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wxWidgets is a cross-platform API that is quite unique in that it uses the native UI widgets:
http://www.wxwidgets.org/

As a Windows user, I'm also happy that I don't have to use some sort of "platform neutral" UI, that usually only do a compromise for limited UI functionality for all platforms instead. I've seen too much of that happen with Java and GTK apps. :-(

If you are a full-on Free Software advocate and only care about writing free/open source software, then I can see why KDE/Qt is usually the best choice. On the other hand, if you are interested in commercial development, like myself, you need to look at pricing as well. If you only want to develop for Windows, then the "SDK" is free and the "IDE" can range from free to a couple of grand with a premium MSDN subscription. But Qt itself costs around $1780 to $6600 on a per developer basis depending on console/GUI one/two/three platform development. If you work for a company with any clout, you can probably cut that cost in half for either platform.

Although I'm not doing anything now, the first thing I would use for a lean startup cross platform development is ACE with wxWidgets on Visual Studio Express or Eclipse with CDT.

It is just my opinion, but I think the pricing for Qt is too high. I wonder how big the Linux Desktop "pie" could grow if we could all settle on Qt if it fell under LGPL or BSD? Trolltech's smaller piece of a bigger pie, might still be bigger than the one they have now. Putting GPL/Free Software asisde for a second, from a commercial perspective, I don't want a "new Microsoft" on the Linux Desktop. Perhaps someone with some cash could revive the Harmony Toolkit...

[smugness level="high"]Really ridiculous, the situations you Americans are in. We Dutchies have it much better :-) We get IRS-developed software for Windows, Linux and Mac OS, built with wxWidgets.[/smugness]

wxWidgets apps? Plenty. Look here

http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/screensh.htm

This is blatant slashvertisement. Qt's controls are all emulated, it's like using Java Swing when you can use SWT instead. Further more, it requires you to use non-standard c++ syntax together with a 'qt preprocessor'. The better choice is wxWidgets. It supports platforms, more compilers, has native controls, and it is open source.

One recent thread about the book (which also comments on why things like functions and OOP appear later in the book than one would think):
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/br owse_thread/thread/b8366618c4547978

Also check the Amazon page for reviews and other feedback plus the author even posted a comment:
http://amazon.com/o/ASIN/0132269937

To reply to some previous comments:

- It's *much* faster than it used to be: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/python.php

- The indentation only bothers you for 1-4 months. (I didn't like it either at first.)

- It *is* interpreted but byte-compiled like Java to make successive runs faster

- Why ESR likes Python: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882

- Native look-n-feel GUI: http://wxwidgets.org/ and http://wxpython.org/

- Compare to other languages: http://wiki.python.org/moin/LanguageComparisons

- Shopping: http://www.bestbookdeal.com/book/compare/013226993 7 (it seems like Amazon, Buy.com, Bookpool, and Overstock rotate for having best overall price, i.e., no tax [depending on where you live] and free shipping)

- Bad code: Python is attractive to first-time programmers because of its ease, so that's what you may be seeing. Also, bad code is language-independent, regardless; Python does not go out of its way to make this happen. However, Python also attracts long-time programmers because they discover they are more efficient and productive in it.

FWIW, I switched to Python a few years ago (after lots of C/C++, Java, Perl, Tcl, etc.), and I don't want to program in anything else again. The naysayers can pound on me all they like, but from my point of view, I enjoy what I do, I get decent pay, and I can get home on time to feed my kids then hack some more for fun after putting them to bed.

-A.C.

I happen to use Linux, OSX and Windows, and the number one annoyance for me is a lack of clear "native-looking" GUI or OpenGL toolkit offering that is reachable by scripting languages like Perl and Python.

the Linux platform needs ... A set of standardized GUI libraries that are free for both commercial and open-source applications.

You mispelled "proprietary" there. It's cool though, lots of people do it.

Also I'm not really sure why you think the Linux kernel needs widget toolkits.

Anyway, yeah there's totally no toolkits that allow proprietary apps.

The price for redhat includes support the price for XP does not. Not only that but it also comes with databasess (plural), directory services, compilers, office suite, and thousands of other pieces of software.

Office Suite [OpenOffice]-> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Databases [MySql, PostgreSQL] -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Thousands of other pieces -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows
Directory Services -> Can download it for free and use it on Windows

The author is cherry picking and presenting half truths in order to try to make a point. It's a weasily thing really.
Someone said that the comparison of QT vs MS Visual Studio is unfair. I am SURE it is unfair, QT is just a library that would compare to Microsoft WinForms... to think that the library is more than 10 times more expensive that the VS IDE makes my head explode...

Anyway so QT costs a lot of money, why not use wxwindows, FOX, FLTK, or a dozen other perfectly fine open source toolkits.

Read the main post again, the company was looking for Open Source software with PAYED support. No, Mailing lists, Forums, Wikis and other nicey info-gadgets work, they need a company to back up their software.

So "one company" charges you a lot of money for real time linux why not go to a competitor?

Please, feel free to extend on this point, do you know othe companies that offer what this person was looking for?

I think this guys is thinking OSS is like windows and that there is only one vendor for anything. Most windows shops are shocked to find that they can shop around for vendors and negotiate contracts. They don't have to bend over for their vendors (strange concept huh?).

I think you have to read again the post, the main problem with today capitalism is the price of the services. The fine print is that some of the services he was looking for are cheaper from your hated Microsoft company. Either because there is more demand for their services or any other reason.

The other fact is that there are not enough companies that offer enterprise support for open source software. At least not enough to drive prices to a competitive level (competitive with closed source software). If X company chose to make buisness with OpenSource software and their prices are 10 times the prices of a similar closed source option, it means they are not being competitive, they MUST change their buisness model (only if they really want to become competitive).

The big contender would likely be wxWidgets. Not as full featured as Qt but cross-platform as well and enough for a lot of apps. Works on embedded systems too.

Of course not knowing what the original app was, it may not be adapted to whatever it was they wanted to do.

Which is why I use wxWidgets + DialogBlocks ($70/user)...

There has been a _totaly_free_ crossplatform GUI API for many years that nobody seems to be talking about, WX.
Its C++, runs on Linux, Mac, Windows, PDAs and more! It has everything you need and its free for opensource and commercial use.
Learn at http://www.wxwidgets.org/ . . I used to be intrested in QT, but I realy didnt like the license I had to pay for something I can get for free from WX.

"It excels in matching the native look and feel of programs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X."

I strongly disagree with this statement. The OS X example programs here are amongst the ugliest OS X UIs I have ever seen.

... wxPython, "a blending of the wxWidgets C++ class library with the Python programming language". Please, do not forget to put links on the articles, because the /. effect need'em.

Do you *NEED* .NET? Can you learn something else? Something cross platform, maybe? Surely there's something out there that will do the job?

While it is quite crippled, Visual C++ Express is quite useable after installing the XP Platform SDK and wxWidgets. I'm working on a project at work using that as the Windows compiler (most of the work is being done on OS X and Linux).

Here's a good tutorial on making Visual C++ Express useful:

http://xurble.org/weblog/2004/10/using-wxwidgets-i n-visual-c-express.html
http://www.wxwidgets.org/wiki/index.php/MSVC_.NET_ Setup_Guide

As others have already asked, what environment you currently use is critical for any development strategy. Simply switching from C++ to Java will gain you nothing, what counts is what better framework you want to use. Since you only mentioned Windows I guess you just use plain MFC but since you also mentioned Java I guess you need to divert to a cross-platform solution.

In case your future environment has to produce binary applications you are IMHO best of if you switch to the wxWidgets framework (http://www.wxwidgets.org/). Since you already have C++ knowledge and wxWidgets is quite easy for Windows developer it shouldn't be a big problem to become familiar. I'm quite sure with wxWidgets you are equally efficient as with any Java framework but don't have the disavantages of Java.

You can use wxWidgets regardless of any platform consideration, if you just want to stick to Windows or to Linux or whatever, it doesn't matter. But if you also follow the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) you can move your code anytime to another supported platform and just release it. As long as you just use the features of wxWidgets there's no need to recode anything on other platforms ever.

If you want to see how well this approach works try out my samples (wyoEditor http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/, wyoFiler http://freshmeat.net/projects/wyoeditor/) or look into Audacity. Or look out for the commercial application Xara. There's probably no alternatives for cross-platform development as if you do single-platform development as with wxWidgets/wyoGuide. And keep in mind, no Java disadvantages.

O. Wyss

It doesn't matter much which distribution Oracle uses and it definitely doesn't make sense to create yet another distribution. Oracle is much better advised to join a distribution best fitting for their use. This certainly means a Debian based. IMHO Oracle is best advised to size with Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical) and bring Ubuntu Enterprise to production quality.

To fight against Microsoft's Windows Server systems or IBM's AIX/Linux systems, an enterprise Linux needs to have a GUI these days. My current choice for Oracle would be XFCE since it's light weight and sufficient for any server task.

But for a successful Linux strategy Oracle also needs to get rid of their Java based installer. With wxWidgets http://www.wxwidgets.org/ there's a perfectly suited cross-platform alternative which is much easier to use and support on Linux and even on other systems.

O. Wyss

2) Amateur/hideous UI toolkit for both major Linux desktops. My own game editor's have better/closer to Apple standard GUI elements.

I agree the two default frameworks aren't that terrific but there's also wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) which even contains a MacOSX port and wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) tells you how to use it efficiently. But what do I tell you, if you really care for moving to Ubuntu you most probably would have known already.

O. Wyss

So why don't Apple help out in the porting effort? ...

Maybe because Apple is not much interested in an OpenOffice port for the Macs. See it would be quite easy for Apple to help creating a native port with wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/), even allowing to get a single source for all ports while being native on any port. I think there are other more political reasons why Apple doesn't delve into OpenOffice. Just think if Apple really would try, Microsoft definitely would get very upset and would immediately stop supporting MSOffice for the Mac. And that's something Apple definitely won't risk under no circumstances.

So why doesn't the OpepSource community itself create a wxWidgets port? Maybe because there are very few OpenSource developers for the Mac and the few who are prefer to waste their time in the fruitless NeoOffice. It's obvious that the Mac would gain most of a wxWidgets port so the initiative should come from their side. But I'm sure if such an effort is started it will attract people from any platform. The gain might be not as obvious but there are already a few developers who see the advantages.

O. Wyss

What a revolutionary insight of a Java-follower! Congratulation, when looking at all these language flamewars, its extra ordinary that anybody can mention this and even be published by a company which bases their SW business on Java.

I'd like to give Bruce Tate or IBM some tips in which direction they might venture to get more insight:

- Web-Clients: HTML + Javascript with the Dojo toolkit (http://dojotoolkit.org/)
- Web-Servers: PHP/Perl/Ruby/..., whatever you like
- Binary applications: C++ with the wxWidgets framework (http://www.wxwidgets.org/)
- Database: SQL with ... (not enough knowlegde to make recommendations)

There are probably many more areas with recomendations but not from me, so just add your own. But think there isn't a perfect language for everthing so it should be now clear that one needs a multi language strategy to become or stay successful.

O. Wyss

It enlightens me highly that the wxWidgets framework (http://wxwidgets.org/) also belongs to this group of the 30 top projects. It shows me that concentrating on wxWidgets in my application development guideline project wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) is the right step and gives me confidence that applications written this way will have a usable GUI and a superb code quality. It gives me pleasure that my way is correct and hope that the future of free choice of computer (http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html ) without application considerations is possible.

O. Wyss

Really. Can't Google port their code to something like wxWidgets? The API is similar to Windows but it works so much nicer. I love how it makes apps look and feel native on the running platform.

Platform: Console Edition, Desktop Light Edition, Desktop Edition
One Platform: $1780, $1990, $3300
Two Platforms: $2670, $2990, $4950
Three Platforms: $3560, $3980, $6600

I like using Ruby for this kind of work too. The language is *so* much nicer and easier to work with than Tcl, VB, C#, etc...

I tend to use wxRuby (a subset of wxWidgets / wxWindows) for the GUI toolkit. It works nicely and looks good. However, since it does auto-layout using spacers and such, it might take some time to get used its new paradigm. But once you learn it, it rocks. No more specifying exactly where things go; the toolkit ensures everything lines up right and spaces out right. There are some GUI design tools for it...umm, maybe wxGlade I think?

The downside to this is that (as of summer '05) the tools to wrap up Ruby programs into an .exe package were not totally flawless. I always seemed to have to manually edit the packaging configuration file to ensure that it included all the correct files. But that only took a few seconds. Maybe those programs have been fixed since then (hopefully). RubyForge is a good place to check for them.

I use Eclipse on Windows with the Ruby plugin (RDT). It's great. But you can use any old text editor if you prefer, especially for a small project.

The upside is that you'll be learning Ruby, which is not only a great language, but is also on the upswing! And those skills will be applicable to Web app development too (using Rails). Might be a great skill for you to pick up. Might as well learn a language of the future instead of one of the previous century.

I am a fan of wxWidgets. http://www.wxwidgets.org./ Write in C++, or in Python and compile.

I also work on a Windows app that use GTK and it works pretty well (and it's plain C), though GTK apps look very slightly different (since it implements all the controls itself) and you need to include all the GTK and GLIB DLLs with your program.

No one mentioned wxWidgets they also have plenty of IDEs available in the tools section.I have used wxglade in the past and was able to do all my work on it.

No one mentioned wxWidgets they also have plenty of IDEs available in the tools section.I have used wxglade in the past and was able to do all my work on it.

I'm guessing that you're going to hear a lot of people saying VisualBasic. Personally, hate VB. You might take a look at wxWidgets. I've only toyed with it myself, like what I've seen. There is also wxDevCPP which gives you a VB style GUI.

There are other api's that are truly cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, Embedded) and don't just "run on top of X http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.ht ml (and no offense, they look prettier too)

-everphilski-

I'm surprised that nobody seems to have much to say about how GTK+ compares with other toolkits other than Qt. How does GTK+ compare to Tk and and WxWidgets? I'm curious in part because, after a long period of doing no graphics programming other than some tweaks to old programs, I went from using raw Xlib to Tk. I've studied GTK+ a little but haven't really used it. My impression is that GTK+ may have the advantage when you need very fine control, but that otherwise Tk is much faster to write and requires less code because it takes care of many of the details for you and chooses good defaults. The only comparisons of this larger set that I've seen are rather dated.

These days any serious developer doesn't use plain GTK+ anymore. If you want to get productive on Linux you either use gtkmm (http://www.gtkmm.org/) or wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/), both based on GTK+. If you also develop for Windows you're better off with wxWidgets.

see also http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=172 263&cid=14343909

O. Wyss

[This is not a troll, it's a serious question from someone who's about to start a major db-driven web app.]

OK, everyone knows Java's a nonstarter these days. Ack, why did they kill it with Swing instead of a decent lightweight GUI (like wxWidgets or FLTK or something)? And they never got the memory usage under control.

But why Ruby and not python? What sort of errors is python prone to that ruby avoids? We have a bunch of python code here (scons and other stuff) and a bunch of older perl, and I'm reluctant to start a big web app in Yet Another Language. We all know python pretty well now. Is ruby going to be that much more maintainable? What about TurboGears for instance?

Also there seems to be a wider variety of libs available for python than ruby. And the python docs are very good. So I'm very interested to hear about the error-prone nature of large web-app development in python.

-- SilentTristero

I'd start with the following:

• The man pages and info documentation included with any Linux system.
• The Gnome and KDE developer sites. If you're developing commercial software, develop for Gnome and your app will work fine on KDE.
• For specific applications like graphics and audio, you may need to use other libraries (i.e. libsdl and wxWidgets)
• If you have any questions, there is 24/7 live human technical support for application developers on IRC. Don't undervalue this - being able to ask a real human and get an immediate answer is huge. (try asking in irc.freenode.net #linux or #debian for what channel to ask specific questions if you can't figure it out)

has nothing to do with compiler optimisation nor which compiler is used. Of course if you use an environment, a toolset, a framework which isn't well suited for cross-platform development, you won't get optimal results. But if you use a suited environment like wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) you'll achieve identical results as with platform-specific development.

O. Wyss

No way. As long as IBM doesn't recognize that these days nobody wants to or can afford to have several different development lines (except maybe Microsoft), literally nobody will port his applications. And nobody will port his application to Java neither. So the only solution to this problem is wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/), because it allows to merge all platforms into one single development tree. And the easiest way to start this transition goes through wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/).

There are many ways to Rome and there are many ways to get portable code. But when it comes to write full featured portable applications there isn't a better alternative than wyoGuide/wxWidgets (http://wyoguide.sf.net/, http://www.wxwidgets.org/).

If you want to write software that works cross-platform try looking into wxWidgets library (http://www.wxwidgets.org/)

Fortunately, there's MinGW, various IDE's, and a bunch of
Open source
libraries available online.

Having said that, I hate having to program with Visual Studio. It's like a great big book of usefull spells, but they are written in invisble ink :o)

Since I'm using wxWidgets for my OpenSource applications, I use VisualStudio quite a lot, even if I intend my applications for Linux. This is because there isn't any useful debugging tool on Linux. GDB: Only Make has as similar bad command mode, DDD: Crashes more often, Eclips: Never been able to install it for wxWidgets, Anjuta: Haven't come to test debugging. I've looked several times at any IDE listed at freshmeat.net but 90% doesn't even support debugging and therefore don't deserve the predicate IDE! I ask when is there a usable debugging tool on Linux?

O. Wyss

PS. You can view my with VisualStudio created Linux application via wyoGuide.

> Use a platform native that run likedy split but is a pain to port,


Not if you use something like wxWidgets

The wxWindows Licence is essentially the L-GPL (Library General Public Licence), with an exception stating that derived works in binary form may be distributed on the user's own terms. This is a solution that satisfies those who wish to produce GPL'ed software using wxWidgets, and also those producing proprietary software.

While the preferred method would be simply use Linux, unfortunately my company is using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 with C++

Quit with the "Linux solves everything" cluelessness - Linux is not a C++ compiler. You mean to say that you think you'd rather develop under Linux than Windows. Okay, but then you have to decide what compiler (probably GCC) build system (Make, Scons?), version control (Subversion, CVS?) and what IDE or text editor to use (Eclipse, vi, Emacs?). If you're working in a team, it's going to be essential to at least standardise compiler and build system.

One thing you may be overlooking is that it's easy to duplicate what you refer to as the "Linux" toolchain experience on Windows - proving that there's nothing exclusively "Linux" about them. Thank GNU and the open source movement, not necessarily some guy from Finland:

* MingW32 is an excellent port of GCC to Windows. It probably has some difficulty compiling MSVC-specific code (I doubt MFC and .NET classes work), but you should ideally be using a cross-platform framework like wxWidgets instead anyway.

* Scons is a great Python based build scripting system. It leaves Makefiles in the dust as it allows you to use Python logic in the make process. I've personally run it on four different platforms (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac) and would never go back to Make. Although it helps, but is not necessary to be a Python fanatic (and if you don't know Python, take 20 minutes to follow the "Instant Python" tutorial linked on their site - it's possible you will fall in love with the language instantly).

* Eclipse is a nice cross-platform IDE that works well on Windows (and Linux, FreeBSD and the Mac). When used with the C++ extensions you get full syntax highlighting, project browsing and integrated debugging. Via custom project settings, it can be easily told how to build Scons projects instead of Makefile ones. (The only problem I've ever had working with Scons is requiring different settings to build Debug and Release builds, but I just set the IDE up to do Debug [work with that most of the time], then compiling and running Release from the command line).

And all of the above can be made to work nicely on Windows and Linux. If you switch to using those cross-platform tools on Windows, at some point your choice of platform becomes irrelevent and transitioning to Linux becomes extremely easy.

Your criticism of Java for making early, hasty changes is dead on, but I would like to think that the damage was lessened because the changes were mostly confined to libraries - deprecating APIs and the like. Had the changes been to language features, things would have gotten much nastier (as if AWT->Swing wasn't nasty enough!)

But all of these proposed changes are to the C# language proper, not libraries. I think that's an essential difference.

Stroustrup (did you call him "its inventor" because you couldn't spell it either? I had to look it up!) wrote in that link "Library extensions will be preferred to language extensions." Hooray! IMO, it's too little, too late for C++, but I'm happy that he's made that distinction. I hope that the C# folks get that message soon, because they haven't yet.

Compare their approach to LINQ (from, where, select, in, etc. all become keywords) to, say, Apple's new Predicates stuff, which accomplishes the same thing (or at least appears to) without relying on new keywords.

Regarding C++ sublanguages - ok, my Mozilla link wasn't very good. But I stand by my point, that any given project will cherry-pick C++ features to construct their own internal C++ subset. Boost makes heavy use of exceptions and templates; wxWidgets doesn't. The STL barely uses inheritance. If you're programming for Boost, you should try to avoid using catch to catch exceptions. If you're programming for SGI, you shouldn't use C++ strings. Etc.

Java doesn't have issues like these. Java programs by and large all make heavy use of exceptions and inheritance, and recommending that you avoid catch() or strings is unthinkable! Keeping the language features trim and widely relevant is a big help.

You're right that, in principle, new users can learn best practices and start writing in the corresponding shared subset of the language, and really good C++ programmers do. If it weren't so damned hard to become a really good C++ programmer, this might actually happen in practice. Until then, best-practice libraries like Boost will remain out of reach for the majority of C++ programmers

(Though Stroustrup acknowledges that C++ makes things "unnecessarily difficult" for newbies. Maybe there is yet hope.)

Search for IDE's based on the Scintilla control. It supports syntax highlighting and code folding for numerous languages (more than 70 IIRC), and is cross-platform. the wxWiki has some info on IDE's, too.

wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) does the job. I know, it's not a complete abstraction layer, but it's good enough for applications such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). You can see a list of some applications that use wxWidgets at http://www.wxwidgets.org/apps2.htm).

It's fast, well designed (although not *that* good, in my opinion), and mature.

wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) does the job. I know, it's not a complete abstraction layer, but it's good enough for applications such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). You can see a list of some applications that use wxWidgets at http://www.wxwidgets.org/apps2.htm).

It's fast, well designed (although not *that* good, in my opinion), and mature.

Only if you want to deal with all that. :) If you'd rather not, you could use wxWidgets (or wxPython) which give you cross-platform native interfaces without doing theming and emulation. I think those who want to do cross-platform have it pretty good these days (although it can always, of course, be better).

As for the Intel announcement, I think the only real impact will be the first thing I heard of when I read it - speed boost for MacTel apps! (if you can afford it, that is...)

Obligatory plug for wxWidgets. :-)

Where the license is free, it works on all platforms, and you can do lots of things with graphics, buttons, dials, etc.... - Just like Qt!