Re: Cross-Platform GUI

[John Taber <jtaber johntaber net>]

I've looked into this extensively and one of these days will finish up my blog 
writeup on it.  For now:

There are plusses and minuses for each - make a list of the most important 
things you need and see how they compare.  

Fltk - pretty simple to use.  Nice small, static compiles.  Dialogs are easy 
to code but not the best looking.  There is no layout manager, just a awkward 
resizable command.  Awkward, static callbacks instead of signal, slots.  No 
major backers or major projects using it.  Most examples and documentation 
are C style.  I never really understood Fluid as a dialog editor.  

wxWidgets - didn't explore too much after looking at code - I guess if you are 
coming from Visual C++ it might look more familar.  I've read some comments 
against it, other comments that say it works great - I believe Audacity uses 
it.   Seems to be a viable option.

There's also Fox toolkit - seems to have excellent Ruby bindings.  No Mac 
support.  Seemed pretty ugly.  Supported mostly by 1 person (though he is 
very responsive).  No dialog editor.

Gtkmm - gtk is being backed by most major Linux players (Red Hat, Novell, 
Sun .... )  And of course Gnome, XFCE, all the Gtk apps.  Gtkmm is very c++ 
like.  Uses the excellent libsigc for signal/slots.  Has a very good layout 
manager.  Confusing library dependencies but uses Pkg-Config to make 
compiling easy.  Use XFC documentation, it's much better.  (XFC is a great 
library too, but only for Linux).  Gtk apps certainly being used on Windows.  
Mac ?? not too sure - maybe others can comment.  

Depending on your situation - you might want to look at Qt - it's a good, easy 
to use toolkit.  Very cross-platform, excellent documentation.  Good looking.  
Very C++ oriented.  The moc signal stuff is non C++ but works well.  Moc 
causes Qt to be slow to compile.  Well supported.  As someone who has to sign 
the checks, I think it is way too expensive for our use but it's your call.  

Don't forget java & SWT - the advances of gcj may bring native compilation of 
Swing.  And the next version is supposed to support native widgets.  

Bottom Line:  We chose gtkmm based mostly on the industry support for gtk, the 
free license, the layout manager abilities, the availability of glade (though 
we're not using it yet), and libsigc.  If XFC becomes cross-platform we will  
strongly consider it (both use mostly the same gtk wrapper commands).  

hope this helps.
John

On Sunday 08 May 2005 08:56 pm, Fabian Arocena wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> I''ve explored a bit about Cross-Platform GUI and have found 3 options
> that are quite attractive:
>
> - GTKmm
> - wx Widgets
> - FLTK
>
> Has anybody worked with some of these ? Is one of them better than the
> others ?
>
> Thanks,
> Fabian.
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