wxEmbedded Beta Released

An anonymous reader writes "Robert Roebling has announced the first beta release of wxEmbedded, a new open source graphical windowing environment for small devices. Here is a brief overview from Roebling about wxEmbedded, along with some background on the wxWindows project from which wxEmbedded is derived."

Comments

WxWindows

[Pac]

WxWindows is one of the most magnificent development projects in existence and the fact we hear so little about it is shame upon the technological press in general and the open source information resources in particular.

WxWindows has for years fullfilled the Java promisse in C++: write once, compile and run anywhere, natively. Their approach to the cross-platform problem was always far superior than the Java approach. And I really don't care about recompilation, machines compile code, not me.

Their main public relations problem seems to be the use of an adult language, C++. Yes there are pointers (scaring, isn't it, a type that holds a memory address), there are templates (mostly scary, trully generic containers) and your program interface looks like everything else in the operating system it is running (ludicrous).

And yet, more than nine years later those guys are still there giving the community such a tool. Trully amazing.

Re:WxWindows

[Jason Earl]

Their main public relations problem seems to be the use of an adult language, C++.

That's the beauty of wxPython. All the cross platform goodness of wxWindows, and the development speed and ease of Python.

Maybe refine your definitions a bit.

[Inoshiro]

You consider an adult language one that (potentially) requires that programmers be mindful of things. This may be an "adult" language, but overall I'm more motivated to work within a language like C# or Java, for the same reason I'd work in C++ or Scheme over C (or C over assembler): higher level constructs take away my micromanaging of bits of the machine, allowing me to focus more on the structure of the problem I'm modelling and working with.

Yes, it's great that pointers put hair on your chest, and that C++ is where Real Men get their rocks off, but don't write off other languages for this reason. It's like writting off French or Japanese because, "English is good enough."

wxWindows: the toolkit everyone should be using

[Jimithing DMB]

I started using wxWindows about 10 months ago (January 2002). I was in the planning stages of a complete rewrite of an application (shameless plug) and had carte blanche to decide what toolkit and development environment I would be using.

After doing some fairly extensive research I came across wxWindows. I'll admit, I don't find the website too easy to navigate-- it seems too different from most other free software websites, but there is a lot of information there. One of the interesting things is that the documentation is GREAT. Normally you don't see detailed documentation like this in any open source or free software project, and many times not even in commercial products (think MFC). With that said, I'll admit that for some complex tasks the documentation is lacking. However, at that point you look at the code which is just absolutely beautiful.

You can tell that wxWindows was created by people who thoroughly understand OO programming, and more importantly understand the specifics of programming OO in C++. C++ is /not/ a toy language. Unlike some other toolkits or frameworks which attempt to hide "complexities" from the programmer, wxWindows exposes nearly everything. When using wxWindows you /WILL/ need to deal with pointers. However, every effort has been made to free memory when and how is appropriate. Some classes really are just reference counters (wxBitmap, wxImage, GDI Objects, etc.). Other classes have their own memory allocation/deallocation scheme. When dealing with window creation you simply use the new operator to allocate the window. Part of a window's constructor is a pointer to its parent. Parents will delete children.

There is no overall "garbage collector". Everything is done just as any reasonable programmer would expect it, and these behaviors are detailed in the documentation. wxWindows is the only toolkit I have seen designed with C++ in mind. Sure.. there is QT, but the Moc is a hack (/me ducks), and QT programming just doesn't hit the right nerve in my mind.

For those looking to get a quick start with wxWindows I'd say to first browse the documentation (especially the topic overviews) and get a feel for how wxWindows deals with things in general. Then grab wxWindows and do the standard configure business (might I suggest you install to its own prefix like /opt/wx). The main makefile does not build the samples. To build a sample, go into the build directory and run make from there. The samples are excellent. For one thing you will get a feel for how the general programming is done with wxWindows. You will be able to take a sample and use it as a starting point for your application. The samples are also great when you are having a problem that shows up in your app and you need a simple testcase. Just add some code to the appropriate sample and see what the behavior is.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that if you have not tried wxWindows, you need to. Don't be put off by C++. Just because you have tried foobar C++ toolkit and thought C++ sucked does not mean wxWindows is the same way. I would even say it's not too much of a stretch that even a Visual Basic programmer could get accustomed to it so long as they actually had at least some grasp of C++ in general. This is especially true for those people who use VB simply because it is "faster and easier than C++" when what they really mean is that it's faster and easier than MFC (which it is). Once you see wxWindows and get to know what a real toolkit should be, you'll not want to use anything else.