See also top-level FAQ page.
List of questions in this category
wxWindows is a class library that allows you to compile graphical C++ programs on a range of
different platforms. wxWindows defines a common API across platforms, but uses the native graphical user interface (GUI) on each platform,
so your program will take on the native 'look and feel' that users are familiar with.
Although GUI applications are mostly built programmatically, there is a dialog editor to help
build attractive dialogs and panels. Robert Roebling's wxDesigner
makes light work of resizable, portable dialogs.
You don't have to use C++ to use wxWindows: there is a Python interface for wxWindows 2,
and also a Perl interface.
Can I use wxWindows 2 for both proprietary (commercial) projects, and GPL'ed projects?
Yes. Please see the licence for details, but basically
you can distribute proprietary binaries without distributing any source code, and neither will wxWindows
conflict with GPL code you may be using or developing with it.
The conditions for using wxWindows 2 are the same whether you are a personal, academic
or commercial developer.
Is there support?
No official support, but the mailing list is very helpful and some people say that
wxWindows support is better than for much commercial software. The developers are
keen to fix bugs as soon as possible, though obviously there are no guarantees.
Many organisations - commercial, government, and academic - across the
world. It's impossible to estimate the true number of users, since
wxWindows is obtained by many different means, and we cannot monitor
distribution. The mailing list contains around 300-400 entries which is
quite large for a list of this type.
See Users for a list of some users and their applications, and
also Feedback for comments.
- Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows ME.
- Linux and other Unix platforms with GTK+.
- Unix with Motif or the free Motif clone Lesstif.
- Mac OS.
- Embedded platforms are being investigated. See the wxUniversal project.
- An OS/2 port is in progress, and you can also compile wxWindows for GTK+ or Motif
on OS/2.
This is a hotly-debated topic amongst the developers. My own philosophy
is to make wxWindows as platform-independent as possible, but allow in a
few classes (functions, window styles) that are platform-specific.
For example, Windows metafiles and Windows 95 taskbar icons have
their own classes on Windows, but nowhere else. Because these classes
are provided and are wxWindows-compatible, it doesn't take much
coding effort for an application programmer to add support for
some functionality that the user on a particular platform might otherwise
miss. Also, some classes that started off as platform-specific, such
as the MDI classes, have been emulated on other platforms. I can imagine
that even wxTaskBarIcon may be implemented for Unix desktops one day.
In other words, wxWindows is not a 'lowest common denominator' approach,
but it will still be possible to write portable programs using the
core API. Forbidding some platform-specific classes would be a stupid
approach that would alienate many potential users, and encourage
the perception that toolkits such as wxWindows are not up to the demands
of today's sophisticated applications.
Currently resources such as bitmaps and icons are handled in a platform-specific
way, but it is hoped to reduce this dependence in due course.
Another reason why wxWindows 2 is not a 'lowest common denominator' toolkit is that
some functionality missing on some platform has been provided using generic,
platform-independent code, such as the wxTreeCtrl and wxListCtrl classes.
No. This is a much-discussed topic that has (many times) ended with the conclusion that it is in
wxWindows' best interests to avoid use of templates. Not all compilers can handle
templates adequately so it would dramatically reduce the number of compilers
and platforms that could be supported. It would also be undersirable to make
wxWindows dependent on another large library that may have to be downloaded and installed.
In addition, use of templates can lead to executable bloat, which is something
wxWindows 2 is strenously trying to avoid.
The standard C++ string class is not used, again because it is not available to all compilers,
and it is not necessarily a very efficient implementation. Also, we retain more flexibility
by being able to modify our own string class. Some compatibility with the string class
has been built into wxString.
There is nothing to stop an application using templates or the string class for its own
purposes. With wxWindows debugging options on, you may find you get errors when including
STL headers. You can work around it either by switching off memory checking,
or by adding this to a header before you include any STL files:
#ifdef new
#undef new
#endif
These are the possibilities so far:
- The richedit sample has a text editor that does markup.
- See www.scintilla.org for
a very nice syntax-highlighting editor widget. Robin Dunn is writing a wxWindows wrapper
for this widget.
- If you only need to display marked-up information, rather than edit it,
then wxHTML will suit your needs. wxHTML is built into wxWindows - please see the reference
manual for details, and samples/html.
- There are rich edit widgets in both WIN32 and GTK+, but there is currently
no wxWindows wrapper for these (but text attribute functions are being added in the wxWindows 2.3.x series).
wxWindows library itself is unfortunately not exception-safe (as its
initial version predates, by far, the addition of the exceptions to the C++
language). However you can still use the exceptions in your own code and use
the other libraries using the exceptions for the error reporting together with
wxWindows.
There are a few issues to keep in mind, though:
- You shouldn't let the exceptions propagate through wxWindows code,
in particular you should always catch the exceptions thrown by the
functions called from an event handler in the handler itself and not
let them propagate upwards to wxWindows.
- You may need to ensure that the compiler support for the exceptions is
enabled as, considering that wxWindows itself doesn't use the
exceptions and turning their support on results in the library size
augmentation of 10% to 20%, it is turned off by default for a few
compilers. Moreover, for gcc (or at least its mingw version) you must
also turn on the RTTI support to be able to use the exceptions, so you
should use --disable-no_rtti --disable-no_exceptions options
when configuring the library (attention to the double negation).
We are using the CVS system to develop and maintain wxWindows. This allows
us to make alterations and upload them instantly to the SourceForge server, from
which others can update their source.
To build source from CVS, see the file BuildCVS.txt in the top-level wxWindows distribution
directory.
By ftp, and via the wxWindows CD-ROM.
If you are feeling adventurous, you may also check out the sources directly
from the cvs
Currently we're working too hard on getting wxWindows 2 finished (are GUI toolkits ever
finished?) to think very far ahead. However, we know we want to make wxWindows as robust
and well-publicised as possible. We also want to aim for better platform-independence of
resources such as icons and bitmaps, standardising on the PNG for all platforms.
Other possibilities include: DCOM/CORBA compatibility; a wxWindows book;
wxWorkshop, an IDE;
other platforms, especially embedded systems; other interface abilities such as speech output.
We will investigate the possibility of compiler or operating system vendors bundling wxWindows with
their product.
The high-level goal of wxWindows is to be thought of as the number one C++ framework,
for virtually any platform. Move over, MFC!
wxUniversal is a new port of wxWindows being currently actively developed. The
main difference is that wxUniversal implements all controls (or widgets) in
wxWindows itself thus allowing to have much more flexibility (i.e. support for
themes even under MS Windows!). It also means that it is now much easier to
port wxWindows to a new platform as only the low-level classes must be ported
which make for a small part of the library.
You may find more about wxUniversal here.
The Java honeymoon period is over :-) and people are realising that it cannot
meet all their cross-platform development needs. We don't anticipate a major threat
from Java, and the level of interest in wxWindows is as high as ever.
Please check out the Community pages,
in particular the suggested projects, and
mail Julian Smart or the developers' mailing list with your own suggestions.