[GRASS-dev] v.digit: Qt or wxWidgets

[Benjamin Ducke]

Wxwidgets does not currently seem to have C support, but that
is not so important:
it is not uncommon for a large software project to use different
programming languages for different parts of the project.
It seems that an objected-oriented language is better suited for
modern day GUI development as it is easy and clean to map GUI
interactions and widgets to classes and methods with a toolkit in C++ or 
Java.
A good GUI, though looking simple can become a very complex issue due
to the many levels of interactions with the user, OS etc. A good OO
framework can help a lot here.

On the other hand, C is still the language of choice for computationally 
intensive algorithms.

So there is nothing that speaks against continuing the low-level GIS
programming in C and putting a C++ GUI toolkit on top of it.

I like Wxwidgets because it is truly open source and has bindings
for many high-level languages (perl, python, .NET, ...). It also uses
native GUI widgets on each platform, so on any OS, the user will
feel comfortable with a Wxwidgets GUI. Plus it has excellent
documentation, API stability and user base support.

Qt is a nice toolkit too, but it is not as open as Wxwidgets. There are
subtle but maybe relevant differences in the licensing scheme and it
seems that there is always a difference between the open source and the
commercial versions. But I think Radim is more qualified to judge this.

Well, that's my thoughts on it.

Benjamin

Michael Barton wrote:
> My understanding is that, as of last summer, there are open source versions
> of QT for all platforms.
> 
> Same for TclTk and wxWidgets
> 
> Michael
> __________________________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution & Social Change
> Center for Social Dynamics & Complexity
> Arizona State University
> 
> phone: 480-965-6213
> fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>From: John Gillette <JGillette at rfmd.com>
>>Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 19:17:52 -0400
>>To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>, Glynn Clements
>><glynn at gclements.plus.com>
>>Cc: <grass-dev at grass.itc.it>
>>Conversation: [GRASS-dev] v.digit: Qt or wxWidgets
>>Subject: RE: [GRASS-dev] v.digit: Qt or wxWidgets
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>>>From: Michael Barton
>>>
>>>I can offer a couple of answers, though Glynn and others can
>>>fill in richer details.
>>>
>>>(2) wxWidgets is an interface building platform, like TclTk,
>>>QT, and GTK. It can be used with C.
>>>
>>>(3) I think that this is answered in (2)
>>>
>>>(4) wxWidgets, like QT and TclTk has versions that run
>>>natively across platforms--inlcuding most *nix flavors, Mac
>>>OS X, and Windows. GTK runs primarily in X11 (though there
>>>are experimental versions under development for other
>>>platforms I understand).
>>>
>>>Michael
>>
>>This probably answers most of my questions.  Obviously wxWidgets
>>is a C++ program which would call the C grass libraries.  I was
>>confused by the relationship of GTK+ and wxWidgets on Linux.
>>wxWidgets "sits on top of GTK+" to use GTK+ as the native GUI
>>on Linux (only).  So based on Michael's answer above, wxWidgets
>>would make it easier to port GUI programs to other systems while
>>doing away with the X11 requirement. This also avoids licensing
>>issues with Qt.
>>
>>So ...  wxWidgets?
>>
>>John
> 
> 
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-- 
Benjamin Ducke, M.A.
Archäoinformatik
(Archaeoinformation Science)
Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte
(Inst. of Prehistoric and Historic Archaeology)
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Johanna-Mestorf-Straße 2-6
D 24098 Kiel
Germany

Tel.: ++49 (0)431 880-3378 / -3379
Fax : ++49 (0)431 880-7300
www.uni-kiel.de/ufg