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-\section{What is wxWidgets?}
+\section{What is wxWidgets?}\label{whatis}
wxWidgets is a C++ framework providing GUI (Graphical User
-Interface) and other facilities on more than one platform. Version 2 currently
-supports all desktop versions of MS Windows, Unix with GTK+, Unix with Motif,
-and MacOS. An OS/2 port is in progress.
+Interface) and other facilities on more than one platform. Version 2 and higher
+currently support all desktop versions of MS Windows, Unix with GTK+ 1.x or 2.x,
+Unix with Motif, Unix with just X11, Unix with DirectFB, Mac OS X, OS/2.
wxWidgets was originally developed at the Artificial Intelligence
Applications Institute, University of Edinburgh, for internal use,
For a selection of wxWidgets tutorials, please see the documentation page on the \urlref{wxWidgets web site}{http://www.wxwidgets.org}.
Please note that in the following, ``MS Windows" often refers to all
-platforms related to Microsoft Windows, including 16-bit and 32-bit
+platforms related to Microsoft Windows, including 32-bit and 64-bit
variants, unless otherwise stated. All trademarks are acknowledged.
-\section{Why another cross-platform development tool?}
+\section{Why another cross-platform development tool?}\label{why}
wxWidgets was developed to provide a cheap and flexible way to maximize
investment in GUI application development. While a number of commercial
\item Built-in support for many file formats (BMP, PNG, JPEG, GIF, XPM, PNM, PCX).
\end{itemize}
-\begin{comment}
-\section{Changes from version 2.0}\label{versionchanges20}
-
-These are a few of the differences between versions 2.0 and 2.2.
-
-Removals:
-
-\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
-\item GTK 1.0 no longer supported.
-\end{itemize}
-
-Additions and changes:
-
-\begin{itemize}\itemsep=0pt
-\item Corrected many classes to conform better to documented behaviour.
-\item Added handlers for more image formats (Now GIF, JPEG, PCX, BMP, XPM, PNG, PNM).
-\item Improved support for socket and network functions.
-\item Support for different national font encodings.
-\item Sizer based layout system.
-\item HTML widget and help system.
-\item Added some controls (e.g. wxSpinCtrl) and supplemented many.
-\item Many optical improvements to GTK port.
-\item Support for menu accelerators in GTK port.
-\item Enhanced and improved support for scrolling, including child windows.
-\item Complete rewrite of clipboard and drag and drop classes.
-\item Improved support for ODBC databases.
-\item Improved tab traversal in dialogs.
-\end{itemize}
-\end{comment}
-
\section{wxWidgets requirements}\label{requirements}
To make use of wxWidgets, you currently need one of the following setups.
(a) MS-Windows:
\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
-\item A 486 or higher PC running MS Windows.
-\item A Windows compiler: most are supported, but please see {\tt install.txt} for
-details. Supported compilers include Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 or higher, Borland C++, Cygwin,
-MinGW, Metrowerks CodeWarrior.
-\item At least 60 MB of disk space.
+\item A 32-bit or 64-bit PC running MS Windows.
+\item A Windows compiler: MS Visual C++ (embedded Visual C++ for wxWinCE
+port), Borland C++, Watcom C++, Cygwin, MinGW, Metrowerks CodeWarrior,
+Digital Mars C++. See {\tt install.txt} for details about compiler
+version supported.
\end{enumerate}
(b) Unix:
\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
-\item Almost any C++ compiler, including GNU C++ (EGCS 1.1.1 or above).
-\item Almost any Unix workstation, and one of: GTK+ 1.2, GTK+ 2.0, Motif 1.2 or higher, Lesstif.
-If using the wxX11 port, no such widget set is required.
-\item At least 60 MB of disk space.
+\item Almost any C++ compiler, including GNU C++ and many Unix vendors
+compilers such as Sun CC, HP-UX aCC or SGI mipsPro.
+\item Almost any Unix workstation, and one of: GTK+ 2.4 or higher (GTK+ 1.2.10
+may still be supported but wxGTK1 port is not maintained any longer and lacks
+many features of wxGTK2), Motif 1.2 or higher or Lesstif. If using the wxX11
+port, no such widget set is required.
\end{enumerate}
(c) Mac OS/Mac OS X:
\begin{enumerate}\itemsep=0pt
-\item A PowerPC Mac running Mac OS 8.6/9.x (eg. Classic) or Mac OS X 10.x.
-\item CodeWarrior 5.3, 6 or 7 for Classic Mac OS.
-\item The Apple Developer Tools (eg. GNU C++) or CodeWarrior 7 for Mac OS X.
-\item At least 60 MB of disk space.
+\item A PowerPC or Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.3 or higher
+\item The Apple Developer Tools (eg. GNU C++) or MetroWerks CodeWarrior (not
+actively supported)
\end{enumerate}
-\section{Availability and location of wxWidgets}
+Under all platforms it's recommended to have large amounts of free hard disk
+space. The exact amount needed depends on the port, compiler and build
+configurations but to give an example, a debug build of the library may take up
+to 500MB.
+
+\section{Availability and location of wxWidgets}\label{where}
\winhelponly{wxWidgets is available by anonymous FTP and World Wide Web
from ftp://biolpc22.york.ac.uk/pub and/or http://www.wxwidgets.org.}
You can also buy a CD-ROM using the form on the Web site.
-\section{Acknowledgements}
+\section{Acknowledgements}\label{acknowledgements}
Thanks are due to AIAI for being willing to release the original version of
wxWidgets into the public domain, and to our patient partners.
Thomas Fettig, Matthew Flatt, Pasquale Foggia, Josep Fortiana, Todd Fries,
Dominic Gallagher, Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia, Wolfram Gloger, Norbert Grotz,
Stefan Gunter, Bill Hale, Patrick Halke, Stefan Hammes, Guillaume Helle,
-Harco de Hilster, Cord Hockemeyer, Markus Holzem, Olaf Klein, Leif Jensen,
+Harco de Hilster, Kevin Hock, Cord Hockemeyer, Markus Holzem, Olaf Klein, Leif Jensen,
Bart Jourquin, Guilhem Lavaux, Ron Lee, Jan Lessner, Nicholas Liebmann,
Torsten Liermann, Per Lindqvist, Thomas Runge, Tatu M\"{a}nnist\"{o},
-Scott Maxwell, Thomas Myers, Oliver Niedung, Stefan Neis, Hernan Otero,
+Scott Maxwell, Thomas Myers, Oliver Niedung, Stefan Neis, Ryan Norton, Hernan Otero,
Ian Perrigo, Timothy Peters, Giordano Pezzoli, Harri Pasanen, Thomaso Paoletti,
Garrett Potts, Marcel Rasche, Robert Roebling, Dino Scaringella,
Jobst Schmalenbach, Arthur Seaton, Paul Shirley, Wlodzimierz `ABX' Skiba,
see the file install.txt for up-to-date installation instructions, and
changes.txt for differences between versions.
-\section{Include files}
+\section{Include files}\label{includefiles}
The main include file is {\tt "wx/wx.h"}; this includes the most commonly
used modules of wxWidgets.
The file {\tt "wx/wxprec.h"} includes {\tt "wx/wx.h"}. Although this incantation
may seem quirky, it is in fact the end result of a lot of experimentation,
-and several Windows compilers to use precompilation (those tested are Microsoft Visual C++, Borland C++
-and Watcom C++).
+and several Windows compilers to use precompilation which is largely automatic for
+compilers with necessary support. Currently it is used for Visual C++ (including
+embedded Visual C++), Borland C++, Open Watcom C++, Digital Mars C++
+and newer versions of GCC.
+Some compilers might need extra work from the application developer to set the
+build environment up as necessary for the support.
-Borland precompilation is largely automatic. Visual C++ requires specification of {\tt "wx/wxprec.h"} as
-the file to use for precompilation. Watcom C++ is automatic apart from the specification of
-the .pch file. Watcom C++ is strange in requiring the precompiled header to be used only for
-object files compiled in the same directory as that in which the precompiled header was created.
-Therefore, the wxWidgets Watcom C++ makefiles go through hoops deleting and recreating
-a single precompiled header file for each module, thus preventing an accumulation of many
-multi-megabyte .pch files.
-
-\section{Libraries}
+\section{Libraries}\label{libraries}
Most ports of wxWidgets can create either a static library or a shared
library. wxWidgets can also be built in multilib and monolithic variants.
See the \helpref{libraries list}{librarieslist} for more
information on these.
-\section{Configuration}
+\section{Configuration}\label{configuration}
When using project files and makefiles directly to build wxWidgets,
options are configurable in the file
for installing wxWidgets on Linux, a correct setup.h is shipped in the package and
this must not be changed.
-\section{Makefiles}
+\section{Makefiles}\label{makefiles}
On Microsoft Windows, wxWidgets has a different set of makefiles for each
compiler, because each compiler's 'make' tool is slightly different.
please see docs/xxx/install.txt in your distribution, where
xxx is the platform of interest, such as msw, gtk, x11, mac.
-\section{Windows-specific files}
+\section{Windows-specific files}\label{windowsfiles}
-wxWidgets application compilation under MS Windows requires at least two
-extra files, resource and module definition files.
+wxWidgets application compilation under MS Windows requires at least one
+extra file: a resource file.
\subsection{Resource file}\label{resources}
so programs that search your executable for icons (such
as the Program Manager) find your application icon first.}
-\section{Allocating and deleting wxWidgets objects}
+\section{Allocating and deleting wxWidgets objects}\label{allocatingobjects}
In general, classes derived from wxWindow must dynamically allocated
with {\it new} and deleted with {\it delete}. If you delete a window,
a drawing object that may be in use. Code that doesn't do this will probably work
fine on some platforms, and then fail under Windows.
-\section{Architecture dependency}
+\section{Architecture dependency}\label{architecturedependency}
A problem which sometimes arises from writing multi-platform programs is that
the basic C types are not defined the same on all platforms. This holds true
The macros handling bit-swapping with respect to the applications endianness
are described in the \helpref{Byte order macros}{byteordermacros} section.
-\section{Conditional compilation}
+\section{Conditional compilation}\label{conditionalcompilation}
One of the purposes of wxWidgets is to reduce the need for conditional
compilation in source code, which can be messy and confusing to follow.
listed in the file {\tt symbols.txt} may be used for this purpose,
along with any user-supplied ones.
-\section{C++ issues}
+\section{C++ issues}\label{cpp}
The following documents some miscellaneous C++ issues.
-\subsection{Templates}
+\subsection{Templates}\label{templates}
wxWidgets does not use templates (except for some advanced features that
are switched off by default) since it is a notoriously unportable feature.
-\subsection{RTTI}
+\subsection{RTTI}\label{rtti}
wxWidgets does not use C++ run-time type information since wxWidgets provides
its own run-time type information system, implemented using macros.
-\subsection{Type of NULL}
+\subsection{Type of NULL}\label{null}
Some compilers (e.g. the native IRIX cc) define NULL to be 0L so that
no conversion to pointers is allowed. Because of that, all these
It is recommended to adhere to this in all code using wxWidgets as
this make the code (a bit) more portable.
-\subsection{Precompiled headers}
+\subsection{Precompiled headers}\label{precompiledheaders}
Some compilers, such as Borland C++ and Microsoft C++, support
precompiled headers. This can save a great deal of compiling time. The
biased towards the precompiled headers facility available
in Microsoft C++.
-\section{File handling}
+\section{File handling}\label{filehandling}
When building an application which may be used under different
environments, one difficulty is coping with documents which may be
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-In addition to the core wxWidgets library, a number of further
-libraries and utilities are supplied with each distribution.
-
-Some are under the 'contrib' hierarchy which mirrors the
-structure of the main wxWidgets hierarchy. See also the 'utils'
-hierarchy. The first place to look for documentation about
-these tools and libraries is under the wxWidgets 'docs' hierarchy,
-for example {\tt docs/htmlhelp/fl.chm}.
+In addition to the \helpref{wxWidgets libraries}{librarieslist}, some
+additional utilities are supplied in the \tt{utils} hierarchy.
For other user-contributed packages, please see the Contributions page
on the \urlref{wxWidgets Web site}{http://www.wxwidgets.org}.
Xnest-based display emulator for X11-based PDA applications. On some
systems, the Xnest window does not synchronise with the
'skin' window. This program can be found in {\tt utils/emulator}.
-\item[{\bf Configuration Tool}]
-The wxWidgets Configuration Tool is a work in progress
-intended to make it easier to configure wxWidgets
-features in detail. It exports setup.h configurations and will
-eventually generate makefile config files. Invoking compilers is
-also on the cards. Since configurations are
-handled one at a time, the tool is of limited used until further
-development can be done. The program can be found in {\tt utils/configtool}.
-\item[{\bf XRC resource system}]
-This is the sizer-aware resource system, and uses
-XML-based resource specifications that can be generated by tools
-such as \urlref{wxDesigner}{http://www.roebling.de} and XRC's own wxrcedit.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/xrc}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/xrc}, {\tt contrib/samples/xrc}, and {\tt contrib/utils/wxrcedit}.
-For more information, see the \helpref{XML-based resource system overview}{xrcoverview}.
-\item[{\bf Object Graphics Library}]
-OGL defines an API for applications that need to display objects connected by lines.
-The objects can be moved around and interacted with.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/ogl}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/ogl}, and {\tt contrib/samples/ogl}.
-\item[{\bf Frame Layout library}]
-FL provides sophisticated pane dragging and docking facilities.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/fl}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/fl}, and {\tt contrib/samples/fl}.
-\item[{\bf Gizmos library}]
-Gizmos is a collection of useful widgets and other classes. Classes include wxLEDNumberCtrl,
-wxEditableListBox, wxMultiCellCanvas.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/gizmos}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/gizmos}, and {\tt contrib/samples/gizmos}.
-\item[{\bf Net library}]
-Net is a collection of very simple mail and web related classes. Currently
-there is only wxEmail, which makes it easy to send email messages via MAPI on Windows or sendmail on Unix.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/net} and {\tt contrib/include/wx/net}.
-\item[{\bf Animate library}]
-Animate allows you to load animated GIFs and play them on a window. The library can be extended
-to use other animation formats.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/animate}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/animate}, and {\tt contrib/samples/animate}.
-\item[{\bf MMedia library}]
-Mmedia supports a variety of multimedia functionality. The status of this library is currently unclear.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/mmedia}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/mmedia}, and {\tt contrib/samples/mmedia}.
-\item[{\bf Styled Text Control library}]
-STC is a wrapper around Scintilla, a syntax-highlighting text editor.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/stc}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/stc}, and {\tt contrib/samples/stc}.
-\item[{\bf Plot}]
-Plot is a simple curve plotting library.
-You can find this in {\tt contrib/src/plot}, {\tt contrib/include/wx/plot}, and {\tt contrib/samples/plot}.
\end{description}
\chapter{Programming strategies}\label{strategies}
writing and debugging wxWidgets programs. If you have any good tips,
please submit them for inclusion here.
-\section{Strategies for reducing programming errors}
+\section{Strategies for reducing programming errors}\label{reducingerrors}
-\subsection{Use ASSERT}
+\subsection{Use ASSERT}\label{useassert}
+
+It is good practice to use ASSERT statements liberally, that check for conditions
+that should or should not hold, and print out appropriate error messages.
-Although I haven't done this myself within wxWidgets, it is good
-practice to use ASSERT statements liberally, that check for conditions that
-should or should not hold, and print out appropriate error messages.
These can be compiled out of a non-debugging version of wxWidgets
and your application. Using ASSERT is an example of `defensive programming':
it can alert you to problems later on.
-\subsection{Use wxString in preference to character arrays}
+See \helpref{wxASSERT}{wxassert} for more info.
+
+\subsection{Use wxString in preference to character arrays}\label{usewxstring}
-Using wxString can be much safer and more convenient than using char *.
-Again, I haven't practiced what I'm preaching, but I'm now trying to use
-wxString wherever possible. You can reduce the possibility of memory
-leaks substantially, and it is much more convenient to use the overloaded
-operators than functions such as strcmp. wxString won't add a significant
-overhead to your program; the overhead is compensated for by easier
-manipulation (which means less code).
+Using \helpref{wxString}{wxstring} can be much safer and more convenient than using wxChar *.
+
+You can reduce the possibility of memory leaks substantially, and it is much more
+convenient to use the overloaded operators than functions such as \tt{strcmp}.
+wxString won't add a significant overhead to your program; the overhead is compensated
+for by easier manipulation (which means less code).
The same goes for other data types: use classes wherever possible.
-\section{Strategies for portability}
+\section{Strategies for portability}\label{portability}
-\subsection{Use relative positioning or constraints}
+\subsection{Use sizers}\label{usesizers}
Don't use absolute panel item positioning if you can avoid it. Different GUIs have
-very differently sized panel items. Consider using the constraint system, although this
-can be complex to program.
-
-Alternatively, you could use alternative .wrc (wxWidgets resource files) on different
-platforms, with slightly different dimensions in each. Or space your panel items out
-to avoid problems.
+very differently sized panel items. Consider using the \helpref{sizers}{sizeroverview} instead.
-\subsection{Use wxWidgets resource files}
+\subsection{Use wxWidgets resource files}\label{useresources}
Use .xrc (wxWidgets resource files) where possible, because they can be easily changed
-independently of source code.
+independently of source code. See the \helpref{XRC overview}{xrcoverview} for more info.
\section{Strategies for debugging}\label{debugstrategies}
-\subsection{Positive thinking}
+\subsection{Positive thinking}\label{positivethinking}
It is common to blow up the problem in one's imagination, so that it seems to threaten
weeks, months or even years of work. The problem you face may seem insurmountable:
isn't painful at the time. Try not to worry -- there are many more important
things in life.
-\subsection{Simplify the problem}
+\subsection{Simplify the problem}\label{simplifyproblem}
Reduce the code exhibiting the problem to the smallest program possible
that exhibits the problem. If it is not possible to reduce a large and
to the problem. In some cases though, such as memory leaks or wrong
deallocation, this can still give totally spurious results!
-\subsection{Use a debugger}
+\subsection{Use a debugger}\label{usedebugger}
This sounds like facetious advice, but it is surprising how often people
don't use a debugger. Often it is an overhead to install or learn how to
use a debugger, but it really is essential for anything but the most
trivial programs.
-\subsection{Use logging functions}
+\subsection{Use logging functions}\label{uselogging}
There is a variety of logging functions that you can use in your program:
see \helpref{Logging functions}{logfunctions}.
in some circumstances (such as when your debugger doesn't support a lot
of debugging code, or you wish to print a bunch of variables).
-\subsection{Use the wxWidgets debugging facilities}
+\subsection{Use the wxWidgets debugging facilities}\label{usedebuggingfacilities}
-You can use wxDebugContext to check for
+You can use \helpref{wxDebugContext}{wxdebugcontext} to check for
memory leaks and corrupt memory: in fact in debugging mode, wxWidgets will
automatically check for memory leaks at the end of the program if wxWidgets is suitably
configured. Depending on the operating system and compiler, more or less
projects / wxWidgets.git / blobdiff