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Simple Windows Development Tools?
fwc asks: "Over the past few years, I've been fortunate to be able to avoid writing a Windows GUI application, however this good luck is coming to an end. In the next few weeks, I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI. Unfortunately, my skills in this area are out of date, since I haven't written any GUI apps for close to 10 years. Because this program needs to be fairly small and easy to install, the use of Perl/tk isn't a valid option. What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"
Unless things have changed in the past few years since I played around with Windows GUI programming, Visual Basic is by far the easiest way to get a Windows GUI app off the ground.
1. Graphical IDE: (in order of my recommendation) Delphi (C++Builder if you are too much into C++), KDevelop, Eclipse or VB.
:-)
or...
2. You can hire someone (like me!! hmassa at gmail) to do it for you.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It's sad. Very sad. But if your tied to windows, then Visual Basic is the way to go. If you've got access to vs.net, c#'s gui builder is also pretty slick and the language is far less braindead to use.
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
It's easy to learn and the GUI designer is also easy to use. What's more, with the new (2005) version, there is a free "Express" edition that you can download from Microsoft.
I just started using Windows XP (out of curiosity) after having used Linux for the last six years, and I honestly have to say I've been very impressed with the development tools Microsoft makes available for free.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
TCL/TK is small, easy-to-use, and portable over many systems.
In addition, your entire program tree plus interpreter can be encapsulated using a starpack.
Visual Basic is definitely what you want to go for if you want a very simple way to get a half-decent GUI running. The only problem with VB is that, if you're coming from a C/C++ history, you're going to find it very messy. And you're going to feel "dirty" unless you spend a lot of time understanding the intricacies and see exactly how good/bad your app is.
If you want the power of RAD and the ease of C/C++ I'd suggest you look into MFC programming. Google for all you need to get started. You can continue to use C/C++ and familiar code to create nice, simple Windows GUIs.
Also, yes. You have definitely been very fortunate.
StrayByte.Net
RAD tools are a great and easy way to write GUI apps without getting knee deep in the API (in this case, Win32). Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and C# Builder are great tools, and all work similarly, but support different languages and tools... C++ Builder is my personal favorite, but I C# Builder is nice for developing .NET applications. Borland also has a similar tool for Java. And there's always Visual Basic.
My blog
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.
Simple Windows Tools? Well, there's always a hex editor... (I kid, I kid!)
:-))
Seriously, it's not as difficult as you might imagine. Even your grandmother could whip something up in Visual Basic, though I don't recommend it.
The path of least resistence here is to grab a copy of Visual Studio, then get yourself a beginners book on Windows programming. Just go to your local book store and you'll find a whole shelf of them. (And not a single book on data structures or algorithms in sight. Grrrr...)
If you're a sucker for a bit of punishment, (but believe you can follow the documentation well enough) just use web tutorials and the online docs to guide you through the process. The Resource Editor will do most of the work for you, so you only need to worry about interfacing your code with the GUI components. (Easy, peasy.
Your last option is for the case that you're familiar with GTK+, and don't have Visual Studio available. (A real masochist you are, aren't you?) Grab a copy of cygwin and install all the dev time tools. (Compiler, BinTools, GTK-devel, etc.) Keep a copy of the GTK Reference up, and you should be good to go. Just remember that you'll need to distribute the cygwin.dll file with your application. Otherwise your users shouldn't notice.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Ask yourself - how would you've done it on Unix? Well - Perl/tk may be not an option, but definitely you can write a no-GUI program to receive data from your serial port and store it somewhere. Then make a small web-server (plenty of options - no need to install apache or stuff) and serve your data in graphical form to a web-browser.
c# using visual studio .net will be your best choice. It offers you the ease of VB when creating windows programs, at the same time the language is a lot easier and cleaner to use. I am actually surprised that VB is continuing to be released in the newest versions of .net. Why you would choose vb.net over c#.net is beyond me (other than vb6 legacy support of course). I haven't done a lot of Java programming but the syntax seems to be quite similar to c#.
nothing
It depends partly on your finances...
.NET (C# or whatever) - free if you don't want MS development tools; very expensive tools to build one small app; much bigger learning curve; 20 MB runtime required
Non-free (beer and speech):
- VB - if you have a copy already it's the easiest choice for quick development; very small learning curve; few libraries required
-
- RealBasic - I hear great things but know nothing about it
Free:
- Python - use built-in UI libraries or better wxWidgets library; my preference for client/server development; moderate learning curve; python and libraries must be installed
- Java - UI has a moderate to high learning curve; runtime requires installation or you may have browser applet as an option; free tools
I'm sure there are others. These are the ones I'm most familiar with.
Developers: We can use your help.
http://realbasic.com/
If you want the power of RAD and the ease of C/C++ I'd suggest you...
You meant the ease of RAD and the power of C/C++, didn't you?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
'Nuff said. And you can get a free version for personal use just like VB.NET express.
The product is better but the biggest plus factor is the community of developers.
http://www.realbasic.com/
Extra credit is that it can compile binaries for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. I believe there's a demo version to try before you buy.
If you're looking for completely free, unfortunately you may well be sol. KDevelop may be your only option as posted above, but I wasn't aware that KDevelop can give you win32 apps....?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If the GUI is really simple and does fairly simple things, try writing an HTML application (.hta). You can find the "hta helpomatic" with google.
a teit.mspx
You'll need to script instead of code, and if you need help with scripting download "scriptomatic" (google).
You can also find a complete list of Windows scripting samples in a help file called the "Portable Script Center" which you'll find here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/cre
machinator omnis sine licentia
there an open source alternative: #Develop
;-)
and you can still choose between c# and vb.net
but c# would be the way to go offcourse
I can't vouch for VB since I try to avoid it as much as possible, but I worked with Delphi at my last job and recommend it as an excellent rapid GUI development IDE and language.
There are lots of extensions to the component palette which are free (as in beer) and some that are free (gratis) which can be very helpful. I didn't do sockets programming but there are components for that, as well as for graphs. You might be surprised at how quickly you can pick it all up, it's quite intuitive.
"We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream."
Schmendrick the Magician
If Java is an option, both Jbuilder and Netbeans have good drag-and-drop GUI tools available. Your app would also be easy to intall and cross-platform, and you don't have to give MS any money.
If that's no good, then Visual Studio is probably your best bet.
If you don't like VBScript, then use Windows Scripting Host with JScript. It's just the same as writing Javascript for a website, except there are different objects available. I think it's been shipping with Windows by default for years, so no installation is necessary, but you'd better double-check.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If you have to get that working on more than a small population of PCs remember that most PCs now lack serial I/O and you will need to use a Serial/USB converter to get serial input. Those converters look like COM ports but generally land as COM5 and above.
.NET 2005 is classy but probably a learning curve. Not sure whether VB .Net 2005 has a serial component; probably not ... and writing your own is next to impossible when the hardware is virtualized via USB. If you have VB6 I would go with it.
.02 worth ... and may the force be with you.
For language, VB is the way to go; VB6 is easy if you have it, VB
Just my
I'm a Delphi programmer so I'd suggest you to use DELPHI, but you could give WxPyhon (http://www.wxpython.org/) a try! :-)
http://smeschini.altervista.org
I guess this depends on what small is... and what your programming background is and whats already on the machine. I personally find writing swing apps to be extremely quick and easy at least compared to the last time I took a look at using the MFC to do windows gui stuff and everything you need to do it is free (as in beer). I guess MS has released some free development tools for .NET that aren't complete crap but I'm not sure what all you're allowed to do with what you develop with it.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) you'll probably only be able to use java for the gui and you'll need to do the rest of it in something else. But I think writing gui stuff in java is fairly easy. And once you've done it for this if you ever felt the need to write a gui for anything else (on most other os's/systems) you could use java.
Why not look into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Express? Freely usable VB, C++ and C# IDEs with compilers and debugers. I'm not sure about support for building graphical applications though. Also note that the C++ compiler defaults to compile for .net 2.0, but there are instructions to integrate the platform SDK.
Can be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
It would've helped knowing what language choices you have.
.NET application development (in that case via Managed C++, but then you need the ~20 MB or so .NET Framework runtime included with your apps, and I guess you don't want that).
.NET designer, and native C++ use a different one. I'm not sure if that one is included in the Express edition or not.
It sounds like you don't want to have your application require large libraries?
For a low level serial port reader app with a slick GUI designer on strictly Windows, Visual C++ Express seems to be one way to go. It's free as in beer and supports native Windows application as well as
One thing I can unfortunately not check now is whether it comes with the C++ GUI designer (which you'd probably be most interested in), as the screenshot only happened to show the
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
- .NET (C# or whatever) - free if you don't want MS development tools; very expensive tools to build one small app; much bigger learning curve; 20 MB runtime required
.NET (Windows Forms is the graphics class ... do some googling, its not that hard) for your interface. Or Qt with C++. Qt (opensource) will *not* work with C++ by default, you need this patch.
Check out Express Editions - C#, J#, C++, VB; comes with an IDE. Not as nice as the full edition but works very well. Highly recommended. You can then use
All the Express editions only target .NET. At this point I still wouldn't consider the .NET framework ubiquitous quite yet, so this approach may seriously affect his deployment. Other than that, it's certainly a viable option. Another good one would be SharpDevelop, which might in fact be preferable to the Express editions purely for licensing reasons. I'm not sure if you're supposed to use Express builds for commercial purposes.
You can compile to .EXE, do all manner of network, database, and desktop automation. And yes, you can play with the serial ports and much more.
Best of all, there is an extensive tech support database and a lively user community, with active and remarkably prompt involvement from the principal architects of the language.
I speak only as a satisfied customer, but this is really the type of shareware that makes you want to register it. I've done some remarkable things with it.
pi = 2*|arg(God)|
"Teach Yourself VB in 24 Hours"
.net stuff if a small footprint is required. it makes small executables but you'll have to ship the framework cuz not everyone has it. furthermore, most people with serial ports on their computers will be using older versions of windows. I like C++/MFC myself but VB 6 will do the trick.
"Teach Yourself Visual C++ in 24 Hours"
I'd keep away from
Scott
C# is free (for a year), and you don't have to learn Basic.
If you don't want to learn Java, or you would prefer something more native to windows,
A few general suggestions if you're rusty with GUI programing that you might want to consider as well:
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I'd reccommend Visual Basic EE. It's free at the moment, and easy to use. I've been using it quite a bit recently.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
The other thing about getting to really know C,C++ is that you can follow system code whenever you have to look at it.
Of course, all the above is just my opinion and based on the current available languages.
A much nicer language than VB, very powerful, and easy to use and there is a good growth path into the full Visual Studio products if you ever need too. After 6 Nov 06, new downloads & purchases will be US$49, but until then you can download it for free and use it for as long as you want. http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/ faq/default.aspx#pricing
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
If it's a starpack, they won't know what it is. They download one executable file that is smaller than 2 megs, and run it.
http://www.equi4.com/starkit.html
I'll second the Tcl/Tk recommendation. It's super easy to get an application up and running in no time. What's even better is that you can do most of the development on Linux if it's not an app that requires a lot of windows specific services, and then switch to windows to put the final touches on. I've even had it happen that I didn't need to change any code at all (but it's usually recommended, just to give your app that extra polish).
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
XUL (pronounced "zool") is Mozilla's XML-based User interface Language that lets you build feature-rich cross platform applications that can run connected or disconnected from the Internet.
How powerful is it? Well, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are two examples.
http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/
http://www.xulplanet.com/
How will he access the serial port under .hta?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I need to write a fairly simple application which will need to display data received from a serial port in a decoded (and graphical) form via a Windows GUI.
Write a simple Win32 program that uses a dialog class has its main window. Depending on how many elements your dialog needs to display, you could probably wirte this in less than two hundred lines of code. There are plenty examples on the internet to get you started. The result will be a small, tight and fast program that uses very little memory. As a bonus, your program will run on all 9x/NT versions of windows without extra dependencies, unlike the MFC/VB/C#/Wx/java frameworks other people are advising you to use.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
I'm a very satisfied customer of Liberty Basic. Their free version is all you'll need. I do serial port GUIs with LB all day every day. http://www.libertybasic.com/ MUCH simpler than VB, .NET, C# or almost any of the others, but still gives you a complete GUI experience. The helpfile and exapmle code make it trivial to cook up code quickly. Try it out -
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.
Since you are probably using ActivePerl, have you considered using the perlcc command to make a single EXE file of your application? Its easy to install as any other stand alone EXE file.
'Small' might be another story. Its certainly smaller than a full perl install on your target system. The EXE will be bigger than a meg certainly. Large compared to true compiled application, larger, and a bit slower to start up, as it unpacks its required modules from its internal package.
But a few meg isn't really that big of a deal these days.
YMMV
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
Why discount perl/tk? ActiveState has a perl developers kit, PDK I think they call it. It has a perl compiler to create an "exe" from your perl code. It supports gui apps, and can create wxperl backed interfaces... I see no reason why tk wouldn't work. For $150, your home free.
Grab up a CPAN module for serial connection and your done. Use the tools you know.
You should take a look at their examples page which lists lots of simple apps that were written in a fairly small amount of code.
Most of the facilities of the language are free-as-in-beer and there are some paid options if you want some advanced features.
Give it a try.
Damien
Have you looked at AutoIt v3? It offers a very simple scripted interface, and the ability to package it all up into a stand alone EXE. I am not sure about serial port access using it, I would imagine you would need to include a COM object to do it. Regardless, it is worth a look - and can be used for a great many things as well. The even distribute it as an installer or zip package for those that detest installers.
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/
In the next few weeks... fairly simple application... program needs to be fairly small and easy to install... Perl/tk isn't a valid option. What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"
Take another look at Perl/Tk, with the use of a compiler like perl2exe to produce a binary as the final product.
Since you have Perl experience, this will be a shallow learning curve. The conversion to exe removes Perl's only significant performance limitation. The installation can be as simple as setting a desktop shortcut to the executable (Perl does not need to be resident on the target machine). The executable will be comparable in size to any executable a C programmer is likely to produce for the 1.xx series of revisions. Figure roughly a megabyte for the compiled Perl and Tk libraries and a couple of kilobytes for your own code.
I have had good success with precompiled Perl/Tk where the goal was to get efficient executables onto a machine that we did not want to have Perl itself on (for security reasons). We needed a tool for clerical staff to convert Word 97 documents to clean HTML4.0 that would work with our style sheets. Perl's pattern recognition made this easy to do; perl2exe gave us a sane way of implementing the solution.
So far I have seen two spectacularly misinformed comments modded +5.
You aren't going to learn anything about Windows programming from slashdot. Too many people here are fighting the Linux Jihad.
I've installed the GPL licensed SharpDevelop at home and work. It's similar to a stripped down Visual Studio. It doesn't do ASPX with code-behind very well yet, but they're working on it. It should be just fine though for making a Windows GUI app as long as the DotNet libraries provide access to the ports you're using or you can get a hold of some that do.
The answer to your question is relatively simple. Do what your client/boss said to do within the Client/Bosses guide lines of your task. Create an outline of the various subtasks. If the subtasks are still to complex, then break those into smaller subtasks. Then one by one, complete the project, "As Tasked". The moment you break out of the client/bosses guide lines of your task, and then communicate this to your client/boss in a non emotional manner. Your boss/client will make a Go/No-Go decision. Don't Get Married To Your Project. You'll learn the hard way, later. With respect to choosing a language, its only syntax. Once your task is done, turn it in, demo it. Ya, you'll get extra requests added on to it. Do Not Do Extra Stuff For Free; It's what pays your rent. When the task is done, and the extras are completed; Ask for your money; Then get your money, in your hand. Then you can go to step 2.
Step 2: Consider what is was like working for this client/boss. Check the job market. Make your best guess. Then do it all over again.
Does this work? For me it does. But I've learned, "Pride Comith, Before the Fall". The ancient Greeks would say, "Before the Gods make you fall; They first give to you the gift of Pride."
I've been able to put together a few simple apps using the .NET Framework, which despite being a Microsoft product, is actually pretty decent.
You can use the Visual Studio Express products, but if you'd rather deal with a free (as in speech) alternative, SharpDevelop is as good as anything I've tried. You can use it to develop in either Visual Basic.NET or C#.Net, and it has a full and quite useful Windows.Forms layout system. For writing a basic Windows.Forms GUI, it's much less resource-intensive than Visual Studio, offers nearly the same features, and is GPL licensed.
For doing Windows development, the .NET framework and Windows.Forms is your best bet, and SharpDevelop gives you a nice open-source IDE with all the features you need.
What about a QT app, the toolkit is free if you GPL the code. All it means is that you have to make avilable the source code (if requested) to the people (and only those people) you distribute the program to. Or you can buy the QT toolkit and then not be forced to release the code as GPL. You can use just about any backend language with QT too.
Otherwise I would give Borland's Delphi a go. Delphi is turbo pascal with object-oriented extension's. It makes fast and very lightweight apps, and it's easy to learn. It also has a Linux counterpart called Kylix.
A very underrated development environment is BlitzMax http://www.blitzbasic.com/
It was created by Mark Sibley, (who also created the venerable blitzbasic for the Amiga over 15 years ago). It's very simple to learn, is available for Windows, Linux, and OsX, and has something of a cult following.
Havoc Video
If you work around the less than ideal formatting, you can find information about dealing with serial ports here:
http://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.4/TclCmd/open.htm
It's part of the core system. I recently created a coin operated internet system driven entirely with Tcl/Tk. I thought I'd have to do the serial port portion in C for speed reasons, but Tcl proved plenty fast - even a scripting language operates much, much faster than someone can shove coins into a slot.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
By far the easiest way to build a windows GUI application is to use GCJ + SWT to produce a native executable with a native look and feel, and to package it using NSIS, the nullsoft installer. Another advantage of using this technology is that your application will run unmodified on X11/GTK and OSX systems.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You can grab a free copy of the Visual C# IDE from Microsoft. Start with something simple, like this sample program that reads serial output and dumps it into a window. Then add the gui parts - and there's obscene amounts of sample code for writing Windows GUIs. The advantage to using C# is that there's a strong likelyhood that if you need something special, you can buy a widget that handles it for you for $200 (under most Open environments it would be free, but it wouldn't work - at least once you get into the more obscure ones).
Problem solved with a small amount of money and a small amount of time - and you have a standards-based application that any other Windows programmer will understand and be able to maintain. Unless you really want to spend all of your time working on stuff like this because you're the only person in the company who knows how to use your TCL/whatever/hybrid built-into-an-exe mess of a program? Cool as it may be, if it can't be trivially handed off to someone, its your problem for as long as you stay at the company.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I'd have to go with the VB crowd. First off, any reasonably recent (since WinME) version of Windows will already have the VB runtime installed. Plus, VB (at least as of version 5, which is the last version I used) has a built-in installer builder/packager. Once the app is done, you just identify the files it uses (in his case, probably one .frx and maybe a third-party control to read the serial port), then push a button and it spits out a ready-to-distribute installer. It's no InstallSheild, but it's perfect for this project.
Nothing against Tcl (actually, I hate it, but this would be a good application for it), but apps built against Tk don't look quite like Windows apps. Not sure if that would be a factor, but the principle of least astonishment would seem to apply here.
Just junk food for thought...
If you are comfortable with Perl/Tk, then I would suggest Perl2Exe. It can create a stand alone executable that contains everything you need to run the script. You can then ship just that one binary from machine to machine and have it run without problem... Well, no more problems that the Windows platform presents you with that is.
We use Perl2Exe at work for a few Perl based large applications and have been extremely pleased with the flexibility it provides in terms of distribution of our end product.
http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm
- Persnickity
I worked a lot with Delphi and C# in Visual Studio 2003/2005. Also flirted with Visual C++ and hated everything about Visual Basic. Delphi is very very very easy to learn and use and, if it should be required, it can provide control down to assembler code.
There are two key elements you need to look at. One is the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) you will be using, and the other one is the framework of classes that will give you the abstractisation level needed so that GUI technical details can be ignored. The actual programming language is not of critical importance, basically if you know one you will adapt very fast to another.
The Delphi IDE is very visual and intuitive. Any other one I used pales compared to it and Visual Studio 2005 only now is capable to provide features Delphi had since 10 years ago. You just have to use it a little and you'll see.
Most Windows applications are built with helper frameworks. The Delphi framework is named VCL and is very easy to use. The visual components (buttons, checkboxes, windows, etc.) are all programmed so that they expose events that will be fired for you. It goes like this: you see a button in the designer and you choose an event this button exposes like the OnClick event. Double click on the event name and the IDE takes you to the place where you'll write the code behind that button. This model is very easy to understand and will work well for small applications. It is used with limited succes even in large applications where it should normally have no place. For small applications you have no need to understand how Windows manages GUI details.
People around here may tempt you towards new and hip things, old dogs like C++ or the traditionally easy VB. Don't listen! VB6 was a piece of crap and VB.NET is cool if you like typing a lot of crap. C++ is a monster that will bite you the first chance it gets and it's visual editor is about as good as the one in VB if not worse.
Try Delphi, it's exceptional despite the fact it has some dust on it. :)
Same contents, better formatting at
http://tmml.sourceforge.net/doc/tcl/open.html
I was pleasantly suprised at how easy it is to develop with Python and GTK on both Linux and Windows. Right now I am doing a little hobby project and I can copy my source tree from my Windows box to my Linux laptop and it runs exactly the same. It took an hour or two with google to find all the packages I needed on windows, while my linux distro (Suse) installed them automagically.
These are the files I installed:
Then a futzing with the PATH and LIB variables and everything works nicely. I can use Glade to build the gui, pygtk to load it, and sqlite to store data.
Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I'll whistle.
I like Qt from TrollTech for my Windows development. It has a far easier learning curve than, say, WinForms, .Net, MFC, or the like. And top-notch documentation.
Also, version 4.x is available for Windows under the GPL as well as a commercial license.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
If you actually want to write a clean win32 program, you only need do this:
.net (large pointless downloads), DO NOT use Java (slow and ugly), and NEVER NEVER use Visual Basic (all of the above).
1.) Read "Programming the Windows API 2nd Edition" by Charles Petzold.
2.) Get MINGW/MSYS
Your skills in windows programming may be 10 years old, but that is okay because most of the useful and good parts of the windows api havn't changed in 15 years.
If you want to write a program that is easy for the user to install DO NOT use any 3rd party libs (dll hell), DO NOT use
"What options do I have to build a small application on Windows, without a large learning curve?"
.NET Framework pre-installed. If that's the case, you're best off using Visual Studio's GUI designers and whichever language flavor you prefer (I recommend C# over VB). As has already been pointed out, there are free/beer and free/freedom alternatives to buying Visual Studio.
.NET is unavailable and small installation size is a key factor, use Win32. Odds are you're a system programmer, so Win32 will probably be a fairly smooth transition for you. Unless you happen to hate Hungarian notation like I do -- then you'll want to pick up your monitor and throw it across the room whenever you use Win32 (or MFC). :)
Your two options are mutually exclusive.
First, the learning curve is going to be large, regardless of which route you take. Some, however, have a smaller learning curve than others.
Second, the smaller learning curves tend to use large runtime libraries that will have to be installed along with your application.
If you want the smallest application footprint possible, you're better off using Win32, but the learning curve is large. MFC is also an option, but the learning curve is actually a little higher, even if you can do much more with MFC than with Win32.
If you happen to be using the latest windows operating system (i.e. XP SP2), odds are that you have the
If
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I used to swear by Java. I finally got over my "ugh - requires indentation!" bias and am absolutely amazed at how quickly one can build quality, multi-platform apps with decent GUIs.
If you know a little bit of perl/php/Java/C/C++ (and, yes, lisp helps), then you should pick up python quickly. If you know a bit of Java Swing, then wx should jump right out of the proverbial box.
You can make great Windows apps from the combo (with py2exe), including services. The apps can have status bar icons, etc. Plus, you can use the full Win32 API if you need to. Python makes it pretty straightforward to wrap external libraries if you need to access specific functions in DLLs.
If you really need it compiled down, the wxWidgets libs work great under C++ and python makes a great RAD testbed which can easily be translated back down to C++.
I never expected to become a python fanboy, but there it is.
Mind the gap...
You've got a bunch of good recommendations, but nobody's mentioned QT so far.
.exe file.
I'm a big fan of QT on windows, and if you don't mind a bit of setup, the free GPL'd version works well with MinGW. The documentation is excellent, which probably would be helpful for someone learning to program GUI stuff.
And it can be compiled statically so that distribution is as easy as copying an
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I believe it uses GTK# for its GUI. C# (and a few other languages) for coding. Mono exists because Microsoft submitted the C# language specs and the CLR (interpreter more or less like the Java JVM - not exactly, but I'm trying to be brief...) to the ECMA standards body. Basically anyone can implement a version of PARTS of .Net. Microsoft reserved certain libraries so they would still have the most attractive version of .Net.
I'm trying to be factual without inserting opinions about the motives of any of the parties involved or their relative worths, and I am not currently using Mono, nor am I specifically recommending it, .Net or C#. I'm just trying to point out one of very many options to the orignal poster.
If anyone wants to debate the value of .Net, Mono, Microsoft, ECMA, emacs, vi, Linux, Mac, Apples, Oranges, or whatever, feel free. I, however, am not interested in a debate.
If your environment allows for it, i.e. OpenSource or you have the money for the license, why not Qt. It adds a degree of portability to the application and is a fairly easy api to code to. Just another idea at any rate.
This is the first insiteful comment in this entire article.
The scary thing is, many of the other posters advocating their bloat/crapware systems in here are also involved in crapping up Linux.
I can't believe the number of people still recommend VB for simple development. What's even more suprising is the number of people recommending VB.NET. There is just no reason to use those languages anymore. VB.NET exists solely to prevent the scores of VB programmers from feeling left out in the .NET world and shouldn't be considered unless the only language you are familiar with is VB.
.NET, it is now as easy to make GUI apps in C# or C++ as it is in VB. They use the same Forms tools, and generate similar code (except in their native language of course). VB's greatest strength was it's drag n' drop forms tool for GUI development, and with the other tools now incorporating something equivalent, IMHO VB should no longer be considered.
.NET tools there are still a variety of frameworks out there: MFC, ATL, raw Win32 API, wxWindows, Qt, GTK, etc. I've listed mostly C/C++ ones, but I'm sure a quick good search would turn up others.
With Visual Studio
If you don't want to use the
I agree. Plus the later Installshield's allow automatic downloading off the Internet what's needed. All the person has to do is make certain their Internet connection is up.
If what you're interested in is just getting the job done, you can't beat VB... or RealBasic, which I'm partial to, since I do more of this kind of thing on the Mac, but it's not mainstream.
There are a lot of knocks on VB, but most of them are snobbery, pure and simple.
If you're interested in earning status with your developer peers, boosting your career, making your resume marketable... stay away from VB.
But if what you're interested in is just getting the job done, it's a good choice.
Postscript: do not let Microsoft's marketers fool you into thinking there's any similarity between Visual Basic and Visual C++. Visual C++ is not just Visual Basic with a different programming language component. I wish it were, or I wish they had a product like that.
VC++'s "visual" features are shallow, fragile, and paper-thin.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
if you dont wanna spend any money, and dont care about stuff that has beta style bugs, look over pythoncard for an hour or three... copy the examples and see how they work.
If you like C++ then try wxWidgets.
.exe file wich requires no installer. It can't be easier to install than that. No runtimes, dlls or pain.
It's ages ahead of MFC. As in easier to do complex stuff, and as much more powerful too.
There is a class to draw X/Y graphics, called wxPlot, so half of what you need is already written.
C++ with wxWidgets is so much easier and powerful compared to Java for anything GUI related. And it makes standard GUIs.
And in the end you have a nice
VisualBasic apps are a PITA to install using the provided installer, you just know it works in your computer but it can be a really complex task to make it run in different setups.
If you like Ruby, Python, perl, or several more languages; you can use wxWidgets with them too.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Python might be a good way to put a graphical front end on just about anything else.
It has a rather nice set of libraries for opening/managing windows, and is pretty comprehensive in other ways. The learning curve is almost nonexistent, and the library documentation is good stuff. I'm just not sure if it will talk directly to the serial port; IPC might be your friend there.
Only gotcha which springs to mind: Python does pass-by-reference.
You can probably pick up Visual Basic 5, Learning Edition for around $20 (I paid $20 CDN for it, which is around $17 US). Comes with lots of samples.
Easy to code easy stuff.
You don't need much more that that... If you *did*, I would recommend Java.
Ratboy
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
IMO, it's not a bad idea, considering a major portion of slashdotters have similar background and many feel fortunate for not having to develop in Win32 environment. The author of post does not want to "learn anything about Windows programming". He just need a temporary, quick and probably dirty solution, from the point of view of a UNIXer.
I strongly recommend looking at BlitzMax and their GUI toolkit MaxGUI. Price here is USD $80 + $25, but it is a solid environment that can interface C libraries directly, even compile libraries like SQLite from source directly into the application. No runtime required. http://blitzbasic.com/Products/_index_.php
Another option which I advocate, and which may be even better for your situation, is PureBasic. This is only USD $69 and comes with it's GUI toolkit, no added cost. Includes a GUI designer to give you some basic GUI code to get things started. No runtime required. http://www.purebasic.com/
Both of these languages do not require a runtime, compile to native code on Linux, Windows and Max OS (probably not something you need to worry about but it's there for free if you need it--in RealBasic you have to pay another $400 or so for each platform).
www.blueapples.org
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.
yahoo widgets, aka konfabulator... XML for windowing and JavaScript for the code. Can you get to serial ports from javascript? maybe.
or the google whatever plug-in-bar thingy might work too.
It is a very user-friendly RAID system which can produce a polished product very rapidly. Since it uses Pascal, it does not have C's assininely stupid pointer-based string that are so loved by crackers thanks to their buffer overflows. And the Borland Pascal has zillions of extensions that makes it just as capable as any C++ compiler, but without the obfuscateness.
One could think of Delphi as "visual pascal on steroïds"; Delphi produces an executable file, which does not needs 36,000 DLLs to be arcanely installed.
And if you need to use a database, Delphi offers either standalone "Paradox" databases, or ODBC interface to connect to your favourite SQL database.
It's not that expensive to buy. You can construct a GUI in minutes and access to the Windows API is simple through the API Viewer. VB 6 is still a very viable solution to writing quick apps because the language is simple, you don't have to learn a big API (other than WinAPI of course), you don't need a big runtime to distribute or download and there are tons and tons of web sites, articles and code snippets available.
Give LabVIEW a shot. It'll set you back some $$$, but probably one of the best languages for developing an application where you get data from somewhere and need to present that graphically to the user.
I'll second Delphi. It uses an OO form of the Pascal language, which might be a problem for some, but I'd take pascal any day compared to basic. Also, Delphi is every bit as easy to use as VB.
I used Delphi at a co-op job for six quarters, and it just plain made me feel powerful. I could throw together a nice GUI in minutes, and then "wire up" the events to real code after getting approval from the people who would be using the program. By the time I was done, i'd have a nice professional-looking app that was only about 700K, didn't need any funny DLL files, and was made out of nice strongly-typed OO code, and took advantage of the huge selection of freeware widgets on sites like http://www.torry.net/
Delphi is the perfect language for writing fast windows apps. Its also perfect for database access, and with the right packages, can be perfect for lots of other tasks, like serial port access. (and what I mean by that is that you can go fumbling around with the Windows Serial port API, or you can get a nice I/O package for Delphi and just drag/drop some components that give you nice events to play with.)
To top it off, if you look at the assembly generated by the compiler, its really pretty good. You might say it's equivalent to -O1 on C code, and thanks to its single-pass compiler, it compiles 10x as fast, so there's basically no wait.
Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
Since I just ran out of mod points, I'll post instead.
Delphi's based on Turbo Pascal so should be easy enough to learn quickly, GUI design also extremley simple point-and-drool. IIRC, it also comes with sources for the default component library. I'm not sure if you realy need that, but in any case that's a plus. There are also tons of additional componens which might be just right for your job, often free as in beer or speech. Have a look at Torry's Delphi pages, lots of stuff there, including components and tools.
One nice thing about Visuo Studio and Borland products is that they have installers that simplifies the task of installing the application on your customer's machine. So, if your product has to have the "remove the shrink wrap and click one icon to install" experience, that's probably the route you want to go.
I don't know about other development platforms, but others have already commented on a few "install one package" runtimes...
Parent's points seconded.
...); most come with source too, if you want to customize them.
...)
Best win32 GUI dev environment. Tons of components to make obscure corners of the Win32 API easy to use (systray apps, bubble-help, transparent or non-square windows,
Delphi bindings for nearly every common API/toolkit you'll ever want (openGL, SDL, fmod,
Great debugger, support for embedded asm if you really really need it.
Remember that the designer of C# was also the head dev for Object Pascal for years... a lot of C#'s nicer language features (like properties) are direct descendents of Delphi.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
I'm quite surprised nobody has yet suggested to just code the application using nothing special (no runtime at all), only directly the Windows API.
It's the way to go to create small & fast executables that need nothing to run.
I was in the same situation a month ago. I had to develop a graphical interface for a application with no MFC background. My project needs to read a GPS from serial to collect geographical info and join aditional info for plotting. I choose to develop it in Delphi using a very easy-to-use component for serial communications (CDD4). The result is easy to distribute because is is only a .exe file. The learning curve for Object Pascal is easy for anyone with background in any language. The code generated is easy to understand (not like VB).
I believe I made the rigth choice.
What kind of data are you going to receive and display? Is it for home use or business? It's expensive but LabVIEW from National Instruments is made for this kind of stuff.
Not because there's inherently anything wrong with it, but the framework download is 23Mb and therefore isn't exactly "fairly small".
Of course, if you can guarantee that the framework will already be there everywhere you're going to install, then it's not an issue.
If you don't mind Ruby (and why would you, Ruby's great), check these out:
- http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/
- http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/allinoneruby/
It "collects" all of your ruby source and libs in one compact executable. It works on Windows, MacOSX and Linux. And it has the possibility to not include the Ruby/TK bindings, but the TK libs as well!
I guess you could also use Ruby bindings for native win32, or bindings for GTK+.
If you don't need a GUI editor, Dev-Cpp is a free package that includes an IDE and C/C++ compiler for Windows.
http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Sharing some of your wisdom re: misinformed comments might actually make your post useful.
I've used both VB and Delphi extensively. Hands down, I'd use Delphi to do the job. If you need your environment to be free, and it is for commercial applications, I'd look at Tcl/Tk -- otherwise, spend your money on the Borland product. You'll be a *lot* happier.
I have a bit of experience with both Tck/Tk and Visual Basic 5. Here's what I think:
Tcl/Tk is great for dashing off little graphical apps that do stuff. I once wrote a fully-functional GUI front end for "cdplayer" in 8 lines and ten minutes. It's the easiest tool I've ever used for hand-coding GUIs but you can also get GUI builders for it.
Good things:
Bad things:
If I were going to write a large or complex Windows app today, I'd probably write the interface in Tcl/Tk and the actual complex stuff in C.
As for Visual Basic, I didn't really use it enough to have an informed opinion. When I used it, I found that it was really easy to create a GUI but the IDE became irritating to use once I needed to write larger amounts of actual code. I also found the help reader annoying (but this was version 5--they may have improved since) and the documentation condescending.
It worked well as long as I didn't try anything too unusual. I don't think I could do Tcl/Tk trick of creating a new kind of widget by adding event handlers to a label widget in Visual Basic. But, I didn't need try it and it worked okay for what I needed to do.
Of course, given how MS radically changed the language with VB7.net and stopped supporting VB6, I don't think I'd ever use VB for any code I thought might be valuable.
...then you should check out John Torjo's most excellent win32gui library. Not only do GUIs and generics mix, C++ can be a RAD language.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You might want to take a look at Visual DialogScript (www.dialogscript.com). It compiles into one executable and uses only one dll. The syntax is very friendly and is somewhat like Delphi. It's a procedural/non-OO language. Message forums are very helpful at www.vdsworld.com.
BTW: I've designed an example application called G-Hotkey (www.g-hotkey.com) which is a macro program for computer games if you'd like to see how small the application footprint is.
http://wxdsgn.sourceforge.net/
Just a warning : many of the usb-serial converters do not work well with serial controls. They drop a packet of bytes here and there. Try to do your work with a real serial port (I consider a pcmcia serial port to be real, a usb serial port is not.). Specifically, MicroSoft says that the serial port control that comes with VB 6 should not be used with usb serial converters.
; en-us;832678
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
Note You cannot use the MSComm control to access a USB serial adapter that is connected to a USB port. If you try to use the MSComm control to access a USB port, you may receive the following error message:
Run-time error '8015': Could not set comm state, there may be one or more invalid communications parameters
Visual Studio 200x makes writing GUI apps in C# and .NET dirt-simple. Literally, click-and-drag your forms (windows) and their controls into place. The form/window design is as easy as VB, and the C# language is as sane and well-structured as Java.
(Whether Java is better/worse than C# is a different argument I'll avoid altogether, because I have no strongly-held opinion yet (except that I prefer C#/.NET GUIs to Java GUIs on the basis of runtime speed alone), although, I do worry sometimes about the viral effect of C# + Mono...)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Yeah, a number of people have already mentioned them, but I have a few extra things to add. First off, the Express Editions are free (as in beer) right now to download and use. You can build commercial apps with the Express Editions.
I'd recommend downloading both VC# and VB Express and using both of them for a little while to see which language you're most comfortable with. In both, you'll be able to use the Windows Forms designer to create your UI, and the process is pretty-much painless with the 2005 products with their new UI design features.
Next, we added a serial port control to the .NET FX v2.0, which is what VS 2005 and the Express Editions all use. This makes it pretty easy to write code that'll grab the data you need. There's a great article on it over at Code Project that walks you through the basics.
Also, if you ever run into trouble you can get help on our Forums at http://forums.microsoft.com.
Good luck!
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Give yourself a couple days to get into Python, knowing how Python classes work will help.
Then spend a few days digging into wxPython.
There are various Python serial interface modules available, and reading from them via a thread, and posting data updates via events will finish everything you need.
Alternatively, pay someone who knows what the heck they are doing to write it up in a couple hours.
Both advices given already make sense. If you really want no extra dependencies and a slim executable, go for Delphi. You could make it even smaller in C++ and WTL (or even C and direct API calls), but it would hardly be worth it considering the increase in complexity. C# is probably the best choice if .NET Framework is deployed already, or if its deployment is not a problem - the IDE is good, documentation is superb, and overall the language and the libraries are somewhat better designed than Delphi/VCL.
If you don't like Tk's default look and feel, it's time to look at Tile:
http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/
"The Tile Widget Set is a next-generation re-implementation of many of the core Tk widgets, along with the addition of several new widgets. With Tile, Tk applications can achieve an appearance much closer to native platform widgets, as well as take advantage of a modern, highly dynamic theme engine to produce a wide variety of alternative user interface styles. Tile widgets complement the existing Tk widgets, and Tile is currently being incorporated directly into Tk."
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
I would recommend QT because:
1. You might as well write cross platform code if you can.
2. You might as well use open source tools whenever possible.
3. If you write it in C++ your application will be fast and responsive.
You can either use the commercial or the GPL versions, and you can develop on your favourite platform (Solaris/BSD/Linux/various other *nix/Win32/Mac), and the resulting application will actually look nice and friendly, unlike many other GUI toolkits which produce slightly alien-looking results.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/
If you prefer C, you could use GTK+ instead: http://www.gtk.org/
It is extremely satisfying to develop a GUI application on your GNU/Linux box and later see it running on a Mac and a Windows box, looking just like a native application on each platform, and performing well. Happy customers.
Tile
No debugger. You're stuck using printf^Wputs statements.
RamDebugger
Try using PerlApp http://www.activestate.com/Products/Perl_Dev_Kit/ which should build you a single .exe (you can get it for unix too) which embeds all modules needed, but only the modules used, so shouldn't be too big.
The best win32 tool: Delphi
Good OSS alternative: http://lazarus.freepascal.org/
Tcl/tk is very small and fast to develop with. Comments elsewhere mention how it can be made into a single EXE. I've used ActiveState Tcl to make standalone exes. In a few hundred lines I wrote a realtime industrial monitoring system with graphs and popups and all sorts - accessing data via sockets but serial ports is easy too.
For slightly easier to read code (and maintain later on) I've used python with tk to monitor a network in realtime linked to perl/awk socket servers that gather data in a dozen lines. It takes a bit more code but may be easier for others to pick up on after you. Python is big to distrib though there's probably some product to make standalone exes like with tcl.
pithy comment
What about Java? What about NetBeans 5? There may be some hangup on getting serial port access, but for the GUI stuff, NetBeans 5 may be the new VB/Delphi.
The age old problem with visual GUI development is that you can do absolute placement and then what happens when you resize the form? Or you can use layout managers (Java Swing) and then you have to wrestle with the layout manager to get the placement you want. NetBeans 5 has the Matisse layout manager -- I played with it and it seems to be the best of both worlds. You can drop and drag widgets in the form designer, but it gives hints regarding good alignments and regarding anchoring to boundaries for resize. Oh, and NetBeans is a free-as-in-beer download.
Java Swing, you say, not the native look for Windows. A lot of native Windows software is a hodge-podge of look-and-feel anyway -- Swing is no big deal. Besides, if you go with Java, you are not tied down to Windows.
For criticism of look-and-feel of TCL/TK, Java Swing, what have you relative to VB, a person needs to look at the hodge-podge of a lot of VB apps -- I can't see how a TCL/TK or Swing app would be much worse.
For this kind of work wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) is probably one of the best approaches. It has fully functional sample appliaction, which can easily be extended with your code. Just look once at the tor manager sample (http://wyoguide.sf.net/index.php?page=tormgr.html ) which was built in about one week.
LabWindows/CVI, was hated by me while i was taking a real time systems class. However, that doesn't mean it wasn't easy to use, or even easier to make all sorts of guages, switches, displays of all sorts. It should fit right in!
I write code.
A few years ago I was in a similar situation, but I didn't want to buy or license anything for monetary and free software reasons.
Having used BloodShed's Dev-C++ for compiling/developing unix targeted school projects at home, I wanted to use it.
And for the GUI stuff I discovered wxWidgets (wxWindows back then), but I kind of hate creating objects at certain XY coordinates instead of drag'n'dropping objects to screen like in C++ Builder.
Now all I need is a RAD GUI for making wxWidgets GUI programs, and there seems to be none available that's stable.
Here's all you need:
Flat Assembler
A list of Free assemblers
MASM32
more on MASM
Webster: The Site to Learn Assembly
Have fun...
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
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.
There's free versions of it that you can download; it produces small EXE files;you can link in everything so all you've got to distribute is a single EXE file.
I've been writing command line stuff in Delphi for years for these 3 reasons. For at least the past several years, for me GUI == Web, so I haven't done any Win32 GUI programming for a long time now.
Resizing is a very good thing, IMHO, and I always try to support it when I can. In Delphi, I would just play with the anchors properties (since about D5, I think) which control which edge each side of the component is 'anchroed' to. On the whole, this gives me exactly what I want. I can also set a minimum size for the application, to prevent controls from becoming unusable. (resizing only makes sense to a certian extent, after all, beyond which you'd need to re-think the UI)
Swing, on the other hand, was so painful to get things right that I never really did get the hang of it. It always seems like components are jumping around or getting bizarre positioning, and never stretch in the places where I want. Trying to ensure artistic 8-pixel gaps in the places where I want them is also irritating. Dynamically modifying the components at runtime is nightmarish compared to Delphi, where I would just show/hide things. I haven't tried NetBeans yet... and I suppose they could have fixed it up nicely, but I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from Swing. Resizing wasn't Swing's only problem, though...
Just to randomly rant a bit, <rant>Java also does horrid repaint optimizing. The usual suggestion to get rid of "flicker" in Java progs (which is a symptom of heavy overpainting) is to use double-buffering. This essentially just lets the inefficiency get drawn to the back-buffer, hiding it from the user. It also requires a back-buffer, which is an extra couple meg of wasted memory, if you fullscreen the app on a large true-color desktop. In all, it leaves your program running slowly, because of the overpainting and extra blit operation required (if you're actually lucky enough to get it accelerated- otherwise its an extra copy of a few meg done by the processor) and uses a ton of memory that isn't needed. The end performance has VB written all over it.
If you'd like to test this on your own, try to write a Java program that doesn't paint *anything* onto a rectangle of your window- a dead zone that gets whatever was on that region of the screen before it. If you can, it means that the painting you do on this area is not overpainting any work done by swing/awt, and you've reached some nice efficiency. I've only ever managed to accomplish this on Frame itself, not any of the Component derivatives. Everything else will fill with the background color, even if you'd like to just erase the background with some image of your own.
</rant>
and, yes, Delphi did do efficient repainting, simply because it uses Windows' paint-callback system, and uses system-level windows to represent some of its widgets. Windows is smart enough to prevent overpainting of windowed components. You can even avoid having the background cleared for you if you create the window with the right flags, or just alter the message handling for that window, which can be done in Delphi by overriding a protected method of TWinComponent.
Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
You can try FLTK (pronounced "fulltick") is a cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit for UNIX®/Linux® (X11), Microsoft® Windows®, and MacOS® X. FLTK provides modern GUI functionality without the bloat and supports 3D graphics via OpenGL® and its built-in GLUT emulation.
FLTK is designed to be small and modular enough to be statically linked, but works fine as a shared library. FLTK also includes an excellent UI builder called FLUID that can be used to create applications in minutes.
WxPerl makes me happy and seems at this point to provide maximum power for minimum effort, and being sufficiently mature at this point in time. VisualBasic has made me very unhappy whenever I have used it in the past.
WxPerl is Perl bindings to wxwindows which itself is a cross-platform C++ based library that can be used from C, or from Python and Perl (and maybe some others). Depending on what you want to do maybe a lightweight language like Perl could make you very happy too.
If you use VisualBasic you may find it possible to get a simple job done relatively quickly but if it ever turns around, bites your butt and grinds your bones between its molars, don't say I didn't warn you. That said, it is certainly possible that it has gotten better than last time I used it some years ago, but to me it reeks. I am biased though, towards Perl and linux. You can look at the successful projects made with wxwindows at wxwindows.org.
Then use KLone (http://www.koanlogic.com/kl/cont/gb/html/klone.ht ml) to create a single EXE that embeds your application code and GUI into a simple webserver that you'll run on target PCs, giving you for free an application that you can use from anywhere via HTTP.
VB is by far the easiest, and simplest way to get into windows GUI programming. However, if you want to go with a non-Microsoft solution, both Borland Delphi and the extremely outdated Borland C++ Builder should work. If you already know C++, this is an added bonus towards using the Builder, however it should be known that the Builder is basically a wrapper around Delphi's PASCAL ide, most of the components are duplicated in source even.
If the interface doesn't have to be really complicated, Borland C++ Builder should work. If you know C++, it shouldn't be hard at all to pick up on Builder. Delphi is more up-to-date, but Microsoft VB would have the most native looking and easily producable solution.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
If you have experience with C++ or Java, go with Visual C# 2005 (download the free Express edition). It has everything you need, is super-easy to use, and includes a serial port component which works well (and imposes no additional dependencies). If you prefer, you can go with Visual Basic 2005 which is a first class object oriented language these days (although personally, I still can't stand BASIC syntax).
.NET framework. If you use ClickOnce deployment (which may or may not be supported in Express, I don't recall) you'll get a neat little folder with the .NET framework, your app and a Setup to double click on which will install .NET seamlessly if not already present. Alternatively you can deploy to a website, which creates an install link.
None of this requires any additional third party or Microsoft libraries with the exception for the
It works really well.
really. really.
if you're going to do something, why do so under the conditions that one
hand is tied to your forehead and the other around your ankle?
given a task, i could write an operating system to boot from processor
reset, and the application to do that task, in considerably less than the
time taken to deal with that. get some balls.
I'm not sure how complex the graphical display needs to be, but VBScript or JScript are both relatively easy to learn and can be written to interface with a lot of Windows components.
Bonus: There is a storehouse of sample scripts and examples on Microsoft's website that you can easily modify with only a little background information. See the links below.
HTML Application Development
Here's where you get code for your graphical interface...HTAs use Internet Explorer so they are ridiculously easy to create. The page also provides plenty of samples that you can tinker with.
Microsoft Scripting Repository
Microsoft VBScript Repository
Here's where you get your scripts...they have VBScript, JScript and others, plus a bunch of samples to tinker with and easy to read tutorials.
Windows 2000 Scripting Guide
Here's the online version of the Windows 2000 Scripting Guide.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Documentation
WMI Tasks for Scripts And Applications
Here's Microsoft's implementation of WBEM...this interface will probably expose the COM ports to get you the information you need for your program. The second link is to sample VBScripts utilizing WMI.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
A fairly small installation is a bit open ended. Small enough to fit on a CD? A USB memory stick? A floppy disk? If by small, the poster meant one of the first two options, I'd go for using the .Net framework. The Express editions are free. Even in it's cut down mode, the IDE is really powerful. Languages available are C#, C++ & VB (though a lot has changed between VB5/6 & VB .Net).
The .Net route also offers some advantages:
1. It may matter to your boss or client that you're using a MS development tool. A mindset thing rather than anything practical.
2. There is a serial port component that you can use without having to dip into the API. Which is nice.
3. Because .Net code is managed code, it's far harder to introduce hard to find bugs such as creating memory leaks because of failing to release handles to the API (unmanaged code) or things like buffer overruns. That's not to say it's not possible, just that the garbage collector & the framework design helps a lot.
4. If the target machine(s) already have the framework on them, it's possible to just copy your app to them without having to create an install program.
5. DLL hell is greatly reduced. DLL's created in .Net can either live in the same folder as your app or be installed in the 'Global Assembly Cache (GAC). It's possible for the GAC to hold multiple versions of the same assembly.
That may whet the posters appetite.
However, if the install needs to fit on a floppy, I'd say that Delphi would be the way to go:
1. Creates pretty small exe files with no need for any other files.
2. HUGE amount of components available, I'm sure there are loads of versions of serial port wrappers available.
3. Speed. Delphi is on a par with most C++ compilers. That said, .Net is no slouch either, I saw a version of Quake V1 written in .Net C++ that was only 10 FPS slower than the original.
4. The only downside I see with Delphi is (last time I looked) the free version was for personal use only.
Both solutions have good documentation. Personally, I'd say that .Net has a better set of documentation, but both have a wealth of recourses available on the interweb.
The best language in the world will not make up for a bad UI design. Check out
http://www.rha.com/ui_hall_of_shame.htm/
for examples of how it's not done.
Sadders
I've worked with or evaluated many of the GUI tools, and definitely agree that Qt is very impressive. There is even a GPL'd version 3 for Windows, Q..3. Documentation, examples, library quality, ease of use, power, cross-platform are all advantages of Qt. The original poster doesn't give many details on the requirements, but I would consider Qt a strong contender. Certainly consider if you are considering VB, and especially if you are considering the other cross-platform libraries. If you are just hacking out a simple application or prototype, perhaps VB will be suitable, but for anything more substantial I would go with Qt given it's great OO design (and I suppose Delphi would also make a good choice, but I haven't used it).
I second the recommendation for Tcl/Tk/Starkits; it's a great little system for putting together small GUIs quickly. Nothing else even comes close.
.NET tools. The main problem with it is that .NET is the usual moving target that all Microsoft APIs are, and that Microsoft may stop making available the free .NET tools at a moment's notice.
If you need more of a real programming language, consider wxLua. It's also small and easy to distribute, but it's a bit better as a language than Tcl.
Finally, consider Sharpdevelop (sharpdevelop.com). It's a free, high-quality IDE for C#, and you can use it with Microsoft's free