Subj : Re: wxWidgets
To   : comp.programming
From : Rob Thorpe
Date : Mon Jul 04 2005 12:13 pm

Jyrki Alakuijala wrote:
> Jon Harrop wrote:
>
> > They all suck for graphics. Look at OpenGL, glut and SDL for
> > platform-independent stuff.
>
> In my opinion, GLUT is really terrible for GUI programming, and
> only usable for making the most simple prototypes. The only
> almost acceptable widget set that is widely available, free,
> and almost good, is wxWidgets. (Qt is not that free, and
> gtk does not work that well in Windows.) Again, the travel
> path of an wxImage to the screen is utterly complex and slow,
> but an OpenGL extension is available for it, too.
> I do not know how well wxWidgets integrates with Ocaml, though.
> Being pre-stl c++-code, dating back to times when inheritance
> was considered almost a necessity, wxWidgets does not have the
> most beautiful architecture.

Personally I find it very tiresome that libraries like wxWidgets force
the user to use C++ and the object-orientated paradigm exclusively to
write GUI code.

> It is a bit strange that wxWindows was forced to change its name
> to wxWidgets because of pressure from Microsoft (as they have
> a product called Microsoft Windows XP). Previously, there have
> been many similarly named product families, like Sun's OpenWindows
> and X Windows etc. -- How come Microsoft Windows did not conflict
> with them? Perhaps they just bought the wxWindows team off their
> original name (similar to the Lindows deal) ... ?

X is not officially called "X Windows" it is simply X or "The X window
system".  Many systems have been called things like "the Foo window
system" before, so it would be very difficult for MS to argue against
it.  (Though some day they may try.)

.