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#1
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Traditional Win32 programming vs. wxWidgetsI need a bit of advice.
I'm looking into coding Win32 programs, after programming console applications for a couple of years now. I've found several tutorials (only a few good ones, but so it goes), and have a pretty good idea of how a basic windows application is generated. I just re-wrote this, and heavily commented it. I think that I get everything in it. CPP / C++ / C Code:
My conundrum is this: The next tutorial, something along the lines of drawing a "simple" (heh, right) plasma, is a bit beyond me, and ill-explained. I'm sure that I could figure it out, but is there truly a reason that I shouldn't abandon traditional Windows 32 programming and just use wxWidgets? I'm on the verge, and if there are no benefits to learning it the old school way, I may just do it. Comments and/or suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance for the advice. __________________
Pursue everything! P.S. This is what you would get at some point in the alphabet with the removal of the Q and R. |
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#2
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Re: Traditional Win32 programming vs. wxWidgetsQuote:
Flashback to the distant past, When the World was Young. I worked part of the way through the Petzold Windows API book about a million years ago (Windows 3.1). This was just for amusement. I typed in each and every line of code, since that's the way I learn. (The eyeball-to-fingers path that leads, mostly, through the brain. Eyeball-to-brain is not nearly as effective.) Subsequently I purchased Microsoft Visual C++ for use in a project that I was working on (it wasn't a Windows project, but the client required that I present the result in a Visual Studio project workspace). I went through some examples from other books using the visual setup stuff. Easier to make dialog boxes without creating resource files "by hand", but still lots of lines of code. Now, flash forward to the 21st century. Here's what it takes to create a 320x200 window with "First Program" as its title using Qt (Here is the Mother Ship for Qt) CPP / C++ / C Code:
Notes: 1. I use Qt as an example, because I have it on all of my personal platforms (Windows XP and several Linux distributions). I use it for learning and personal amusement. It very well may be that other cross-platform (or even single-platform) tools suit your purposes better. WxWidgets may be just the thing four you (or FLTK or ...). Don't choose a tool based on anybody else's opinion. Check them out. (Look for links to tutorials and examples on the suppliers' web pages. Look all over the Web.) It is not my intent to steer you away from WxWidgets, but to present a few thinking points. Many of the following Good Things hold for WxWidgets and other toolsets as well. Compare. 2. Free downloads of open-source (GPL) versions of Qt for Windows, Linux and other platforms are available. If you are going to develop closed-source applications (things that you will distribute without supplying source code), there are commercial development licenses. 3. By default, Qt uses the default "theme" of your setup. That is, on Windows, the stuff you create looks like the rest of your Windows thingies (border color, title color, etc.). On Linux it looks like the rest of your Linux stuff. Etc. This is a Big Deal for me. 4. It is a set of C++ classes (not C). There are approximately a gazillion of them. 5. Supplied with the free download version (as well as the commercial version, of course), there is a good "assistant" program with complete documentation and a lot of tutorial programs already written and compiled for you. Step-by-step descriptions help you learn how to write your own. 6. There is also a visual "designer" program that lets you add the kind of widgets that you want and arrange them visually (drag-and-drop) instead of writing the code directly. However, the <layout> classes do a pretty good job of getting things fairly presentable just from simple code. Stuff you write yourself in pure C++. 7. I have no connection with the parent company (Trolltech) and I don't develop commercial applications based on Qt (or any other GUI development system). I have no emotional attachment to Qt either. 8. There may be some benefits in learning the ins and outs of the Windows API functions in actual applications. I don't think it ever hurts to know what's going on beneath the covers when you develop a high-level application, but if you are looking for a quicker way to learn how to create visual programs, higher-level toolkits may be better for you. 9. Just because I know that some contributors to this board use Qt doesn't mean that you can get simple answers to all of your complex questions here (or, even, your simple questions either). On the other hand, there is an FLTK board on gidforums that has some experts ready to help. They will fall all over themselves to come to your assistance. Maybe you should check that one out. 10. All of these points are presented for your consideration. Make a note of which will be important to your learning process and compare the various tools that you run across before choosing one to try. (And if, after trying one of the freebies, you decide to change to another, just consider it part of the learning process. You don't have to stick with one that turns out not to be your cup of tea.) 11. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily my own. It's these dang voices in my head. Your Mileage May Vary. Regards, Dave |
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#3
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Re: Traditional Win32 programming vs. wxWidgetsIf you do use WxWidgets Try Wx-DevC++ it's a really good WYSIWYG Editor for developing WxWidgets
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