I apologize in advance for the rather lengthy post, but I'm a first time Code::Blocks user and would like to get off on the right foot with this fabulous tool. This sofware has a lot of potential and I want to make sure I am using it properly to get the most out of it.
Now my situation is a follows...
I've gone through the first tutorial on using wxSmith as a gui designer and after a lot of adjusting and unstretching, I finally got my window to look like the tutorial. After this experience, I played around a little more with the second tutorial and started experiencing the same sorts of problems such as, placement, sizing, and inability to add items. Going outside of the tutorial now and just playing with the editor, every time I attempted to add new items to a panel, everything resized back to the little square described in tutorial number one, but I also lost all previous sizing and placements. Also, if I tried not to use 'sizers' and just manually place widgets on a empty panel, the components shift around as I add each one and/or drastically distort in shape (ultra-wide taking up a lot or all of the screen space), etc. I'm assuming that if I want to place a widget in the lower right corner of an empty panel, the new component should stay where I put it and not move previously placed widgets to other locations or change their sizing and/or locations.
Maybe I just don't know how to use wxSmith and it's not intended to be an intuitive designer, but one which requires and exact sequence (or special property settings) for the placement of each visual item on a frame or dialogue in order to appear as expected and stay where it is placed. If this is the case, I can live with that, but I would definitely need that level of specific information.
Please direct me to a very simple, step-by-step guide (which assumes nothing on the user's knowledge of sizers, Jave layout methods, etc.), that I can ultimately use to verify my wxSmith designer operation against.
I have worked with other gui designers in the past, such as MS Visual Studio for VC++, Boa Constructor for wxWidgets, and the Sally IDE for SmartWin. All of these IDEs seem to provide more of a WYSIWYG experience, and perhaps I am improperly making assumptions about wxSmith's operation that are not valid. In any event, I think I must be doing something fundamentally wrong. I sincerely hope that my install is not broken (or worse), wxSmith just doesn't work on my system. Using wxSmith was the overriding factor in my decision to switch to Code::Blocks as my IDE of choice for development of C++, wxWidgets, gui applications.
Just so that the support staff know where I stand, I feel Code::Blocks is an outstanding product, from the design all the way to its plugin architecture. I am absolutely thrilled with the breath of features of the Code::Blocks IDE and I can definitely see that a lot work and foresight has gone into its planning and development. Once my issue with wxSmith is resolved, I'll have just about everything I need in a a windows development IDE.
Outlined below are the steps I used to setup wxWidgets and Code::Blocks:
1) I have successfully downloaded and built, wxWidgets v2.8.7 from source using the MingW gcc v3.4.2 compiler.
2) To build the wxWidgets gcc libraries and DLL's, I altered my 'config.gcc' to use the following permanent settings:
UNICODE=1
USE_ODBC=1
USE_OPENGL=1
USE_QA=1
MONOLITHIC=1
SHARED=1
Then I built two versions of the wxWidgets dll's, one a 'release' and the other a 'debug' version using the following two commands:
cd <wxWidgets-installed-src-dir>\build\msw
make -f makefile.gcc Build=debug
make -f makefile.gcc Build=release
cd ..\..\samples
make -f makefile.gcc Build=release
(Everything compiled and linked successfully except the 'mfc' sample. I don't have Microsoft Foundation Class installed anymore so the failure of this sample to build doesn't bother me.)
3) I have downloaded and installed the Code::Blocks 8.02, using the pre-built binary installer for windows.
4) Successfully set up the Code::Blocks symbols: 'wx' and 'sw', such that I can compile and link either type of gui project without incident.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
P.S. - I'd also like instructions on how to build 'plugins' for Code::Blocks
My System Specifications:
------------------------
MingW: gcc v3.4.2
MingW: make v3.81
TortoiseSVN 1.4.8
Code::Blocks v8.02 (My current preferred IDE)
Windows XP SP2
AMD Opteron 175
RAM: 4gigs
250 gig HD space left
