Re: [boost] Re: [gui] The Big Picture

From: Rene Rivera (grafik.list_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-30 22:03:48

Matt S Trentini wrote:
> 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.

In the next development cycle (wxNG) they are planning to rewrite that. 
And they are considering using Boost.Signal as the signal library, or 
something like it.

>   o wxWindows avoids newer coding techniques

The current development version is moving towards newer coding styles.

>     - 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

Don't know how much of that they plan to rewrite in wxNG, but it has 
been mentioned.

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

In the current dev they have support for the wx equivalents of some of 
those to just be typedef equivalents. That is they have an std 
compatible interface and in some cases are implemented as shells around 
the std types. The intent is to continue moving more out of wx that is 
now part of the standard or other libraries like Boost.

>   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

But of course other people think otherwise ;-) And at least you can 
disable much functionality if you don't need it.

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

No clue if they are planning to address that.

>   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...

It's thread safe in the sense that you have to do everything GUI related 
in the main/GUI thread. I really hate that aspect.. but I cope with it :-)

All that is of course AFAIK. I don't fastidiously follow the wx dev list 
so  I may be misinformed in places.

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