[boost] Re: [gui] The Big Picture

From: Matt S Trentini (matt_trentini_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-30 19:57:50

Marcelo E. Magallon wrote:

>  That's something that's been bugging me...
> 
>  How would be that any different from wxWidgets?

wxWidgets is my pick of the (many!) libraries that help write 
cross-platfrom C++ code but it's far from perfect.  I do'nt have a lot 
of time right now (just about to head away to celebrate New Years!) but 
here's a couple of issues I have with it off the top of my head:

   o Event system is ugly
     - An event table like MFC's?  No thanks.
     - Signals are a much neater solution.

   o wxWindows avoids newer coding techniques
     - Using templates and C++ RTTI would have cleaned up their code
     - Again, understand that those features weren't very portable but 
we're in a different situation today

   o Standard library avoidance
     - They reimplemented vector, string etc for the same reasons as the 
last point

   o Huge class list, difficult to find the classes you're looking for
     - Namespaces would have alleviated this issue
     - Also overextends it's bounds - I don't believe it should have 
networking and date/time classes for example

   o wxWidgets is not exception safe
     - (Nor are exceptions used within the library)

   o wxWidgets is not thread safe or thread aware
     - Or it wasn't the last time I used it, from memory some people 
were working on it...

Don't get me wrong, wxWindows offers a great deal and is a very rich 
library.  But it has room for improvement, particularly with the event 
subsystem.

Gotta run!

Cheers,
Matt