docs/doxygen/overviews/roughguide.h

   1 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   2 // Name:        roughguide
   3 // Purpose:     topic overview
   4 // Author:      wxWidgets team
   5 // RCS-ID:      $Id$
   6 // Licence:     wxWindows license
   7 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
   8
   9 /*!
  10
  11 @page overview_roughguide Writing a wxWidgets Application: A Rough Guide
  12
  13 To set a wxWidgets application going, you will need to derive a #wxApp class
  14 and override wxApp::OnInit.
  15
  16 An application must have a top-level #wxFrame or #wxDialog window. Each frame
  17 may contain one or more instances of classes such as #wxPanel,
  18 #wxSplitterWindow or other windows and controls.
  19
  20 A frame can have a #wxMenuBar, a #wxToolBar, a status line, and a #wxIcon for
  21 when the frame is iconized.
  22
  23 A #wxPanel is used to place controls (classes derived from #wxControl) which
  24 are used for user interaction. Examples of controls are #wxButton, #wxCheckBox,
  25 #wxChoice, #wxListBox, #wxRadioBox, #wxSlider.
  26
  27 Instances of #wxDialog can also be used for controls and they have the
  28 advantage of not requiring a separate frame.
  29
  30 Instead of creating a dialog box and populating it with items, it is possible
  31 to choose one of the convenient common dialog classes, such as #wxMessageDialog
  32 and #wxFileDialog.
  33
  34 You never draw directly onto a window - you use a <em>device context</em> (DC).
  35 #wxDC is the base for #wxClientDC, #wxPaintDC, #wxMemoryDC, #wxPostScriptDC,
  36 #wxMemoryDC, #wxMetafileDC and #wxPrinterDC. If your drawing functions have
  37 wxDC as a parameter, you can pass any of these DCs to the function, and thus
  38 use the same code to draw to several different devices. You can draw using the
  39 member functions of wxDC, such as wxDC::DrawLine and wxDC::DrawText. Control
  40 colour on a window (#wxColour) with brushes (#wxBrush) and pens (#wxPen).
  41
  42 To intercept events, you add a DECLARE_EVENT_TABLE macro to the window class
  43 declaration, and put a BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE ... END_EVENT_TABLE block in the
  44 implementation file. Between these macros, you add event macros which map the
  45 event (such as a mouse click) to a member function. These might override
  46 predefined event handlers such as for #wxKeyEvent and #wxMouseEvent.
  47
  48 Most modern applications will have an on-line, hypertext help system; for this,
  49 you need wxHelp and the #wxHelpController class to control wxHelp.
  50
  51 GUI applications aren't all graphical wizardry. List and hash table needs are
  52 catered for by #wxList and #wxHashMap. You will undoubtedly need some
  53 platform-independent @ref functions_file, and you may find it handy to
  54 maintain and search a list of paths using #wxPathList. There's many
  55 @ref functions_miscellany of operating system methods and other functions.
  56
  57 @seealso
  58
  59 @li @ref overview_classesbycat
  60
  61 */
  62