ANN: wxWidgets Code Exchange

Do you like to promote your wxWidgets based application or component!? Post it here and let's see what the critics have to say. Also, if you found that ONE wx component the world needs to know about, put it here for future reference.
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dsilvia
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ANN: wxWidgets Code Exchange

Post by dsilvia »

Hi!

This is a new site set up to receive links and, in some cases where conditions warrant, code for general availability to the individual developing public for wxWidgets source code. It's just for code and just for free, no commercial code of any kind and no websites. Here's a blurb from the welcome page:
The purpose of this site is to provide a central location for wxWidgets developers to share their code, rather than
having multiple Favorites or Bookmarks in a browser or searching through forum and group archives for postings with
links. It is intended to fill a perceived gap wherein there are few places for individuals to share their efforts.
Most sites are geared toward working groups, organizations, and shareware companies. This site is for the individual
to share what they've found and find what they need. It also offers some limited space for those individuals who may
not be able to share the product of their labors because they do not have access to an internet hosting site. Code
here is free for use by any wxWidgets developer...

Links here are direct and only to compressed archives (zip or equivalent files) of source code. There are no
compiled versions for trial, free, or otherwise, this is a site for coders. It is not intended to be a hub for
other sites, only a download source for developers. As such, you get what you see. You won't be sidetracked to
another site to dig through yet more archives and web pages, just this one site. All links are here and lead
directly to the download described.
This is the address:

http://www.wxCodex.net

You should address any comments or queries to:

[email protected]

fyi,
Dave S.
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Post by tierra »

Just some minor comments I have...

This is great for small code snippets, but anything sizable should use the existing wxCode site so it's versioned in CVS, backed up, and it offers a viable way of switching out maintainers easily. With a proper Bakefile setup, it would also be a candidate for being listed in the new Package Manager that offers an easy way to install it in the wxWidgets installation. Though if this was only used for small code snippets, this forum already has a section specifically set aside for this, but it also offers the advantage that the owner can easily edit the post and update the code. I'm not seeing anything along the same lines here.

Also, I can't see any place for identifying what license the submitted code is under. You did mention this is for free code, but some snippets are direct modifications of wxWidgets code and thus are required to be released under the wxWindows Licence. Also, some have already posted their code in other locations under GPL or other licenses. Many don't want to just post their code in the public domain either given the choice of other OSI approved licenses. The author could post the license with the description, but being able to search based on license would be handy as well.

One last detail that bothers me is that the site style could use a good amount of work. Backgrounds with text or writing of any kind shouldn't be used, I found it hard to read certain parts of the site. The rest of the backgrounds would be better if they were lighter and less distracting. The fonts used seem to change in both size and color on every page, it's really annoying. I get the impression that the site is a toy for kids to play with.

Please don't take any of this offensively, I just wanted to give some feedback on how I think the site could be improved.
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Post by eranif »

I dont see why this site cannt co-exist with wxCode, I presonally think that multiple sites is good (multiple resources, more hits on google, small possibility for downtime of both sites etc), I myself, for example, didnt put my controls under wxCode and I dont see any problem with that.

This initiative is good, and I welcome it, thats the idea of open-source, anyone who wants something can make it (code, sites etc)

/Eran
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Post by dsilvia »

Yes, you see, but the site is not for work groups, organizations, and sharewares, it's for us poor folks hanging out at the fringes who just write code and want to share it.

I understand there are places that have code directly linked to wxWidgets, that's a different story. I write code using the toolkit (from scratch, no cut'n'paste from wxWidgets sources) and I like to share it. I see no one place to do this, like the places there are if you're a project, or work group, or org, or some other nebulous non-individual entity. Some place for the work alone coder, perhaps a hobbyist.

Anyway, I do appreciate your feedback and, no, I take no offense!;)

BTW, however, comments and suggestions would work better if they were emailed to the site, that's why I included the email: [email protected]

thx,
Dave S.
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Post by gururamnath »

Dave,
How about making the snippet section like a Q&A kind of thing ? It will be easy of everyone to navigate and copy the snippets directly rather than downloading a zip file.

You can do something like the one available for Delphi

http://www.swissdelphicenter.ch/torry/

-Guru Kathiresan
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Post by dsilvia »

@tierra
RE: text changing size. If that's happening, check you default browser settings. Other than a couple of places where I make the text larger using font-size: large[r], the font is left to be whatever the browser uses.

@gururamnath
RE: Q&A and cut'n'paste type of transfer. I really don't want to get into a forum or billboard paradigm (in fact my ICRA label disclaims that). There'll be enough to do just managing the data. Besides, it's a space consideration as well. The site isn't huge and I'm not well funded (retired on a disablility fixed income), so it's not likely to grow significantly. There's space available if someone has no place to post their code, but that's about it. Also, the idea of zip archives makes for clean, efficient (bandwidth and time-wise) file transfers. And zips are so commonplace it doesn't seem an overly burdensome requirement.

@eranif
Thank you for understanding my purpose so succinctly!;)

thx,
Dave S.
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Post by metalogic »

eranif wrote:I dont see why this site cannt co-exist with wxCode
I do :D

The welcome page itself states "rather than having multiple Favorites or Bookmarks in a browser" yet by basically duplicating an existing site it's forcing me to add more bookmarks.

I'm with tierra, I'd rather see efforts put into improving what we already have rather than adding more which results in a net dilution of resources.

That said, I appreciate anyone that puts this kind of effort into improving the wx community. If it the effort can be channeled into improving existing solutions then all the better.
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Post by dsilvia »

metalogic wrote:
eranif wrote:I dont see why this site cannt co-exist with wxCode
I do :D

The welcome page itself states "rather than having multiple Favorites or Bookmarks in a browser" yet by basically duplicating an existing site it's forcing me to add more bookmarks.

I'm with tierra, I'd rather see efforts put into improving what we already have rather than adding more which results in a net dilution of resources.

That said, I appreciate anyone that puts this kind of effort into improving the wx community. If it the effort can be channeled into improving existing solutions then all the better.
rather than having multiple Favorites or Bookmarks in a browser
It means having multiple download link Favorites/Bookmarks, not sites. Don't read out of context, it refers to links to downloads throughout the welcome message.
I'm with tierra, I'd rather see efforts put into improving what we already have rather than adding more which results in a net dilution of resources.
Do you mean a net dilution of control?
That said, I appreciate anyone that puts this kind of effort into improving the wx community. If it the effort can be channeled into improving existing solutions then all the better.
Thank you, I appreciate your appreciation and my aim is to improve the wx community, however:

Your comment implies one "correct" solution. I don't know of any field of human endeavor in all of history that can claim to have a single "correct" solution to anything.


Like eranif I have trouble understanding objections to variety and diversity. It's OpenSource, and it sounds like you don't believe in that as it denies control.

I'm not looking to control or deny control, just provide an extra service of a slightly different tenor than what exists. I also don't believe in megalithic structures, they necessitate the kind of control you're advocating, become unwieldly, and generally end up hard to deal with. You know like
bureaucracies (let's hear it for Vogons!;) )
eranif wrote:I dont see why this site cannt co-exist with wxCode
I do :D
In short, it looks like you object to anything that doesn't look like, or do like you think it should. Not very tolerant. There's no reason why it cannot coexist. The same as there are other toolkits than just wxWidgets. Or is it that you think all developers world wide should abandon the toolkits they're working with/on and start putting all their efforts into wxWidgets? Do that and see how fast quality and innovation would plummet!;)

What exactly is it you're afraid of? It's just another site offering a solution to a perceived problem. Microsoft has the kind of central control you speak of. Is that what you think wxWidgets should be like? Closed and in complete control of all aspects? Then it becomes a product and not an OpenSource and that is a completely different matter!;)

thx,
Dave S.
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Post by metalogic »

Wow, you really read a little too much into my post. Forget about Microsoft, control and bureaucracies.

All I'm saying is that I hate duplication.
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Post by dsilvia »

metalogic wrote:Wow, you really read a little too much into my post. Forget about Microsoft, control and bureaucracies.

All I'm saying is that I hate duplication.
Then wouldn't it be more appropriate to simply say "I hope there's no duplication of effort"? Instead of:
eranif wrote:
I dont see why this site cannt co-exist with wxCode

I do :D ( Very Happy )
I only read in according to the implications of your statements. If you choose to take a statement out of context and voice an objection based on an interpretation that's not there (like the one about "yet by basically duplicating an existing site it's forcing me to add more bookmarks. "), then the shoe fits. If it pinches your toes, try a different size!;) And you don't bother to explain what you mean by "duplicating an existing site", nor to justify the statement. There's no duplication at wxCodex.net. It's a different paradigm than wxCode with far fewer requirements and a simpler submission mechanism and a different purpose.

Listen to and think about the tune that's being played before jumping on a bandwagon!;)

thx,
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Post by tierra »

dsilvia wrote:Then wouldn't it be more appropriate to simply say "I hope there's no duplication of effort"?
That would be questioning whether there is duplication of effort or not. This seems like a pretty clean, cut case of duplication of effort to me. You've already said this is only for small, simple snippets of code, but the Code Dump section of these forums has served very successfully for the same purpose and will continue to do so. To make your site more useful than the forum, you'd need to at least add a search option to the site (and would have to eventually), but the forums already have this implemented.

I was thinking along the same lines as metalogic, but didn't want to take it that far at the time.

I don't see what's wrong with using the Code Dump for small snippets of code, and it does bother me that you want to start a new site making me search two different sites for snippets if I really cared to look for them. You're dividing the community and resources by starting a site for something that already exists. Usually the only reason for doing so is if the existing resource hasn't and doesn't cut the job, but that's not the case here, quite the opposite right now.

Some other advantages to using the Code Dump instead aside from search functionality is that users can use code highlighting, and post pictures/screenshots with their code (which is very often needed in regards to GUI toolkit related code snippets). This is all just more features you'll need to duplicate at some point. It's not a question of whether there's duplication of effort, there is. The only feature the Code Dump won't ever have is categorization of snippets, but I don't think that matters when it comes to simple code snippets.
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Post by dsilvia »

tierra wrote:
dsilvia wrote:Then wouldn't it be more appropriate to simply say "I hope there's no duplication of effort"?
That would be questioning whether there is duplication of effort or not. This seems like a pretty clean, cut case of duplication of effort to me. You've already said this is only for small, simple snippets of code, but the Code Dump section of these forums has served very successfully for the same purpose and will continue to do so. To make your site more useful than the forum, you'd need to at least add a search option to the site (and would have to eventually), but the forums already have this implemented.

I was thinking along the same lines as metalogic, but didn't want to take it that far at the time.

I don't see what's wrong with using the Code Dump for small snippets of code, and it does bother me that you want to start a new site making me search two different sites for snippets if I really cared to look for them. You're dividing the community and resources by starting a site for something that already exists. Usually the only reason for doing so is if the existing resource hasn't and doesn't cut the job, but that's not the case here, quite the opposite right now.

Some other advantages to using the Code Dump instead aside from search functionality is that users can use code highlighting, and post pictures/screenshots with their code (which is very often needed in regards to GUI toolkit related code snippets). This is all just more features you'll need to duplicate at some point. It's not a question of whether there's duplication of effort, there is. The only feature the Code Dump won't ever have is categorization of snippets, but I don't think that matters when it comes to simple code snippets.
You've already said this is only for small, simple snippets of code
Where you're getting this I'll never know! I've never made any such statement, only you have.

You know, I'm really not going to waste any more of my time. You obviously have an impression and won't give it up or entertain any alternatives, so, what's the point.

Consider at this point that you have had the last word.
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Post by Jorg »

dsilvia,

Please consider it as positive critisism. I have suffered a load of critisism when I started this forum for the same reason. There was an email list, and not many people believed in the wxWidgets Forum .. Now two years later and 4700 members strong, it is at the stage that if I would pull the plug the wxWidgets community would take over and keep it alive.

I wish the best for your site too, if you beieve in it as much as I believed in the usefulness of the forum, you make it a very attractive and useful site, filling the niches that this forum lacks, or that the wxCode site lacks.

If it is really useful, I am sure the people will use it. If not, you can think of ways how to make it useful.

In other words, do not give up, even when there is some feedback that you did not expect. It can also mean you know now how to proceed, and what to improve.

Good luck with your site. Make sure to advertise it on the wx-users / wx-dev mailinglist as well, to reach a maximum userbase.

With regards,
- Jorgen
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Post by dsilvia »

Jorg wrote:dsilvia,

Please consider it as positive critisism. I have suffered a load of critisism when I started this forum for the same reason. There was an email list, and not many people believed in the wxWidgets Forum .. Now two years later and 4700 members strong, it is at the stage that if I would pull the plug the wxWidgets community would take over and keep it alive.

I wish the best for your site too, if you beieve in it as much as I believed in the usefulness of the forum, you make it a very attractive and useful site, filling the niches that this forum lacks, or that the wxCode site lacks.

If it is really useful, I am sure the people will use it. If not, you can think of ways how to make it useful.

In other words, do not give up, even when there is some feedback that you did not expect. It can also mean you know now how to proceed, and what to improve.

Good luck with your site. Make sure to advertise it on the wx-users / wx-dev mailinglist as well, to reach a maximum userbase.

With regards,
- Jorgen
Hi!

Thank you for the encouragement! I guess sometimes I rise to the bait a bit too easily :(

I will keep it going, tho', as I feel there is a need and I can't help but feel that there are others who feel the same and wish, as I did, that such a site existed.

Thanks again!;)

Dave S.
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