-|
+ |
-wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ
+wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ
|
@@ -22,17 +23,40 @@ wxWindows 2 for Windows FAQ
See also top-level FAQ page.
+List of questions in this category
+
+
-Which Windows platforms are supported?
+
-wxWindows can be used to develop and deliver applications on Windows 3.1, Win32s,
-Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. A Windows CE version is being looked into (see below).
+wxWindows 2 can be used to develop and deliver applications on Windows 3.1, Win32s,
+Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. A Windows CE
+version is being looked into (see below).
wxWindows 2 is designed to make use of WIN32 features and controls. However, unlike Microsoft,
we have not forgotten users of 16-bit Windows. Most features
work under Windows 3.1, including wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl using the generic implementation.
-However, don't expect very Windows-specific classes to work, such as wxTaskBarIcon. The wxRegConfig
-class doesn't work either because the Windows 3.1 registry is very simplistic. Check out the 16-bit
+However, don't expect very Windows-95-specific classes to work, such as wxTaskBarIcon. The wxRegConfig
+class doesn't work either because the Windows 3.1 registry is very simplistic. Check out the 16-bit
makefiles to see what other files have been left out.
16-bit compilation is supported under Visual C++ 1.5, and Borland BC++ 4 to 5.
@@ -48,17 +72,48 @@ using wxGTK or wxMotif, then check/debug your wxWindows for Windows
programs with TWIN32, and finally produce an ix86 Windows executable using Cygwin/Mingw32,
without ever needing a copy of Microsoft Windows. See the Technical Note on the Web site detailing cross-compilation.
-
What about Windows CE?
+
This is under consideration, though we need to get wxWindows Unicode-aware first.
There are other interesting issues, such as how to combine the menubar and toolbar APIs
-as Windows CE requires. But there's no doubt that it will be possible, albeit
+as Windows CE requires. But there's no doubt that it will be possible, albeit
by mostly cutting down wxWindows 2 API functionality, and adding a few classes here
and there. Since wxWindows for 2 produces small binaries (less than 300K for
-the statically-linked 'minimal' sample), shoehorning wxWindows 2 into a Windows CE device's limited
+the statically-linked 'minimal' sample), shoehorning wxWindows 2 into a Windows CE device's limited
storage should not be a problem.
-
What compilers are supported?
+
+
+In the same directory as you have your executable (e.g. foo.exe) you
+put a file called foo.exe.manifest in which you have something like
+the following:
+
+
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
+<assembly
+ xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
+ manifestVersion="1.0">
+<assemblyIdentity
+ processorArchitecture="x86"
+ version="5.1.0.0"
+ type="win32"
+ name="foo.exe"/>
+ <description>Foo program</description>
+ <dependency>
+ <dependentAssembly>
+ <assemblyIdentity
+ type="win32"
+ name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls"
+ version="6.0.0.0"
+ publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df"
+ language="*"
+ processorArchitecture="x86"/>
+ </dependentAssembly>
+ </dependency>
+</assembly>
+
+
+
Please see the wxWindows 2 for Windows install.txt file for up-to-date information, but
currently the following are known to work:
@@ -77,43 +132,58 @@ currently the following are known to work:
There is a linking problem with Symantec C++ which I hope someone can help solve.
-
Which is the best compiler to use with wxWindows 2?
+
-It's partly a matter of taste, but I (JACS) prefer Visual C++ since the debugger is very
-good, it's very stable, the documentation is extensive, and it generates small executables.
-Since project files are plain text, it's easy for me to generate appropriate project files
+It's partly a matter of taste, but I (JACS) prefer Visual C++ since the debugger is very
+good, it's very stable, the documentation is extensive, and it generates small executables.
+Since project files are plain text, it's easy for me to generate appropriate project files
for wxWindows samples.
-Borland C++ is fine - and very fast - but it's hard (impossible?) to use the debugger without using project files, and
-the debugger is nowhere near up to VC++'s quality. The IDE isn't great.
+Borland C++ is fine - and very fast - but it's hard (impossible?) to use the debugger without using project files, and
+the debugger is nowhere near up to VC++'s quality. The IDE isn't great.
-C++Builder's power isn't really used with wxWindows since it needs integration with its
-own class library (VCL). For wxWindows, I've only used it with makefiles, in which case
-it's almost identical to BC++ 5.0 (the same makefiles can be used).
+C++Builder's power isn't really used with wxWindows since it needs integration with its
+own class library (VCL). For wxWindows, I've only used it with makefiles, in which case
+it's almost identical to BC++ 5.0 (the same makefiles can be used).
-You can't beat Cygwin's price (free), and you can debug adequately using gdb. However, it's
+You can't beat Cygwin's price (free), and you can debug adequately using gdb. However, it's
quite slow to compile since it does not use precompiled headers.
CodeWarrior is cross-platform - you can debug and generate Windows executables from a Mac, but not
the other way around I think - but the IDE is, to my mind, a bit primitive.
-Watcom C++ is a little slow and the debugger is not really up to today's standards.
+Watcom C++ is a little slow and the debugger is not really up to today's standards.
-
Is Unicode supported?
+Among the free compilers the best choice seem to be Borland C++ command line
+tools and mingw32 (port of gcc to Win32). Both of them are supported by
+wxWindows.
-No, although there are other internationalisation features.
+
-However, the issues surrounding Unicode support have been looked into so we know
-what we need to do, and have some header files ready to use containing appropriate
-type definitions. Just about every file in wxWindows will need changes, due to the
-pervasive nature of characters and character arrays. Unicode support is needed
-for the port to Windows CE (see above).
+Yes, Unicode is fully supported under Windows NT/2000 (Windows 9x don't
+have Unicode support anyhow).
-
Can you compile wxWindows 2 as a DLL?
+
+
+An answer from Klaus Goedde:
+
+"For Japanese under Win2000, it seems that wxWindows has no problems to work with double byte char sets
+(I mean DBCS, that's not Unicode). First you have to install Japanese support on your Win2K system
+and choose for ANSI translation
+HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\CodePage=932 (default is 1252 for Western).
+Then you can see all the funny Japanese letters under wxWindows too.
+
+In a wxTextCtrl control you have to set the window style "wxTE_RICH", otherwise this control shows the wrong
+letters.
+
+I don't now whether it works on non W2K systems, because I'm just starting using wxWindows."
+
+
+
Yes (using the Visual C++ or Borland C++ makefile), but be aware that distributing DLLs is a thorny issue
-and you may be better off compiling statically-linked applications, unless you're
-delivering a suite of separate programs, or you're compiling a lot of wxWindows applications
+and you may be better off compiling statically-linked applications, unless you're
+delivering a suite of separate programs, or you're compiling a lot of wxWindows applications
and have limited hard disk space.
With a DLL approach, and with different versions and configurations of wxWindows
@@ -122,30 +192,277 @@ negating the point of using DLLs. Of course, this is not a problem just associat
wxWindows!
-
How can I reduce executable size?
+
You can compile wxWindows as a DLL (see above, VC++/BC++ only at present). You should also
-compile your programs for release using non-debugging and space-optimisation options.
+compile your programs for release using non-debugging and space-optimisation options, but
+take with VC++ 5/6 space optimisation: it can sometimes cause problems.
Statically-linked wxWindows 2 programs are smaller than wxWindows 1.xx programs, because of the way
wxWindows 2 has been designed to reduce dependencies between classes, and other
techniques. The linker will not include code from the library that is not (directly or
indirectly) referenced
-by your application. So for example, the 'minimal' sample is less than 300KB using VC++ 6.
+by your application. So for example, the 'minimal' sample is less than 500KB using VC++ 6
+(note that this figure may be greater for the latest version of wxWindows).
If you want to distribute really small executables, you can
-use Petite
+use Petite
by Ian Luck. This nifty utility compresses Windows executables by around 50%, so your 500KB executable
will shrink to a mere 250KB. With this sort of size, there is reduced incentive to
-use DLLs.
+use DLLs. Another good compression tool is UPX.
+
+Please do not be surprised if MinGW produces a statically-linked minimal executable of 1 MB. Firstly, gcc
+produces larger executables than some compilers. Secondly, this figure will
+include most of the overhead of wxWindows, so as your application becomes more
+complex, the overhead becomes proportionaly less significant. And thirdly, trading executable compactness
+for the enormous increase in productivity you get with wxWindows is almost always well worth it.
-
Will wxWindows be compatible with MFC?
+
There is a sample which demonstrates MFC and wxWindows code co-existing in the same
-application. However, don't expect to be able to enable wxWindows windows with OLE-2
+application. However, don't expect to be able to enable wxWindows windows with OLE-2
functionality using MFC.
+
+
+If you get errors like
+
+
+no matching function for call to 'wxDC::DrawTextA(const char[5], int,
+int)'
+
+
+or similar ones for the other functions, i.e. the compiler error messages
+mention the function with the 'A' suffix while you didn't
+use it in your code, the explanation is that you had included
+<windows.h> header which redefines many symbols to have such
+suffix (or 'W' in the Unicode builds).
+
+
+The fix is to either not include <windows.h> at all or include
+"wx/msw/winundef.h" immediately after it.
+
+
+
+The most common cause of this problem is the memory debugging settings in
+wx/msw/setup.h. You have several choices:
+
+
+ - Either disable overloading the global operator new completely by
+ setting wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS and
+ wxUSE_DEBUG_NEW_ALWAYS to 0 in this file
+
- Or leave them on but do #undef new after including any
+ wxWindows headers, like this the memory debugging will be still on
+ for wxWindows sources but off for your own code
+
+
+Notice that IMHO the first solution is preferable for VC++ users who can use
+the VC++ CRT memory debugging features instead.
+
+
+
+Set up your interface from scratch using wxWindows (especially wxDesigner --
+it'll save you a lot of time) and when you have a shell prepared, you can start
+'pouring in' code from the MFC app, with appropriate
+modifications. This is the approach I have used, and I found
+it very satisfactory. A two-step process then - reproduce the bare
+interface first, then wire it up afterwards. That way you deal
+with each area of complexity separately. Don't try to think MFC
+and wxWindows simultaneously from the beginning - it is easier to
+reproduce the initial UI by looking at the behaviour of the MFC
+app, not its code.
+
+
+
+Some crash problems can be due to inconsistent compiler
+options (and of course this isn't limited to wxWindows).
+If strange/weird/impossible things start to happen please
+check (dumping IDE project file as makefile and doing text comparison
+if necessary) that the project settings, especially the list of defined
+symbols, struct packing, etc. are exactly the same for all items in
+the project. After this, delete everything (including PCH) and recompile.
+
+VC++ 5's optimization code seems to be broken and can
+cause problems: this can be seen when deleting an object Dialog
+Editor, in Release mode with optimizations on. If in doubt,
+switch off optimisations, although this will result in much
+larger executables. It seems possible that the library can be created with
+strong optimization, so long as the application is not strongly
+optimized. For example, in wxWindows project, set to 'Minimum
+Size'. In Dialog Editor project, set to 'Customize: Favor Small
+Code' (and no others). This will then work.
+
+
+
+As of wxWindows 2.1, there is a new system written by Vadim Zeitlin, that
+generates the makefiles from templates using tmake.
+
+Here are Vadim's notes:
+
+
+To use these new makefiles, you don't need anything (but see below).
+However, you should NOT modify them because these files will be
+rewritten when I regenerate them using tmake the next time. So, if
+you find a problem with any of these makefiles (say, makefile.b32)
+you'll need to modify the corresponding template (b32.t in this
+example) and regenerate the makefile using tmake.
+
+tmake can be found at
+www.troll.no/freebies/tmake.html.
+It's a Perl5 program and so it needs Perl (doh). There is a binary for
+Windows (available from the same page), but I haven't used it, so
+I don't know if it works as flawlessly as "perl tmake" does (note
+for people knowing Perl: don't try to run tmake with -w, it won't
+do you any good). Using it extremely simple: to regenerate makefile.b32
+just go to distrib/msw/tmake and type
+
+
tmake -t b32 wxwin.pro -o ../../src/msw/makefile.b32
+
+The makefiles are untested - I don't have any of Borland, Watcom or
+Symantec and I don't have enough diskspace to recompile even with
+VC6 using makefiles. The new makefiles are as close as possible to the
+old ones, but not closer: in fact, there has been many strange things
+(should I say bugs?) in some of makefiles, some files were not compiled
+without any reason etc. Please test them and notify me about any problems.
+Better yet, modify the template files to generate the correct makefiles
+and check them in.
+
+The templates are described in tmake ref manual (1-2 pages of text)
+and are quite simple. They do contain some Perl code, but my Perl is
+primitive (very C like) so it should be possible for anybody to make
+trivial modifications to it (I hope that only trivial modifications
+will be needed). I've tagged the ol makefiles as MAKEFILES_WITHOUT_TMAKE
+in the cvs, so you can always retrieve them and compare the new ones,
+this will make it easier to solve the problems you might have.
+
+Another important file is filelist.txt: it contains the list of all
+files to be compiled. Some of them are only compiled in 16/32 bit mode.
+Some other are only compiled with some compilers (others can't compile
+them) - all this info is contained in this file.
+
+So now adding a new file to wxWindows is as easy as modifying filelist.txt
+(and Makefile.ams for Unix ports) and regenerating the makefiles - no
+need to modify all files manually any more.
+
+ Finally, there is also a file vc6.t which I use myself: this one
+generates a project file for VC++ 6.0 (I didn't create vc5.t because
+I don't need it and can't test it, but it should be trivial to create
+one from vc6.t - probably the only things to change would be the
+version number in the very beginning and the /Z option - VC5 doesn't
+support edit-and=continue). This is not an officially supported way
+of building wxWindows (that is, nobody guarantees that it will work),
+but it has been very useful to me and I hope it will be also for
+others. To generate wxWindows.dsp run
+
+
tmake -t vc6 wxwin.pro -o ../../wxWindows.dsp
+
+Then just include this project in any workspace or open it from VC IDE
+and it will create a new workspace for you.
+
+If all goes well, I'm planning to create a template file for Makefile.ams
+under src/gtk and src/motif and also replace all makefiles in the samples
+subdirectories with the project files from which all the others will be
+generated. At least it will divide the number of files in samples
+directory by 10 (and the number of files to be maintained too).
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Vadim Zeitlin:
+
+
+On the VC++ level, it's just the matter of calling _CrtSetDbgFlag() in the very
+beginning of the program. In wxWindows, this is done automatically when
+compiling with VC++ in debug mode unless wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS or
+__NO_VC_CRTDBG__ are defined - this check is done in wx/msw/msvcrt.h which
+is included from app.cpp which then calls wxCrtSetDbgFlag() without any
+ifdefs.
+
+This works quite well: at the end of the program, all leaked blocks with their
+malloc count are shown. This number (malloc count) can be used to determine
+where exactly the object was allocated: for this it's enough to set the variable
+_crtBreakAlloc (look in VC98\crt\srs\dbgheap.c line 326) to this number and
+a breakpoint will be triggered when the block with this number is allocated.
+
+For simple situations it works like a charm. For something more complicated
+like reading uninitialized memory a specialized tool is probably better...
+
+Regards,
+VZ
+
+
+
+
+
+
+This can happen if you have a child window intercepting EVT_CHAR events and swallowing
+all keyboard input. You should ensure that event.Skip() is called for all input that
+isn'used by the event handler.
+
+It can also happen if you append the submenu to the parent
+menu {\it before} you have added your menu items. Do the append {\it after} adding
+your items, or accelerators may not be registered properly.
+
+
+
+Currently this is not possible because the wxConfig family of classes is
+supposed to deal with per-user application configuration data, and HKLM is
+only supposed to be writeable by a user with Administrator privileges. In theory,
+only installers should write to HKLM. This is still a point debated by the
+wxWindows developers. There are at least two ways to work around it if you really
+need to write to HKLM.
+
+First, you can use wxRegKey directly, for example:
+
+
+ wxRegKey regKey;
+
+ wxString idName(wxT("HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\"));
+ idName += packid;
+
+ regKey.SetName(idName);
+
+ {
+ wxLogNull dummy;
+ if (!regKey.Create())
+ {
+ idName = wxT("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\SOFTWARE\\My Company\\My Product\\Stuff\\");
+ idName += packid;
+ regKey.SetName(idName);
+ if (!regKey.Create())
+ return FALSE;
+ }
+ }
+
+ if (!regKey.SetValue(wxT("THING"), (long) thing)) err += 1;
+
+ regKey.Close();
+
+
+
+Or, you can employ this trick suggested by Istvan Kovacs:
+
+
+class myGlobalConfig : public wxConfig
+{
+ myGlobalConfig() :
+ wxConfig ("myApp", "myCompany", "", "", wxCONFIG_USE_GLOBAL_FILE)
+{};
+ bool Write(const wxString& key, const wxString& value);
+}
+
+bool myGlobalConfig::Write (const wxString& key, const wxString& value)
+{
+ wxString path = wxString ("SOFTWARE\\myCompany\\myApp\\") + wxPathOnly(key);
+ wxString new_path = path.Replace ("/", "\\", true);
+ wxString new_key = wxFileNameFromPath (key);
+ LocalKey().SetName (wxRegKey::HKLM, path);
+ return wxConfig::Write (new_key, value);
+}
+