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 wxWidgets which implements the various GUI controls
  14 by drawing them itself (using low level wxWidgets classes). Please see
  15
  16                      http://www.wxwidgets.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 wxWidgets 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 wxWidgets to another platform.
  29
  30 However, wxUniversal doesn't have a 100% native look and feel unlike the
  31 other wxWidgets 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 wxWidgets 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 If compiling from CVS, please copy include/wx/univ/setup0.h
  49 to include/wx/univ/setup.h before following these steps.
  50
  51 a) Using Visual C++ 6.0/7.x
  52
  53    Follow wxMSW instructions but make sure to choose one of the "Universal"
  54    configurations before building.
  55
  56 b) Cygwin
  57
  58    Please refer to the Unix section below
  59
  60    Note that gcc's precompiled headers do not work on current versions of
  61    Cygwin. If your version of Cygwin is affected you will need to use the
  62    --disable-precomp-headers configure option.
  63
  64 ** the instructions may be out of date as for wxWidgets 2.5.2+ **
  65
  66 c) Other compilers
  67    Borland:
  68    in the wxwindows\src\msw directory run
  69    'make -f makefile.b32 WXUSINGUNIV=1' to build the library and then run
  70    'make -f makefile.b32 WXUSINGUNIV=1' in the sample directory  which you wish
  71    to build using the wxUniversal widgets. Use 'SET WXTHEME=GTK' [or  WIN32 or METAL]
  72    to test the existing themes
  73
  74 Unfortunately we don't have makefiles for any other compilers yet.
  75 Please contact us if you would like to help us with creating one for the
  76 compiler you use.
  77
  78 Note that you can use the wxUniversal classes, wxMSW and MicroWindows (from
  79 Century Software) to build a different variant of wxUniversal than that
  80 documented here. Please see docs/univ/readme.txt for further information.
  81 Note that this port is not up-to-date and probably needs work
  82 to compile.
  83
  84 Note that by default, wxUniv under MSW uses PostScript printing,
  85 not Windows printing. To change to Windows printing, set
  86 wxUSE_POSTSCRIPT_ARCHITECTURE_IN_MSW to 0 in include/wx/univ/setup.h
  87 before compiling.
  88
  89 3. Installing under Unix
  90 ------------------------
  91
  92 Please refer to the installation instructions for wxGTK or wxX11. The only
  93 change for wxUniversal is that you must add "--enable-universal" switch to
  94 the configure command line and for wxX11 even this is unnecessary, i.e. it
  95 is enabled by default.
  96
  97 If compiling from CVS, please copy include/wx/univ/setup0.h
  98 to include/wx/univ/setup.h before configuring.
  99
 100 4. Running wxUniv programs
 101 --------------------------
 102
 103 wxUniv programs all honour the standard option "--theme" which allows to
 104 specify the theme to be used by name. Currently there are the following
 105 themes:
 106
 107 a) win32 -- Windows 95 look and feel
 108 b) metal -- based on win32 but with gradient backgrounds
 109 c) gtk   -- GTK+ 1.x standard look and feel
 110
 111 Thus, to launch a program using gtk theme you may do "./program --theme=gtk".
 112
 113 It is also possible to change the default theme for all wxUniv applications
 114 at once by setting the environment variable WXTHEME to the theme name.
 115
 116 5. Documentation and support
 117 ----------------------------
 118
 119 Please note that wxUniversal is not as mature as the other wxWidgets ports
 120 and is currently officially in alpha stage. In particular, it is not really
 121 intended for the end users but rather for developers at the current stage and
 122 this is why we don't provide any binaries for it.
 123
 124 There is no separate documentation for wxUniversal, please refer to wxWidgets
 125 documentation instead.
 126
 127 Support for wxUniversal is available from the same places as for wxWidgets
 128 itself, namely:
 129
 130 * Usenet newsgroup comp.soft-sys.wxwindows
 131
 132 * Mailing lists: see http://lists.wxwindows.org/ for more information
 133
 134 * WWW page: http://www.wxwidgets.org/
 135
 136
 137  Hope you find wxUniversal useful!
 138
 139                                                                  Vadim Zeitlin
 140
 141
 142 This file is accurate for the version 2.3.4 of wxUniversal. It was last
 143 modified on Apr 15, 2002.
 144