User forums > Using Code::Blocks
New to Code Blocks
takeshimiya:
--- Quote from: DaveK on July 19, 2006, 12:46:20 pm ---I have thinking Code::Blocks was like the cross-platform solution like Visual Studio is for Window applications. When I asked about a book, that was what I was asking about. My fault for misinterpreting this application. [;)]
--- End quote ---
In that sense you was right. C::B with wxSmith can be thought as a kind of Visual Studio.
--- Quote from: sethjackson on July 19, 2006, 01:44:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: DaveK on July 19, 2006, 12:46:20 pm ---...
My requirements are database access, window based application containing menus, toolbars, dialog bars, wizards, etc.
--- End quote ---
wxWidgets can do all of this out of the box. However for database access you will need to get one of the addon classes. From wxCode.
--- End quote ---
Right, you can do all of that with wxWidgets.
If one wants to do GUI programming with wxWidgets, C::B includes the plugin called wxSmith which will help you to create visually forms, dialogs, etc.
To learn programming with wxWidgets, I recommend the official book.
You can download it from here: http://www.phptr.com/content/images/0131473816/downloads/0131473816_book.pdf
That book, along with wxWidgets, wxSmith, the wxWidgets reference manual, and Code::Blocks, will get you going with all the development you wanted to do, and in a cross-platform way.
iw2nhl:
Another great cross-platform C++ toolkit is Qt.
It works on Windows (95 to Vista), Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and some PDA.
It has 2 licenses:
- for closed source development (you must buy a license)
- for open source development (free of charge, GPL license)
Moreover it has 3 tools (among others) included:
- "Qt Designer" to draw your GUI graphically
- "Qt Linguist" to make your program multilanguage in an easy way
- "Qt Assistant" help system used by Qt and available for your programs too
Toolkit overview (Qt4):
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/features
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/whatsnew
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/learnmore
Documentation (for all versions):
http://doc.trolltech.com/
Qt 4.1 documentation:
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/index.html
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/overviews.html
It supports a lot of database systems:
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/sql-driver.html
Next 4.2 version (it should be available for year ending):
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qt4-2-intro.html
Interesting articles on Qt programming:
http://doc.trolltech.com/qq/index.html
Community site (with forum for help):
http://www.qtcentre.org/
You can find in internet a lot of examples (all KDE programs are written with Qt) and some tutorials.
There are printed books too.
KDE and KDE applications:
http://www.kde.org/
http://www.kde-apps.org/
Tutorials for Qt3 and Qt4 respectively:
http://www.digitalfanatics.org/projects/qt_tutorial/
http://qt4.digitalfanatics.org/tiqt/
agent007se:
I really don't know a lot of wxWidgets so I can't speak about.
But really '+1' for Qt suggestions. It's a really really nice Toolkit and, moreover, it's extremely well documented :D (I fall in love of their docs :p).
takeshimiya:
Probably the only two cross-platform toolkits well supported, mature, and with a big community are wxWidgets and QT.
Following the list of iw2nhl I'll give a list to start learning wxWidgets.
* The major advantage wxWidgets haves over QT is native widgets. QT haves to use in some platforms, the so called "styles" (for example, in the next 4.2 ver. it'll feature a theme simmilar to GTK's Clearlooks), but wxWidgets already haves native widgets in almost all platforms, that means in the GTK's case that it uses the own GTK widgets and rendering calls, so it's absolutely the same as a native GTK application.
The same accounts for Windows (it uses Win32, and the programs looks the same as MFC programs), in Mac, Carbon and Cocoa, in Linux, GTK, Motif and direct X11 also. That's not the case with any other existant toolkit right now.
* And the major advantage of QT over wxWidgets is perhaps that QT 4.x (not previous versions) haves a more advanced C++ API, altrough that haves disvantages, like making more difficult to get things working on other compilers, and more importantly, it's more difficult to make bindings to other languages. wxWidgets 3.x will feature an up-to-date C++ API nonetheless.
wxWidgets currently haves bindings in the following languages: C++ (not a binding), Python, Ruby, Perl, Basic, Smalltalk, Java, JavaScript, Haskell, Eiffel, C#.NET, Lisp, Lua, among others.
It works on Windows (3.1 to Vista, including Windows CE), Linux, Unix, DOS, Mac OS 9/X, OpenVMS, OS/2, and some PDA.
It has 1 license:
- for closed source development (free of charge, LGPL-alike license, very permissive)
- for open source development (free of charge, LGPL-alike license, very permissive)
Moreover it has a lot of tools (among others) including:
- "DialogBlocks" to draw your GUI graphically
- "wxSmith" to draw your GUI graphically (included in Code::Blocks)
- "poEdit" to make your program multilanguage in an easy way
- "HTB" a help system used by wxWidgets and available for your programs too
Toolkit overview:
http://wxwidgets.org/about/feature2.htm
http://wxwidgets.org/
http://wxwidgets.org/about/
Documentation:
http://wxwidgets.org/docs/
It supports a lot of database systems:
http://www.wxwidgets.org/wiki/index.php/ODBC
Next 3.x version:
http://www.wxwidgets.org/wiki/index.php/WxWidgets3
Interesting articles on wxWidgets programming:
http://wxwidgets.org/docs/tutorials.htm
http://wxwidgets.org/about/reviews2.htm
Community site:
http://www.wxcommunity.com/
Forum site (for help):
http://wxforum.shadonet.com/
You can find in internet a lot of examples and some tutorials.
Recently, the official book has been published, you can buy a printed copy from here:
http://wxwidgets.org/docs/book/
Also, it has been made available as a free PDF download from here: http://www.phptr.com/content/images/0131473816/downloads/0131473816_book.pdf
wxWidgets applications:
http://wxwidgets.org/about/users.htm
http://www.wxcommunity.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownload&cid=5
wxWidgets compared to other toolkits:
http://www.wxwidgets.org/wiki/index.php/WxWidgets_Compared_To_Other_Toolkits
iw2nhl:
Ok, Takeshi Miya, but mine was not a Qt vs. wxWidgets comparison, I only presented a little overview of Qt!
If you want a true comparison, give also a description of the faults of wxWidgets.
First of all, native widgets: is this really a problem?
1) they are NOT slow (they use native drawing primitives) and are exactly like the native ones
2) Microsoft for some of his programs (most important ones) does NOT use native widgets: MS Office used 13 different widget implementations between the various releases, and they are still present in recent releases, some dialogs use one, some use others); Internet Explorer too does not uses native widgets to draw web pages.
3) under Windows XP and Mac OS X native widgets are used (most of people use theese OS)
4) under KDE (Linux, BSD and Unix) Qt IS the native widget
5) under PDA wich support Qt, it IS the native widget
6) under Windows 9x/2000 it draws (using native, hardware accelerated drawing functions) widgets that are visually identical to native ones
Speaking of wxWidgets:
1) Windows 3.1 is no more supported (means: code has been removed)
2) not all widgets are native under wxWidgets too (see: http://www.wxwindows.org/manuals/2.6.3/wx_wxrenderernative.html#wxrenderernative)
3) there is no "style" for KDE (while this is not true for Qt under GNOME)
I don't know wxWidgets very well, but I read this (probably this is a reductive list):
- very simple painting system (see here for a very-short description of the powerful Qt painting system, with anti-aliasing, gradients, double-buffering, styles and others: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/paintsystem.html)
- documentation is very far from the Qt one
- Qt is all pure C++ programming (if you like full OOP), while in wxWidgets you have a lot of macros and this makes programming less natural to a C++ developer
- Qt supports different programming style (loops and iterators): C++, STL, Java-like
- Qt (human) support from Trolltech is excellent (this is important for large projects)
- with Qt/Embedded you can use a Qt program without anything else than QT/Embedded itself! It includes the OS (Linux based) and a graphic system: nothing more (no X server) is required, so CPU and RAM are free for your application. Now (Qt4) it has become Qtopia (http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/qtopia_platform)
- at a first sight, wxWidgets has much less classes, both GUI and not-GUI related than Qt (means less developer time with Qt: less code and use of well-tested classes)
- also Qt has bindings (althought less than wxWidgets), most used ones are Python (PyQt), C# (Qt#) and Ruby (QtRuby), others are Tcl (Froglogic Tq), Java, Perl, and Smoke; in the past there was also C but it is no more mantained
- there are also transition tools for MFC, Motif, Tcl/Tk and others
- Qt supports also his own scripting language with Qt Script for Applications (QSA: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/addon/qsa)
Like anything else, Qt is not perfect and has its drawbacks, anyway remains among the best C++ toolkits available today (and is continously evolving).
The main drawback is that it requires more RAM and CPU power than native applications, but it is well payed by the easy of developing, the features it offers and the easy of portability.
For a list of supported platforms and compilers:
http://www.trolltech.com/developer/notes/supported_platforms
Obviously I'm not an expert of both Qt and wxWidgets: if there are mistakes, please let me now!
Best regards,
Alessandro
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version