wxWidgets Discussion Forum

Hello, my name is Ryan, and I am from Indonesia. English is not my native language, so apologize if there are many errors in writing.
WxWidgets is a GUI toolkit that has been released long ago, but I did not see a desktop environment based on wxWidgets. So I think wxWidgets should improving support for x11 platforms, because I saw a number of features that have been implemented in WxMSW not yet implemented in WxX11. Hopefully there is a lot of developers who would be interested to make wxwidgets as a desktop environment like Qt (KDE) and GTK+ (GNOME)

Hi Ryan,

I saw a number of features that have been implemented in WxMSW not yet implemented in WxX11

That's because wxX11 is not meant for routine use on x11 platforms; you should almost always use wxGTK. wxX11 was intended for those rare situations where gtk can't be installed.

Hopefully there is a lot of developers who would be interested to make wxwidgets as a desktop environment like Qt (KDE) and GTK+ (GNOME)

Why? The point of wxWidgets is to be a cross-platform toolkit with a native look-and-feel on the 3 main platforms. It doesn't try to produce its own 'look', as Gnome/Qt do.

Regards,

David

Thank you for responding to my question. I am very pleased.
To my knowledge, Qt and GTK+ is also a cross-platform widget toolkit, but they also still have their own look and feel. If they are pinned on a specific platform, they are also still trying to mimic the look and feel of the platform occupied by them. So there is no obstacle for wxWidgets to have its own look and feel.
If there is a questions, "What are the advantages of using wxWidgets if I can directly use Qt or GTK+?"
Or for the more extreme question "How if the platform that is occupied by wxWidgets is not developed anymore?"
Forgive me, but in my opinion, Qt and GTK+ can become very popular because they are applied to a desktop environment.
I hope wxWidgets can be the best toolkit.

Best regards,

RyanBram

To my knowledge, Qt and GTK+ is also a cross-platform widget toolkit, but they also still have their own look and feel.

Yes, exactly. But wxWidgets doesn't. It doesn't want to; it wants to look native i.e. like MSWin on MSWin; like OS/X on OS/X; like gtk on Linux.

"What are the advantages of using wxWidgets if I can directly use Qt or GTK+?"

None, unless you want the same code to work on other platforms too, using native widgets wherever possible so as to look and behave natively on them.
(Well, almost none. wx uses C++ rather than gtk's C; so that's an advantage of sorts. And Qt's event system is not to everyone's taste.)

Or for the more extreme question "How if the platform that is occupied by wxWidgets is not developed anymore?"

You mean, when MSWin is no longer developed?

I hope wxWidgets can be the best toolkit.

It's already good at what it does. It doesn't, and shouldn't, try to do everything though.

Ok, so from your last answer I can understand that wxWidgets takes different path from Qt and GTK+. wxWidgets goal is to be a cross platform GUI Toolkit. It is like some kind of a wrapper for low level API to the higher level API that can be understand by every platform.
It is clear to me, but I have one last question for this topic :
What do you think if someday there is a group of people who try to develop wxWidgets native look and feel, then making a desktop environment based on wxwidgets?
Thanks for your time to answering my questions.

I frankly see no reason why people would want to write a new toolkit with a new look and feel for a new desktop environment, it's not like we don't have enough choice already... but if some people want to do that, they are free to do so. They should just not expect to take wxUniversal (which is the non-native, little-developed side of wx) for that task because it is really subpar compared to other toolkits, as wx concentrates on wrapping other toolkits

Thanks David and Auria. Your answer made everything clear.

What do you think if someday there is a group of people who try to develop wxWidgets native look and feel, then making a desktop environment based on wxwidgets?

There was one, once: http://wyodesktop.sourceforge.net/
As you can see, it attracted no support and hasn't been updated for 6 years.