Re: [Mingw-users] MinGW GUI Libraries

[Tatsh <dd...@gm...>]

- Nokia (formerly Trolltech) loves Qt (strictly C++ only) and that's why they 
package MinGW with it. This my personal favourite as its incredibly easy to 
use, looks great, and looks like Windows (but not perfectly) in Windows and 
same for OS X.
- Gtk+ (C and C++) was ported to Windows with MinGW in mind (VC++ works but 
it's best to use 6.0 only). Works well but you will need a lot of helper 
libraries also installed. http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html
- wxWidgets (C++) comes with CodeBlocks I think (which comes with MinGW). 
http://www.wxwidgets.org/

All of these are cross-platform and have cross-platform threading. Another 
reason why I would choose any of these as opposed to something stuck on 
Windows.

Who uses Qt? Autodesk, KDE developers, so many other projects.

Who uses Gtk+? GIMP developers (Gtk = GIMP Toolkit), Pidgin developers 
(formerly Gaim). Tons of other projects.

Who uses wxWidgets? Audacity is honestly the only one I can think of right now 
but I'm sure there are many more. wxWidgets is probably the lightest of the 
three.

The thing about using any of these is that they are extra overhead to make 
your life easier. If your application is truly for Windows only, then I would 
strongly suggest Win32 API but keeping the code abstract enough so it is easy 
to add to another toolkit at any time.

Example:
generic_project/
  code.c
  morecode.cpp
  CMakeLists.txt <-- I really like CMake :-)
  libs/blah_lib/
  gui/
  gui/win32/main.cpp <-- Now this is where main() or WinMain() is called.
  gui/qt/main.cpp <-- This is where main() for Qt is called.

A build option should control whether or not you would use one GUI or not.

To compile for Windows, you must set the -mwindows switch in GCC and you may 
want to also use the -mthreads switch. -mwindows turns your program from being 
recognised by Windows as a command line application to a GUI application. At 
that point, calls to printf and similar functions will work but will go to the 
'special device' nul. Code is out there to demonstrate how to give you a 
'debug' command line window where you can redirect printf and similar 
statements.

Tim McDonough wrote:
> Up until now I've been using MinGW for command line type applications.
> Is there a preferred or recommended GUI library that is more popular
> than others for this development environment?
> 
> Tim
> 
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Tatsh
www.tatsh.net
dd...@gm...