What about wxWindows?
on
GTK-- vs. QT
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· Score: 0, Redundant
Ever tried wxWindows? I and my company use it. IT IS REALLY nice and easy to use. And it is open source. Best of all it does "little" things like printing...
Considering that I am a Canadian bred engineer... You are not allowed to call yourself a professional engineer, but I am most surely allowed to call myself an engineer... Heck that is what I went to university for and the piece of paper says so...
While I think that you might be disappointed that not many folks are actually supplying patches there are two reasons for this.
1) It is really good and does not need much in terms of patches. I use it all the time and I love it.
2) Debugging a Windows Shell Extension is a royal pain in the ass. I actually tried to debug Tortoise because I wanted to change a few things. But I gave up when debugging became difficult.
As a result it says one thing. You did a great job....
BTW if those folks did not have a working GPS system then there are two things to consider. First the maps in the US are not as well kept up-to-date as in Europe. But second and most importantly THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE between a good GPS and a sucky GPS. And it is really dependent on the money, but not entirely. You need to do some research and find out which one was rated best.
Actually mine does... I know which roads are one way, where round abouts are, which side streets to avoid, etc. And if there is a traffic jam coming up I can punch in the distance and it will automatically reroute me to next best route.
Because of this GPS system I absolutely refuse to buy another car without it.
What I even love about my GPS is when I get lost (did not turn off when I should have) my GPS will automatically reroute me and figure out when I will arrive there. The ETA is really cool because it tells me on a long haul when I will arrive...
Ok I could go on for hours, but the few thousand Euros are worth every penny...
Having just quit a pure XML company (can't say the name of the company, but lets just say I can now spy on the company instead of working there) I have to say that pure XML databases will most likely not pick up.
The reason why they will not pick up is not because they are not good in their own domain, but simply because the legacy of SQL is simply too large. To make XML do what SQL does today is about eight years away.
In those eight years SQL data will become huge and the problem will be converting the data. For example if you have a multi-terrabyte database how can you ensure there are no errors in transferrring. Hard disks have an error rate that works one in a billion. Now put that on a multi-terrabyte database that means a megabyte of data may be faulty at the best. This means that somebody will have a screwed up account.
This means the best solution is status-quo since the status quo works and does the job correctly.
I even predict that in ten years the "programmer" will almost cease to exist. In ten years we will become data mining extractors. Sure there will still be a task of extracting data using programs, but the main concern will be managing the data and figuring out interesting things from it.
What all this means is that we will live for a long time to come with SQL. Ok there may be XML adaptors, but it will still be SQL...
Ok while I hate to say that this is spam and all spam is bad, it will work...
Let me explain why. Right now there is a certain amount of noise, much like a radio. But now imagine a radio that can custom tailor information based on your location.
I have a GPS system in my car and I LOVE IT!!! I never have to read another map. And in Europe the GPS system is REALLY accurate. What I would love to do is tell my system that I am interested in buying something in the next week. And if I drive past a store that has that something tell me. Or if I need that something right away tell me. The point is that I would really like this even though it is spam.
I think the difference with this spam and other spam is that this is pin point spam that may actually be relevant on the spur of the moment.
wxWindows is really good. I am using it for a shareware application. IT IS AMAZING!!! It is professional because it has the little things (Internationalization and printing). I also found wxWindows extremely intuitive. It only took me a day to become fluent in wxWindows. Ok I know MFC, GTK and QT (read the full documentation) so I sorta knew what to look for.
I have gone through this myself very often and there are two REALLY good libraries. Ok they are not C++ based, but I really like them.
The first is NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime). I used this in a few projects and NSPR worked wonders. The other one is APR (Apache Runtime). I am working on an Open Source C++ Apache server framework and have to say I love it. I am so interested in the APR solution because it uses resource pools, which mean that I do not have to worry about every pointer being freed. The resource pools handle this automatically.
If you want more information about APR stuff feel free to email me. Just take the obfuscated email address apart.
Wow... You are right... I remember in the bad old days of Compuserve you actually had to pay to get into forums. And as a result people developed software to get you in and out as fast as possible. Now such thing as browsing.
If they actually do this it will be death. Think about it. We would have trolling engines that only download content. Forget client side content, images or redirects. The web would fundenmentally change for the worse. Instead of dynamic pages we would go back to static pages. We would get a model like WAP and all of us know how well WAP did (NOT!!!). Remember WAP is a page model.
What is interesting to note is that the original design of Windows NT with its servers was abandoned in NT 4.0. And from what I know in XP it does not even exist. While HURD did sound very interesting and many of its concepts sounded good I think speed is still an issue.
Many people say, computers get faster. Sure I agree, but software gets slower as well. The real question is if the software gets slower faster than the CPU or not? For example while C++ as a GUI is hard to program, C++ gui's are miles faster than any Java GUI. On top of that C++ GUI's are nicer than Java's. Hence why Java has not made it on the desktop.
I agree with you entirely and people do not seem to realize what is going on.
The thing is that shareware developers are where the market is. Microsoft promotes this market because it keeps Microsoft alive. Some folks say it costs X thousand to get MS development tools. Yes it does, for the enterprise. But a shareware developer can get the tools they need for a few hundred bucks.
People say, that getting QT should be in the business plan. Sorry, while shareware developers would love to create a business plan it does not work that way. Look at WinZip, Norton Utilities, etc. These guys started out small with a simple utility. They did not have the cash to mass market anything. And remember that QT is only the beginning, you still need to compile the software using some compiler.
I am in the same boat. I do both Open Source and Shareware and am very happy to do both. But I also am restricted in how much money I can spend. AS a result I have found a REALLY GOOD library called wxWindows. This library is both cross-platform and has implemented all of the little things that a shareware developer needs like; multi-languages, unicode and printing.
So when people say that shareware developers are too cheap these people are missing the point. The point is that 2000 USD is garage level change. And the original poster was right. If KDE does too well it will not attract the shareware developer who develops the innovative software. But I also see the point that me using wxWindows allows me to run in both KDE and GNOME without any hassles.
So I take it that you also do not drive a vehicle. Because you know that there are multiple choices of that as well...
It gets my goat when I hear people say comments like this. I always compare it to a vehicle. There are hundreds of makes and yet we all seem to be able to drive each sort of vehicle (Big trucks not included). Why? Simple because even though some things may be different vehicles are generally the same and we take the time to figure out a vehicle.
Linux is the same. There are lots of distributions, but which one you want depends on your taste. For example do I want GNOME or KDE?
Those that say there should only be one distribution should also ask if they are willing to only drive one type of vehicle....
That is why I sort of backed off with respect to the tax since I know there are some special situations regarding Americans.
In general I do not have a problem with that ruling, but lets keep it consistent. For example if I have a Napster server in some country that allows file trading the RIAA should simply F... off.
Of course it was legal. Can I not give monies to a cause? Maybe the cause is illegal in one country, but why could not the cause be legal in another. Not to set off flamebait and not to agree with Bin Laden (Of course I do not agree with the scum sucking bastard). BUT and this is a big BUT, to some today's terrorist is tomorrow's new political leader and champion of the cause.
For example, what about the capitalists who fought in communist Russia? Are they terrorists or are they hero's? It really depends and that is my point. What is illegal in one country may be legal in another. And the US with this ruling set the precedent that so long as the Nazi stuff is sold in the US all is ok...
No it does have to do with commerce. Because Yahoo America allows these items to be sold. And in France these items are not allowed to be sold. Yahoo used to free-speech argument to let them sell the items. My point is that in the US they used free-speech and in other countries I can use whatever mechanism is legal.
This sets of an interesting precedent and something that I do not know if the world is ready to accept. It basically says that I can do, say, sell and buy anything I want so long as the country where I am doing the transaction allows it.
So putting this into context. I could legally in US buy drugs so long as the transaction is carried out in Holland. Of course the comment would be "Gee Einstein how are you going to get the drugs to the US?". Well that is beside the point. What it says is that I can basically money launder because if the transaction occurs within a country that does not ask of the origin it is legal.
Consider it this way. I make drug money. The money is considered income in a country that does not ask questions. The country asks for a 10% cut and calls the money legal. At that point I have the right to take that money into my own country. Of course US citizens may have problems because they have special tax laws. But if I was a non-US citzen living in the US I would be exempt (I think). So at that point I have legal money since I paid tax at source.
Ok I may be over-simplifying some things, but the precedent is still set and freezing of terrorist monies may not be legal anymore. Interesting!!!
I had a chance to talk to an IBM evanglist personally at a conference. He was a fellow speaker. And we talked about the IBM OSS and Eclipse thing. From what I gathered it is going to be very interesting. Specially it is an OSS development platform where anyone can plug in their development tool. I remember that it was written in Java, but not specifically geared towards Java. In other words I could develop C++ code in Eclipse.
And from what I gathered IBM is TRYING REALLY hard to become more OSS aware. The interesting thing is that while yes it is partly marketing it is also very much desire to see OSS work. Cool to see that IBM is hip again...
Win4Lin is like VMWare, but I think Lindows like Wine is an actual layer that makes the Windows application another task. This is prefer because I hate swapping from one window to another window to get at another window. Lindows if they succeed will have a much better user experience.
There is free and then there is way too much in cost. And this product is definitely in the ballpark of being way tooo expensive. Seriously it is ONLY a GUI toolkit. I looked at their library of supported widgets and thought, too much for too little....
I agree with your comment on charging. I am trying to build some shareware products (49 dollars) and 1500 USD is not something I can swallow. And like yourself I use wxWindows. wxWindows is cool and works well.
But I disagree with wxWindows not as professional. I have used many GUI toolkits and wxWindows seems really good. What I really love about wxWindows is their attention to printing and multiple languages. Something that is essential in any shareware.
Well having gone through coder, architect, consultant contract, CTO, Developer Manager, etc there are a couple things I have learned. Like yourself I am not too old (33). First figure out what you really like. That is the most important factor. If your do not like what you do you will do it ok, but not outstanding.
What I figured out is that I love to advise other people what to do. In other words I love being a consultant / architect / mentor. But in that field you need to stay on top of things. The best way to stay on top of things is to simply read, write and just do what you love. Just doing things at work will not give you that edge. Socialize, attend conferences, write articles. Become involved.
Rule 1) No matter how useful a table is, it is never enough. As a result my table are a series of pieces of wood (IKEA table tops) held up using legs (IKEA). Important that the table top height can be adjusted so that you will be comfortable.
Rule 2) Always put plastic / carpet between your chair wheels and floor. If you do not do this then the floor will look like hell after one year. Or worse you will loosen the tiles
Rule 3) Get a REALLY good chair. Your butt is going to be in it for a while and you want to be comfortable. And I do not go for the ergonomic chairs. Often I sit diagonally in my chair or something wierd and a "boss" style chair is great. I find ergonomic chair makes my butt fall asleep.
Rule 4) Get wireless or multi-device boxes. Otherwise you will have wire spaghetti...
I do not agree with that all. I was CTO of a company (resigned today) and we used W2K servers with Apache 1.3.19. Apache ran like a charm and was STABLE AS HELL. Where IIS may need a reboot or restart Apache just kept on running.
I made the decision to Apache because the W2K environment has better development tools.
But there is one thing to remember W2K is REALLY GOOD, just do not run any MS software on top of it. Then things become very unstable very quickly.
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Ever tried wxWindows? I and my company use it. IT IS REALLY nice and easy to use. And it is open source. Best of all it does "little" things like printing...
Considering that I am a Canadian bred engineer... You are not allowed to call yourself a professional engineer, but I am most surely allowed to call myself an engineer... Heck that is what I went to university for and the piece of paper says so...
While I think that you might be disappointed that not many folks are actually supplying patches there are two reasons for this.
1) It is really good and does not need much in terms of patches. I use it all the time and I love it.
2) Debugging a Windows Shell Extension is a royal pain in the ass. I actually tried to debug Tortoise because I wanted to change a few things. But I gave up when debugging became difficult.
As a result it says one thing. You did a great job....
You did not get it!!! I am not a spy!!!!
BTW if those folks did not have a working GPS system then there are two things to consider. First the maps in the US are not as well kept up-to-date as in Europe. But second and most importantly THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE between a good GPS and a sucky GPS. And it is really dependent on the money, but not entirely. You need to do some research and find out which one was rated best.
Actually mine does... I know which roads are one way, where round abouts are, which side streets to avoid, etc. And if there is a traffic jam coming up I can punch in the distance and it will automatically reroute me to next best route.
Because of this GPS system I absolutely refuse to buy another car without it.
What I even love about my GPS is when I get lost (did not turn off when I should have) my GPS will automatically reroute me and figure out when I will arrive there. The ETA is really cool because it tells me on a long haul when I will arrive...
Ok I could go on for hours, but the few thousand Euros are worth every penny...
Having just quit a pure XML company (can't say the name of the company, but lets just say I can now spy on the company instead of working there) I have to say that pure XML databases will most likely not pick up.
The reason why they will not pick up is not because they are not good in their own domain, but simply because the legacy of SQL is simply too large. To make XML do what SQL does today is about eight years away.
In those eight years SQL data will become huge and the problem will be converting the data. For example if you have a multi-terrabyte database how can you ensure there are no errors in transferrring. Hard disks have an error rate that works one in a billion. Now put that on a multi-terrabyte database that means a megabyte of data may be faulty at the best. This means that somebody will have a screwed up account.
This means the best solution is status-quo since the status quo works and does the job correctly.
I even predict that in ten years the "programmer" will almost cease to exist. In ten years we will become data mining extractors. Sure there will still be a task of extracting data using programs, but the main concern will be managing the data and figuring out interesting things from it.
What all this means is that we will live for a long time to come with SQL. Ok there may be XML adaptors, but it will still be SQL...
Ok while I hate to say that this is spam and all spam is bad, it will work...
Let me explain why. Right now there is a certain amount of noise, much like a radio. But now imagine a radio that can custom tailor information based on your location.
I have a GPS system in my car and I LOVE IT!!! I never have to read another map. And in Europe the GPS system is REALLY accurate. What I would love to do is tell my system that I am interested in buying something in the next week. And if I drive past a store that has that something tell me. Or if I need that something right away tell me. The point is that I would really like this even though it is spam.
I think the difference with this spam and other spam is that this is pin point spam that may actually be relevant on the spur of the moment.
wxWindows is really good. I am using it for a shareware application. IT IS AMAZING!!! It is professional because it has the little things (Internationalization and printing). I also found wxWindows extremely intuitive. It only took me a day to become fluent in wxWindows. Ok I know MFC, GTK and QT (read the full documentation) so I sorta knew what to look for.
wxWindows could be worth your time to look at.
I have gone through this myself very often and there are two REALLY good libraries. Ok they are not C++ based, but I really like them.
The first is NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime). I used this in a few projects and NSPR worked wonders. The other one is APR (Apache Runtime). I am working on an Open Source C++ Apache server framework and have to say I love it. I am so interested in the APR solution because it uses resource pools, which mean that I do not have to worry about every pointer being freed. The resource pools handle this automatically.
If you want more information about APR stuff feel free to email me. Just take the obfuscated email address apart.
Wow... You are right... I remember in the bad old days of Compuserve you actually had to pay to get into forums. And as a result people developed software to get you in and out as fast as possible. Now such thing as browsing.
If they actually do this it will be death. Think about it. We would have trolling engines that only download content. Forget client side content, images or redirects. The web would fundenmentally change for the worse. Instead of dynamic pages we would go back to static pages. We would get a model like WAP and all of us know how well WAP did (NOT!!!). Remember WAP is a page model.
What is interesting to note is that the original design of Windows NT with its servers was abandoned in NT 4.0. And from what I know in XP it does not even exist. While HURD did sound very interesting and many of its concepts sounded good I think speed is still an issue.
Many people say, computers get faster. Sure I agree, but software gets slower as well. The real question is if the software gets slower faster than the CPU or not? For example while C++ as a GUI is hard to program, C++ gui's are miles faster than any Java GUI. On top of that C++ GUI's are nicer than Java's. Hence why Java has not made it on the desktop.
Folks sometimes you need the speed!!!!
I agree with you entirely and people do not seem to realize what is going on.
The thing is that shareware developers are where the market is. Microsoft promotes this market because it keeps Microsoft alive. Some folks say it costs X thousand to get MS development tools. Yes it does, for the enterprise. But a shareware developer can get the tools they need for a few hundred bucks.
People say, that getting QT should be in the business plan. Sorry, while shareware developers would love to create a business plan it does not work that way. Look at WinZip, Norton Utilities, etc. These guys started out small with a simple utility. They did not have the cash to mass market anything. And remember that QT is only the beginning, you still need to compile the software using some compiler.
I am in the same boat. I do both Open Source and Shareware and am very happy to do both. But I also am restricted in how much money I can spend. AS a result I have found a REALLY GOOD library called wxWindows. This library is both cross-platform and has implemented all of the little things that a shareware developer needs like; multi-languages, unicode and printing.
So when people say that shareware developers are too cheap these people are missing the point. The point is that 2000 USD is garage level change. And the original poster was right. If KDE does too well it will not attract the shareware developer who develops the innovative software. But I also see the point that me using wxWindows allows me to run in both KDE and GNOME without any hassles.
"I probably would have stayed away. "
So I take it that you also do not drive a vehicle. Because you know that there are multiple choices of that as well...
It gets my goat when I hear people say comments like this. I always compare it to a vehicle. There are hundreds of makes and yet we all seem to be able to drive each sort of vehicle (Big trucks not included). Why? Simple because even though some things may be different vehicles are generally the same and we take the time to figure out a vehicle.
Linux is the same. There are lots of distributions, but which one you want depends on your taste. For example do I want GNOME or KDE?
Those that say there should only be one distribution should also ask if they are willing to only drive one type of vehicle....
That is why I sort of backed off with respect to the tax since I know there are some special situations regarding Americans.
In general I do not have a problem with that ruling, but lets keep it consistent. For example if I have a Napster server in some country that allows file trading the RIAA should simply F... off.
Of course it was legal. Can I not give monies to a cause? Maybe the cause is illegal in one country, but why could not the cause be legal in another. Not to set off flamebait and not to agree with Bin Laden (Of course I do not agree with the scum sucking bastard). BUT and this is a big BUT, to some today's terrorist is tomorrow's new political leader and champion of the cause.
For example, what about the capitalists who fought in communist Russia? Are they terrorists or are they hero's? It really depends and that is my point. What is illegal in one country may be legal in another. And the US with this ruling set the precedent that so long as the Nazi stuff is sold in the US all is ok...
No it does have to do with commerce. Because Yahoo America allows these items to be sold. And in France these items are not allowed to be sold. Yahoo used to free-speech argument to let them sell the items. My point is that in the US they used free-speech and in other countries I can use whatever mechanism is legal.
This sets of an interesting precedent and something that I do not know if the world is ready to accept. It basically says that I can do, say, sell and buy anything I want so long as the country where I am doing the transaction allows it.
So putting this into context. I could legally in US buy drugs so long as the transaction is carried out in Holland. Of course the comment would be "Gee Einstein how are you going to get the drugs to the US?". Well that is beside the point. What it says is that I can basically money launder because if the transaction occurs within a country that does not ask of the origin it is legal.
Consider it this way. I make drug money. The money is considered income in a country that does not ask questions. The country asks for a 10% cut and calls the money legal. At that point I have the right to take that money into my own country. Of course US citizens may have problems because they have special tax laws. But if I was a non-US citzen living in the US I would be exempt (I think). So at that point I have legal money since I paid tax at source.
Ok I may be over-simplifying some things, but the precedent is still set and freezing of terrorist monies may not be legal anymore. Interesting!!!
I had a chance to talk to an IBM evanglist personally at a conference. He was a fellow speaker. And we talked about the IBM OSS and Eclipse thing. From what I gathered it is going to be very interesting. Specially it is an OSS development platform where anyone can plug in their development tool. I remember that it was written in Java, but not specifically geared towards Java. In other words I could develop C++ code in Eclipse.
And from what I gathered IBM is TRYING REALLY hard to become more OSS aware. The interesting thing is that while yes it is partly marketing it is also very much desire to see OSS work. Cool to see that IBM is hip again...
Win4Lin is like VMWare, but I think Lindows like Wine is an actual layer that makes the Windows application another task. This is prefer because I hate swapping from one window to another window to get at another window. Lindows if they succeed will have a much better user experience.
There is free and then there is way too much in cost. And this product is definitely in the ballpark of being way tooo expensive. Seriously it is ONLY a GUI toolkit. I looked at their library of supported widgets and thought, too much for too little....
I agree with your comment on charging. I am trying to build some shareware products (49 dollars) and 1500 USD is not something I can swallow. And like yourself I use wxWindows. wxWindows is cool and works well.
But I disagree with wxWindows not as professional. I have used many GUI toolkits and wxWindows seems really good. What I really love about wxWindows is their attention to printing and multiple languages. Something that is essential in any shareware.
Well having gone through coder, architect, consultant contract, CTO, Developer Manager, etc there are a couple things I have learned. Like yourself I am not too old (33). First figure out what you really like. That is the most important factor. If your do not like what you do you will do it ok, but not outstanding.
What I figured out is that I love to advise other people what to do. In other words I love being a consultant / architect / mentor. But in that field you need to stay on top of things. The best way to stay on top of things is to simply read, write and just do what you love. Just doing things at work will not give you that edge. Socialize, attend conferences, write articles. Become involved.
Rule 1) No matter how useful a table is, it is never enough. As a result my table are a series of pieces of wood (IKEA table tops) held up using legs (IKEA). Important that the table top height can be adjusted so that you will be comfortable.
Rule 2) Always put plastic / carpet between your chair wheels and floor. If you do not do this then the floor will look like hell after one year. Or worse you will loosen the tiles
Rule 3) Get a REALLY good chair. Your butt is going to be in it for a while and you want to be comfortable. And I do not go for the ergonomic chairs. Often I sit diagonally in my chair or something wierd and a "boss" style chair is great. I find ergonomic chair makes my butt fall asleep.
Rule 4) Get wireless or multi-device boxes. Otherwise you will have wire spaghetti...
I do not agree with that all. I was CTO of a company (resigned today) and we used W2K servers with Apache 1.3.19. Apache ran like a charm and was STABLE AS HELL. Where IIS may need a reboot or restart Apache just kept on running.
I made the decision to Apache because the W2K environment has better development tools.
But there is one thing to remember W2K is REALLY GOOD, just do not run any MS software on top of it. Then things become very unstable very quickly.