% sed -n 2,5p./net/core/netfilter.c
* Heavily influenced by the old firewall.c by David Bonn and Alan Cox.
*
* Thanks to Rob `CmdrTaco' Malda for not influencing this code in any
* way.
Congratulations, you have just reinvented (a small part of) GNU gettext package! Seriously, why not just use existing and much better solutions? For the record, gettext works just fine under Win32 and Mac and you don't have any licensing issues with using its message catalogs.
If you think you've found a memory leak in wxWindows, please do let us know about it (comp.soft-sys.wxwindows). Remember that if our users don't report the bugs to us, we have much harder time fixing them.
Of course, in my experience, memory leaks in wxWindows are more often than not leaks (or bugs) in the user code but if you're sure your code is ok, please try to report the problem. Posting a bug report won't take much longer than posting to Slashdot (although arguably it's not as much fun).
> My preferred solution would be a platform- > independent API that implements its calls using > native widgets. For example, you create a menu, > and let the native toolkit deal with the menu's > behavior as it sees fit
This is exactly what wxWindows is trying to do. Of course, doing this is not always simple and nobody is perfect but the idea behind wxWindows is just this. That is, we try to provide you with access to all features of a particular platform if you need them, but to make it unnecessary to use such low level features by also providing higher level abstractions which the framework itself can map to the correct platform-specific implementation.
The main advantage wxWindows has over Qt is that it has truely native look and feel (LNF). Try running your Qt program under Windows XP and compare it with a wxWindows one -- which one looks really native? Personal preferences aside (i.e. forgetting that I hate XP LNF), wxWindows clearly fullfills the goal of allowing you to create native looking applications better. The same goes for wxGTK port: Qt apps will never use yyour current GTK+ theme, but wxGTK ones will.
Further, why ask "why not just use Qt"? Why not rather ask "why use a proprietary and closed (in the sense that you can't modify it nor participate in its development) library instead of completely free, open and at least in some ways superior one"?
> Netscape 4 users can go fuck themselves, though.
Thanks for your gentle advice, how thoughtful of you. The arrogance of the Web designers never ceases to amaze me -- especially combined to the fact that everyone seems to find it perfectly normal unlike, say, the programmers saying that the latest version of their program will require a Pentium ++N with at least 1Tb of RAM. I really wonder why is it so and how is the above different from saying "all non-IE users can..."?
> The Ring's power is not to turn people invisible (though it can do that).
It's an interesting idea and your argumentation is good but unfortunately this is not what the book says. All of the rings except of the 3 elven ones (which are different because Sauron didn't take any part in making them) made their owner invisible when put on and allowed him to see the the beings of the other world - as well as being seen by them.
> On SuSE, I often used --nodeps for rpm, cos I *knew* that mutt doesn't *require* a spell checker, even if the stupid.SPEC file said so.
This is why I like so much the possibility provided by.deb to have not only required packages but also recommended and suggested ones - just look here at the
Mutt package entry
and you'll see that ispell is suggested for mutt, but not in any way required by it.
GTK--/Qt are not the only choices
on
GTK-- vs. QT
·
· Score: 3, Informative
[disclaimer: my real email address is @wxwindows.org]
> Not supprisingly we've come up with two choices,
> GTK-- and QT.
This surely is surprizing to me. I wouldn't consider GTK-- a serious choice for writing Win32 programs - sure, it "works", but have you seen it and/or used any GTK+ programs under Windows? But I would consider FOX, FLTK and wxWindows as serious contenders to Qt.
I can't speak of the others but let's compare wxWindows and Qt:
1. wxWin has almost all of the features Qt has
(it doesn't have some, but then it has some extras)
2. wxWin is free (as in beer too) for all uses
3. wxWin has native LNF, even under Windows XP
(which can be a serious advantage if you
target this platform).
But try it for yourself - wxWindows 2.3.2 is scheduled for Dec, 2 and has quite a few interesting new features. And see www.wxwindows.org for more info.
Yes, it is by far too naive. Where are you going to take these 2 extra persons to work on your project? If it were as simple to attract people to the open source projects as you seem to think, my life would have been so much simpler. Unfortunately, it's all but impossible. BTW, I maintain (although, luckkly, not alone) 2 rather big projects (and a few small ones) so I know what I'm speaking about.
The simple truth that many, if not all, programmers understand but few Slashdot posters do, is that there can perfectly well be many people interested in using project but none at all willing to contribute to it. And I don't speak [only of] programming but many other things such as helping with writing documentation, creating icons, testing, administrating the project home page, answering the users on the mailing lists and much more. Note that just about anybody can find something in this list [s]he could help with.
In fact, the only area where we've got much of outside help was with translations probably because people feel strongly enough about their own language to motivate them to do some (not very inspiring, I admit) work. But it stays an exception.
It is strange that Brian (who was active on wxWin lists and, if I'm not mistaken, had the cvs access himself) didn't tell us anything about this before but chose to comment here.
Anyhow, the comment contains at least 3 errors:
1. wxWin license is not LGPL and so it isn't invalid
2. there is no code from GPL libraries in wxWin to the best of my knowledge
3. "messy makefile" is totally false
And I don't know what was meant exactly by "extremely bad C++ programming practice".
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder why nobody has mentioned this:
./net/core/netfilter.c
% sed -n 2,5p
* Heavily influenced by the old firewall.c by David Bonn and Alan Cox.
*
* Thanks to Rob `CmdrTaco' Malda for not influencing this code in any
* way.
Congratulations, you have just reinvented (a small part of) GNU gettext package! Seriously, why not just use existing and much better solutions? For the record, gettext works just fine under Win32 and Mac and you don't have any licensing issues with using its message catalogs.
[disclaimer: I'm an active member of wx dev team]
If you think you've found a memory leak in wxWindows, please do let us know about it (comp.soft-sys.wxwindows). Remember that if our users don't report the bugs to us, we have much harder time fixing them.
Of course, in my experience, memory leaks in wxWindows are more often than not leaks (or bugs) in the user code but if you're sure your code is ok, please try to report the problem. Posting a bug report won't take much longer than posting to Slashdot (although arguably it's not as much fun).
VZ
> My preferred solution would be a platform-
> independent API that implements its calls using
> native widgets. For example, you create a menu,
> and let the native toolkit deal with the menu's
> behavior as it sees fit
This is exactly what wxWindows is trying to do. Of course, doing this is not always simple and nobody is perfect but the idea behind wxWindows is just this. That is, we try to provide you with access to all features of a particular platform if you need them, but to make it unnecessary to use such low level features by also providing higher level abstractions which the framework itself can map to the correct platform-specific implementation.
[disclaimer: I'm a wxWindows developer]
The main advantage wxWindows has over Qt is that it has truely native look and feel (LNF). Try running your Qt program under Windows XP and compare it with a wxWindows one -- which one looks really native? Personal preferences aside (i.e. forgetting that I hate XP LNF), wxWindows clearly fullfills the goal of allowing you to create native looking applications better. The same goes for wxGTK port: Qt apps will never use yyour current GTK+ theme, but wxGTK ones will.
Further, why ask "why not just use Qt"? Why not rather ask "why use a proprietary and closed (in the sense that you can't modify it nor participate in its development) library instead of completely free, open and at least in some ways superior one"?
> Netscape 4 users can go fuck themselves, though.
..."?
Thanks for your gentle advice, how thoughtful of you. The arrogance of the Web designers never ceases to amaze me -- especially combined to the fact that everyone seems to find it perfectly normal unlike, say, the programmers saying that the latest version of their program will require a Pentium ++N with at least 1Tb of RAM. I really wonder why is it so and how is the above different from saying "all non-IE users can
And what do you think of lynx users, BTW?
> The Ring's power is not to turn people invisible (though it can do that).
It's an interesting idea and your argumentation is good but unfortunately this is not what the book says. All of the rings except of the 3 elven ones (which are different because Sauron didn't take any part in making them) made their owner invisible when put on and allowed him to see the the beings of the other world - as well as being seen by them.
> On SuSE, I often used --nodeps for rpm, cos I *knew* that mutt doesn't *require* a spell checker, even if the stupid .SPEC file said so.
This is why I like so much the possibility provided by .deb to have not only required packages but also recommended and suggested ones - just look here at the
Mutt package entry
and you'll see that ispell is suggested for mutt, but not in any way required by it.
[disclaimer: my real email address is @wxwindows.org]
> Not supprisingly we've come up with two choices,
> GTK-- and QT.
This surely is surprizing to me. I wouldn't consider GTK-- a serious choice for writing Win32 programs - sure, it "works", but have you seen it and/or used any GTK+ programs under Windows? But I would consider FOX, FLTK and wxWindows as serious contenders to Qt.
I can't speak of the others but let's compare wxWindows and Qt:
1. wxWin has almost all of the features Qt has
(it doesn't have some, but then it has some extras)
2. wxWin is free (as in beer too) for all uses
3. wxWin has native LNF, even under Windows XP
(which can be a serious advantage if you
target this platform).
But try it for yourself - wxWindows 2.3.2 is scheduled for Dec, 2 and has quite a few interesting new features. And see www.wxwindows.org for more info.
> Is this too insane, or niave?
Yes, it is by far too naive. Where are you going to take these 2 extra persons to work on your project? If it were as simple to attract people to the open source projects as you seem to think, my life would have been so much simpler. Unfortunately, it's all but impossible. BTW, I maintain (although, luckkly, not alone) 2 rather big projects (and a few small ones) so I know what I'm speaking about.
The simple truth that many, if not all, programmers understand but few Slashdot posters do, is that there can perfectly well be many people interested in using project but none at all willing to contribute to it. And I don't speak [only of] programming but many other things such as helping with writing documentation, creating icons, testing, administrating the project home page, answering the users on the mailing lists and much more. Note that just about anybody can find something in this list [s]he could help with.
In fact, the only area where we've got much of outside help was with translations probably because people feel strongly enough about their own language to motivate them to do some (not very inspiring, I admit) work. But it stays an exception.
VZ
> but there is a lot of Linux software that also
> requires a reboot to function properly
Any examples?
I'd consider it a serious bug and complain to the author immediately if I ever saw such package - but so far I haven't.
plenty of clients support multiple SMTP servers. Of course, being one of its authors I can't stop myself from advising you to have a look at Mahogany
It is strange that Brian (who was active on wxWin lists and, if I'm not mistaken, had the cvs access himself) didn't tell us anything about this before but chose to comment here.
Anyhow, the comment contains at least 3 errors:
1. wxWin license is not LGPL and so it isn't invalid
2. there is no code from GPL libraries in wxWin to the best of my knowledge
3. "messy makefile" is totally false
And I don't know what was meant exactly by "extremely bad C++ programming practice".