it can be built with wxMSW,
  38 wxGTK or wxX11. In any case, you should download the sources for the
  39 appropriate toolkit in addition to wxUniversal - in fact, you should download
  40 them first and then unpack wxUniversal in the same directory.
  41
  42  The requirements for wxUniversal are the same as for the underlying low level
  43 toolkit.
  44
  45 2. Installing under Win32
  46 -------------------------
  47
  48 a) Using Visual C++ 6.0
  49
  50    Simply open the src/wxUniv.dsw file in DevStudio and build it.
  51    Then open the widgetsUniv.dsp file in samples/widgets to build
  52    the widgets sample.
  53
  54 b) Cygwin
  55
  56    Please refer to the Unix section below
  57
  58 c) Other compilers
  59    Borland:
  60    in the wxwindows\src\msw directory run
  61    'make -f makefile.b32 WXUSINGUNIV=1' to build the library and then run
  62    'make -f makefile.b32 WXUSINGUNIV=1' in the sample directory  which you wish
  63    to build using the wxUniversal widgets. Use 'SET WXTHEME=GTK' [or  WIN32 or METAL]
  64    to test the existing themes
  65
  66    Unfortunately we don't have makefiles for any other compilers yet.
  67 Please contact us if you would like to help us with creating one for the
  68 compiler you use.
  69
  70 Note that you can use the wxUniversal classes, wxMSW and MicroWindows (from
  71 Century Software) to build a different variant of wxUniversal than that
  72 documented here. Please see docs/univ/readme.txt for further information.
  73
  74 3. Installing under Unix
  75 ------------------------
  76
  77 Please refer to the installation instructions for wxGTK or wxX11. The only
  78 change for wxUniversal is that you must add "--enable-universal" switch to
  79 the configure command line and for wxX11 even this is unnecessary, i.e. it
  80 is enabled by default.
  81
  82 4. Running wxUniv programs
  83 --------------------------
  84
  85 wxUniv programs all honour the standard option "--theme" which allows to
  86 specify the theme to be used by name. Currently there are the following
  87 themes:
  88
  89 a) win32 -- Windows 95 look and feel
  90 b) metal -- based on win32 but with gradient backgrounds
  91 c) gtk   -- GTK+ 1.x standard look and feel
  92
  93 Thus, to launch a program using gtk theme you may do "./program --theme=gtk".
  94
  95 It is also possible to change the default theme for all wxUniv applications
  96 at once by setting the environment variable WXTHEME to the theme name.
  97
  98 5. Documentation and support
  99 ----------------------------
 100
 101  Please note that wxUniversal is not as mature as the other wxWindows ports
 102 and is currently officially in alpha stage. In particular, it is not really
 103 intended for the end users but rather for developers at the current stage and
 104 this is why we don't provide any binaries for it.
 105
 106  There is no separate documentation for wxUniversal, please refer to wxWindows
 107 documentation instead.
 108
 109  Support for wxUniversal is available from the same places as for wxWindows
 110 itself, namely:
 111
 112 * Usenet newsgroup comp.soft-sys.wxwindows
 113
 114 * Mailing lists: see http://lists.wxwindows.org/ for more information
 115
 116 * WWW page: http://www.wxwindows.org/
 117
 118
 119  Hope you find wxUniversal useful!
 120
 121                                                                  Vadim Zeitlin
 122
 123
 124 This file is accurate for the version 2.3.4 of wxUniversal. It was last
 125 modified on Apr 15, 2002.
 126