My hat off!

[cvo]

Hi all,

I'm new here. I want to spend some words regarding this framework and take the occasion to introduce myself. A humble comment you can skip if you
don't want to waste your time.

As a long time developer, I used to use wxWidgets in the very long past then I switched to MFC/Win32 for many years, then to Qt
and then on other systems. I'm been playing with the samples of wxWidgets in the last days and I'm positively surprised about the level of
complexity this framework has reached. I congratulate you all about it. A very solid work.
I spent the past months updating myself on the UI technology evolution, trying to find a good UI framework in terms of UI controls available
and simplicity to use. I think I will stick with wxWidgets for a while. I might be wrong but it seems Microsoft is still looking for a viable
framework and its search is still going on unsuccessfully. .NetFramework until 4.8 then WPF, then again to UWP and Net Core then renamed
simply Net. The last attempt is WinUI.
I might be very wrong on this side, but it seems there was a trend or a new approach to UI behind the scene many embraced along the years, even Microsoft did that without publicly offering it: A Window to catch all WM_* but from then all event dispatching/drawing etc were managed by the "app" and not by the system. I mean, all owner/custom drawing concerts (user32 & comctrl32 UI controls) that had to take place to have a more appealing
UI and sometimes new UI controls since Microsoft standard controls and advanced ones were not updated so much or not at all.
I'm speaking about the new XML approach in describing the inner hierarchy of UIs and the possibility to use a rendering system behind the scene, as Direct2D, GDI+ and the old GDI, the events are dispatched by the "app" (or framework itself) between the controls etc. On the net it seems it is called DirectUI or something like that.
This gives a big boost on UI design and flexibility. Think about the flickering you get during dialogs resizing in win32 and mfc.
I think your AUI from Kirix follows this new approach. Isn't it?

My requirement was a framework where I could still use C++ and so I think I will stick with wxWidgets.

One last question: I would like to speed up as much as it is possible the UI design and I read there are tools for designing wxWidgets UI and producing its XML equivalent. I installed wxFormBuilder and it seems quite good. Which tool would you suggest or use in prodcution?

Thanks a lot and good work!

[DavidHart]

Hi,

I installed wxFormBuilder and it seems quite good. Which tool would you suggest or use in prodcution?

You've probably already found the wxWiki list. I recommend wxCrafter, which comes with the CodeLite IDE; but I'm biased, as I help out on them.

...tools for designing wxWidgets UI and producing its XML equivalent.

By XML I presume you mean XRC. Before wxCrafter was created we used wxFormBuilder but, at that time, it didn't support XRC for many of the more recent GUI wx classes. Of course that was >10 years ago, and they might have added them by now.

The other front-runner is Code::Blocks. I've not tested it recently, but when I did its main disadvantage was its form builder, wxSmith, which I found distinctly unintuitive. YMMV, of course.

Regards,

David

[cvo]

Hi,

thanks a lot for you answer.

wxCrafter looks very good but:

1. I ran it and expected a sort of "create..." under the File menu. But there wasn't.
2. There might be a toolbar under the menu bar, I see the space taken by it but there is no icons or apparently any buttons.
Then moving the cursor over it I saw, thanks to the appearing tooltips, that there is button to open a project and almost at the leftmost of my monitor, covered by the left edge of my monitor, a button to create a new project. I clicked on it and
3. then I could eventually add a wxDialog and work on it. During that process it asked me to fill some data, base class name & derived class name etc, I just clicked on the finish button thinking there were some default values and an error messages appeared saying that "Please enter a file name". Sorry, a file name?

I feel wxCrafter might be a good program but it seems it is still at development stage.

By XML I presume you mean XRC.

Yea, you know QML, XAML and the like.

Thanks!

[DavidHart]

Yea, you know QML, XAML and the like.

I mentioned XRC because that's what wxWidgets supports.

A bit off-topic here, but:

1. I ran it and expected a sort of "create..." under the File menu. But there wasn't.

No. You start by creating a new top-level window from the Designer tab.

2. There might be a toolbar under the menu bar, I see the space taken by it but there is no icons or apparently any buttons.

There is: see the attached image. Some issue with your Desktop Environment, perhaps? Or resize it a bit?

3. then I could eventually add a wxDialog and work on it. During that process it asked me to fill some data, base class name & derived class name etc, I just clicked on the finish button thinking there were some default values and an error messages appeared saying that "Please enter a file name". Sorry, a file name?

Yes. A wxFrame or wxDialog are top-level windows; they get saved as individual project files. It's the equivalent of the File menu 'create' you mentioned.

I feel wxCrafter might be a good program but it seems it is still at development stage.

Well, we all are . But wxCrafter was first released 10 years ago.

[cvo]

No. You start by creating a new top-level window from the Designer tab.

Some issue with your Desktop Environment, perhaps? Or resize it a bit?

Yes. A wxFrame or wxDialog are top-level windows; they get saved as individual project files. It's the equivalent of the File menu 'create' you mentioned.

mmm I don't think it's my case. Look at the shot in attach.
1. the message box appears when I click on the wxDialog icon on the Designer tab.(edit: that's why I tried to find a "create" menu item the first time)
2. As you can see the toolbar is empty.

If you don't mind I woud prefer to stop here since this forum is not for wxCrafter.

Thanks a lot for your support!

2023-05-23 11_58_16-wxCrafter.png (40.74 KiB) Viewed 138 times

[cvo]

One last thing.

Is wxCrafter open sourced? Is it part of CodeLite source respository?

github.com/eranif/codelite/tree/master/wxcrafter

Or does it have its own?

Thanks again!

[DavidHart]

Is wxCrafter open sourced?

Yes, for several years now. It was originally nagware.

Is it part of CodeLite source respository?

Yes. If you download CodeLite, binary or source, you automatically get wxCrafter too.

Or does it have its own?

Yes, I think it still does too, though I don't have the link stored.

I wonder if that's part of the difference between our images up-thread. I was using my CodeLite instance's wxCrafter, opening a wxcp file that is part of a pre-existing project. Were you using a standalone wxCrafter?

[cvo]

Were you using a standalone wxCrafter?

Yes. I downloaded it from https://downloads.codelite.org/

Sorry but I don't have the time to run CMake etc. and see if I could catch the bug. There is no .sln file inside the repository unfortunately.

But I'm available to test it if you want to. just let me know.

Thanks

Edit: wxCrafter seems more appropriate for my usage. I would like to use it. So again, I'm available to check it in release mode.

[DavidHart]

Sorry but I don't have the time to run CMake etc. and see if I could catch the bug.

Er, which bug?

Edit: wxCrafter seems more appropriate for my usage. I would like to use it. So again, I'm available to check it in release mode.

Good. But perhaps a better place to discuss this would be the CodeLite forum.