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cross platform gui tool kit



paul_cour at verizon.net wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Iam curious, does wxPython
> add any potential to this debate?

Sure, insofar as it highlights the fact that many of the C++ toolkits have
wrappers for other languages.  The wrappers don't always have the same level
of quality as the native interface, or as a toolkit built around a language's
"natural" idioms.

For instance, I have some minimal experience with gtkmm (the C++ wrapper for
GTK+; also known as GTK--).  For me, it was pretty hard to work with, largely
because (at least the last time I looked) it lacked a thorough
example/tutorial  (EDIT: it seems that there is now a whole pile of
documentation, including an online book, so perhaps this critism is no longer
valid).  To be fair, I also did not have C-based GTK+ experience, which I
think would have helped tremendously.  Just looking at the number of packages
on my system that require gtkmm (zero), it seems to not get much use, and I'm
sure there are many reasons for that (QT is more in line with C++ philosophy,
QT's 'designer' is more mature than 'glademm', etc).  I for one, prefer the
non-infectious LGPL license to QT's scheme, but once you see how nice QT is...

On the other hand, the Python bindings for GTK+ get a ton of use (Redhat uses
Python extensively for their sys-admin front-end tools), and from what I've
heard those bindings are pretty good (which is probably the result of a large
organization like Redhat committing to use and improve them).

Matt

>> From: Matthew Gillen <me at mattgillen.net>
>> Date: 2006/12/11 Mon AM 08:14:02 CST
>> To: Stephen Adler <adler at stephenadler.com>
>> Cc: discuss at blu.org
>> Subject: Re: cross platform gui tool kit
> 
>> Stephen Adler wrote:
>>> The gui tool kits is what I'm looking for. I prefer open source, for all 
>>> the open source reasons, but if there is a pay solution which is much
>>> better then I'll consider that avenue. Basically I want to write a GUI
>>> intensive application which I can run on linux, windows and macs.
>> Ok.  Programming language still matters, perhaps more than it should.  The
>> reason I was asking about what your specific license requirements are is that
>> it /can/ make a difference:
>>
>> QT, as Jerry mentioned, is a great C++ toolkit.  I learned a lot about the
>> proper way to use C++ by working with QT.  However, note that it is dual
>> licensed: you can use it for free under a GPL license, but this in turn
>> "infects" your code with the GPL license.  If you want to buy a commercial
>> license from Trolltech, then you develop closed-source apps with it.
>>
>> GTK+: This written in C, and the native interface is C-based (although there
>> are wrappers for C++, Python, and others). It is LGPL, which means it does
>> *not* infect your code with it's license.  So you can write proprietary apps
>> with it for free.
>>
>> There are other C++ ones, like fltk, and someone else mentioned wxwidgets.
>> There are also some for other languages like Tcl's Tk.
>>
>> You can check out this article, even though it's a few years old by now, it's
>> still pretty informative:
>> http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/928/
>>
>> Matt
>>
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