my background: i've been developing web applications using php and javascript for the past ten years. before that, i've developed applications using turbo pascal for DOS. in my opinion application and web application development are two different kinds of development (at least it's what i think when i remember back the old days of DOS application development).
now i am in the need to go back to "normal" application development for various reasons. the application i want to build needs a GUI and it has to run on osx and windows. as mac os user it would be very nice for me to get an application as result, that really feels like an osx application. i don't need any special UI components: an explorer/finder like tree, a datagrid and some form-elements would be enough for my needs.
now the problem is, that i don't know where to start: i would classify me as newbie, because it's that long time since i last developed anything other than a web application. are there any recommendations of programming languages and gui toolkits with a not to steep learning curve? or can you recommend any book i should read for getting into cross-plattform osx/windows app development?
many thanks!
thanks everyone! i think i'll have a look at realbasic!
Edit Nov 2011 - a retraction
Most of what I say below is still true however I have now got serious reservations about recommending REALbasic for anyone trying to release commercial-quality applications. To save me remembering to edit this post later, see if RealSoftware have managed to release a robust version of their IDE using the Cocoa version of their frameworks. If not, be very cautious.
It's with a heavy heart that I write this because I still really like the language and think the framework and IDE are well-done. The problem is apparently one of under-capitalization and possibly a software development culture inside the company that consistently fails to deal with a bug regression problem. Many bugs are fixed each release but there appears to be a huge tax on the developers in the number of introduced bugs. They have a very small team for the complexity of the product, especially considering the newly released Web Edition which is effectively an entirely new platform.
It's still theoretically a great product but take advantage of the trial period, test it thoroughly on each of the platforms you plan to target and decide if you can live with any bugs you find because they may be there for a while.
REALbasic.
The language is a powerful, modern OO language that won't be hard for you to adapt to from your vaguely remembered Pascal or current JavaScript. It has most of the power of C++ without the dangerous bits that make debugging a nightmare. You will also find the IDE simpler and easier to deal with than say Visual Studio.
The IDE makes it very easy to throw together a GUI and have it just work on multiple platforms. The Pro version has one of the best cross-platform debuggers I've used and it is easy to just work (say) on a Mac and develop for Windows and Linux, compiling and testing with one click.
There is also a thriving community including many people at your level of expertise so you won't be mocked for being a newbie.
I am a professional software developer with over 25 years experience and currently mainly working in REALbasic, C++, C#, Objective-C and a bit of Ruby. For apps such as you mention, REALbasic is my tool of choice.
edit: I can't believe someone downvoted this but didn't have the guts to add a comment explaining why. I'd heard about prejudice against REALbasic but this is the first time I've encountered it. In what way was my answer inappropriate for this question?
Just to add to my cred, I've implemented cross-platform frameworks used by systems deployed to tens of thousands of end users - I have the C++ cross-platform experience to applaud someone else doing a good job and the REALbasic frameworks are very nice.
The best cross-platform tool I've dabbled in with a relatively small learning curve...especially if you're familiar with Visual Basic...is REALbasic. With REALbasic Pro you can compile a program to target Win32, Linux, and OS X from the same codebase, as long as you're not using OS-specific calls and features (which you can do with plugins or direct calls). Their support has been pretty responsive to my questions, the personal edition (which compiles to only the single target platform you'd downloaded the IDE for) is free for Linux and inexpensive for other platforms, but really you might want to download and try it out. One IDE, relatively inexpensive, and can compile native applications on OS X, Windows, and Linux...it's less hassle, and for me that's important when you want to get a job done.
I'd advise against C and Qt and would also recommend REALbasic.
With your background in Pascal and probably JavaScript you'll feel much more comfortable with REALbasic. I've done a lot of coding in Pascal and C/C++ - where Pascal guides you to avoid programming mistakes, C lets you step right in, even invites you, and then you'll have a hard time figuring out why it went wrong. Qt is a very abstract framework and requires you to learn a lot before you can get something working, just like with C. When compared to the easyness we used to have with TP back then.
RB is much more like Pascal in this regard. And its IDE is quite modern in regards to supporting your programming, with an easy-to-use GUI designer, straight-forward editor to fill in the gaps for handling UI events, code completion, etc.
Only when you get into huge program sizes, RB loses some of its appeal because it is missing tools to give you a good overview of complex class interactions etc.
Another thing is that Qt is more likely to cause ugly-looking Mac apps than RB would. RB visually guides you to get it all aligned nicely - in Qt you have to work with numbers, offsets, etc. to position your objects (at least it was that way when I used Qt 2 years ago).
I've written quite a few x-platform apps in RB and am pretty happy with the results.
You won't probably write those super-nice looking apps that compete with the best on the open small business market, but if you just want to get some solid code working, with an easy-to-design UI that's acceptable to the average user, give RB a try.
It's not free, though. But its rather small community is on your side - they're eager to help, instead of bashing everyone who's trying to talk sense :)
I'm new here but picked up on this thread through the REALbasic User Group. I think my position was similar to yours. I did website design for my work, using mostly javascript (with a little php, not much). I had a Pascal and BASIC background. I'd dabbled it C but didn't like the level of detail you needed to monitor it. It reminded me too much of assembly (which I still have nightmares about from my high-school/college days).
I was looking for a cross-platform language, with a familiar feel to it, but initially started with VB because it was free. I prefer programming in MacOS however, so I tried REALbasic. I found that REALbasic's UI builder was much easier to use than VB's. I'd echo other comments that the community is the most responsive of any user groups I've been involved with. I've since used REALbasic and my Mac to make several programs that over 100 users use every day at my work (on PCs, mostly XP and 2000). I've received compliments on the polish and ease of use of these programs. You DO have to remember to adjust the 'little' things to make it look right cross platform (ie: default button placement is opposite on PC vs. Mac, button sizes are different on Linux, etc). Many people have donated custom classes that do this stuff for you though.
People seem to assume that a "BASIC" language cannot be powerful enough for their purposes. While it is BASIC at it's core (with For..Next, Do..While, and If..Then commands), it ain't your daddy's BASIC. It's much more OOP than anything else I've used, based upon an event-driven structure, which for me was easy to pick up. They have a free trial, so grab a demo and run through the tutorial. If you get stuck, ask for questions on the NUG or Forums at the website and you'll likely get an answer quickly.
You may be interested in the following questions and answers:
Cross-platform development - Go with a cross-platform UI toolkit or native on multiple platforms?
Easiest cross platform widget toolkit?
Should I use a cross-platform GUI-toolkit or rely on the native ones?
Using a Mac for cross platform development?
and many others suggested in the Related sidebar of these questions.
Some answers suggest gtk (which is used by cross-platform gimp). Others suggest native approaches. Some suggest that a Mac is a nice platform for developing for Mac OS X, Windows, Unix and Linux.
I wholeheartedly recommend RealBasic too. I have been using RB for about 8 years now and find it to be a perfect tool for my Companies development needs, from small apps, to large multi-user systems.
It is perfect for beginners and those that are getting back into programming, and also for professional developers.
Highly recommended.
As Andy Dent and others here have indicated, for a newbie to create cross-platform applications it is hard to beat REALbasic (now Xojo).
Sure, there are plenty of other cross platform solutions such as QT (C++), Java, .NET (to some extent) and wxWidgets but they are not something a beginner would be able to use effectively.
I have many years of professional development experience in a wide variety of languages and technologies and I prefer to use REALbasic most of the time.
With that said, you might also consider Runtime Revolution or Adobe Air.
Whilst it might seem tempting to use a language thats platform independent and allow you to write the app once and use anywhere, you will undoubtably be sacrificing something on each, particularly in the UI and user experience.
If you can your best creating something using a native API that lets you take full advantage of the features of the OS to make your application shine.
I would definitely go for C++ and Qt, the code you write once will compile and run without problems on Windows, Mac and Linux. The new IDE that comes with Qt - Qt Creator is brilliant, works and looks the same on Windows, Mac and Linux, you don't need to anything else to start writing cross-platform applications.
I tried WxWidgets but didn't find good IDE, the best one was Code Blocks but GUI Designer is not perfect and has different problems on different systems and the IDE itself is still under heavy development.
Other options are Java and C# but those are not cross-platform languages, those are platforms themselves. Although you wouldn't need to compile code for each platform there will a lot of different issues on the way...
If your GUI's simple enough, why not just create a generic GUI layer, then program to that? Compile a version for each OS using native widgets. That's the best way to ensure native L&F on multiple platforms.
Both the Qt and REALbasic suggestions are good, although they tie you to that particular technology (which I can't imagine would be an issue in this particular case).
Personally, I'd go with Java, because it's worked for me before (I had an app that ran on my PDA, my phone and my desktop), but it doesn't use native widgets.
Adding a late comment here:
Take a look at Revolution. It's sort of like a modern Hyper-card on roids. And it's cross platform (Mac, Linux and Windows). This is a serious competitor to RealBasic and is coming on strong. Though I still use RB (and like it) I'm giving Revolution a serious look at.
I would also look into either Realbasic or Revolution. They both create cross platform native apps. Personally I think Realbasic would be a better choice as it is very similar, language wise, to VB. You can learn some valuable skills with RB and it can grow with your experience. I have been using VB and RB for more then 10 years combined and I think you will be happy.
If you need your code to be cross platform, you would have to go with something like QT.
Although, I would recommend using native API for each one (Cocoa for Mac OS X, .NET or the Win32 API for Windows). User experience will be much better. But of course, that will cost you more money in terms of developers hours.
Related
I'm on the beginning slope of learning Mac programming and in particular Cocoa. It seems to be a comprehensive framework providing all kinds of things every app programmer needs. Qt4 is the same sort of thing at a general level, except it runs on other platforms and uses C++ instead of Obj-C. More importantly for me, I've used Qt4 and so am familiar with it, though hardly expert. I am new to Obj-C and app programming in general, but know C++.
I'd be interested in comparisons of Qt4 and Cocoa, tips for those starting one coming from the other (either way), and discussions on their internals, API design, intended uses, how the designers of each made decisions about how things should work, etc.
What are some recommended readings?
(Of course, I want serious writings by professional developers with real experience with both, not flame wars or fanboy gush or marketing pablum.)
So far I have used Qt4 to implement some cross-platform applications (Windows & Mac) and I used XCode (Objective-C) only for iPhone Applications development - therefore I don't have first-hand experience in using Objective-C for native Mac applications.
I think the best advantage of Qt4 is portability, and I love it for it.
Not only you may port the entire Qt Application to different environments, but with a small effort you can create standard C++ libraries (libraries that not use Qt4 Classes) which are far more useful and portable.
On the other hand, I think the XCode/Objective-C environment is more mature regarding project management and UI Design and off-course you can use the full set of Mac-OS native calls in your application. As you may know Objective-C is fully compatible with C++ and you can use any third party C++ libraries, but if your main environment is XCode/Cocoa you will finally find yourself writing mainly Objective-C code which cannot be ported to any other environment but Mac-OS/iOS.
Therefore to cut a long story short, I think your decision must be based more on your long-term needs than to any environment/design/language/API details:
=> If you know that you will build Apps for Mac-OSX (or iOS) for the next 1-2 years and there is no portability requirements, go with the XCode/Objective-C approach to create a more solid base for Mac Application development.
=> If this is a "Just One Mac/OSX Application" thing and then you will return to Qt4 or another environment, maybe it's better to stick with Qt4, enjoy the advantages of portability and use the experience you already have to reduce the developing time.
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I'm trying to find a programming language I feel really comfortable learning and using for desktop/GUI application development. I realize it's unlikely that any language meets ALL of these criteria, but I'd like to find one that meets as many as possible. I've listed the following features ROUGHLY in order from most desirable/important to least.
Ideal Language Features:
Code Style: C/Java-like
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus
Object-oriented
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac)
Reasonably fast
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike)
Background:
Most importantly, I need something that is straight foward and reasonably familiar, and something that isn't going to require a deep understanding of platform-specific APIs. I can't afford to spend a lot of time learning to develop Win32 apps in C++ for example. I've used wxWidgets, and liked the basic usage, but I'm really wanting to use a language with garbage collection, dynamic typing, and so on.
My frustration with Java, C#, and others is the need for a 3rd party runtime. I don't want end users to have to worry about installing and maintaining a separate platform.
Now then. Ideas??
Haha, due to the constraints you imposed you are now left with HTML and javascript. Good luck :)
The answer to your question is simply: None.
You excluded all desirable languages and platforms in your question.
I'd suggest you throw away your aversion against .NET and go with Delphi Prism. It's not C#, it is cross-platform compatible (everything is officially supported on Mono) and you can create applications that bring the runtime with them (Mono as part of your application).
I'd suggest Groovy and Griffon. Groovy is a dynamic language (like Ruby / Python) that runs on the JVM and integrates with millions of Java libraries out there easily. Griffon is a high-productivity RAILS-like framework for developing GUIs. Groovy has been around for 5 years and has a robust community and is supported by SpringSource (now division of VMWare). Griffon is a bit younger, but also has a fairly robust community.
These seem to fit your criteria.
I know I switched from Java to Grails (web framework written in Groovy that's similar to Rails), and haven't looked back.
Have you looked at QT? It's a really great GUI library and there are bindings for just about every language in common usage. There is a ton of documentation and a wide community. You mention that you want to do something in a language with garbage collection and dynamic typing, but rule out Python and Ruby, which are the 2 most popular languages that fit this criteria (also, they both have great QT bindings, I use pyQT4 and it is just awesome). They really aren't that far from what you do in Java/C, you just end up writing a lot less.
Wow you really limit your choices. I'm going to jump on the QT bandwagon and recommend C++.
Most of the objects in QT inherit from another object that sort of does it's own garbage collection.
There is incredible documentation out there for it.
QT is extremely powerful and has most of the elements you would like, and is extensible if you want to modify elements yourself.
If you do a static build for your release build the people you give the application to won't need distribute any other libraries as they will all be built into the .exe file.
The next iteration of Delphi is said to be cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). I think it meets all your requirements except garbage collection.
No language meets all of those restrictions. Technically, it sounds like you're asking for something almost identical to Java but then explicitly disallow Java for unstated reasons. Conceptually, it sounds like you're looking for Python or Ruby but disallow them for using slightly different syntax.
Given the order of priorities, I think the closest you'll find in existing languages might be C with the Boehm GC and GTK+ for the GUI (and GLib for the object system). You do say "No GTK" under "No third-party runtime required", but I'm not sure what "runtime" you refer to here, since IIRC it's just a bunch of C libraries.
Given the specificity of the requirements, I think your best bet is to write your own language. Compilers really aren't that hard to write anymore. There are off-the-shelf tools to help with parsing and code generation and math and text processing and GC and so on. Once you get started you'll probably find people willing to help port it. Many existing cross-platform GUI libraries (like wxWidgets) use C/C++ so if you have a decent FFI you can use that, too. You want "support" and "documented" but if you're the primary author you'll understand it better than anybody. The hardest part about a language is design, and it sounds like you have a picture in your head of exactly what the language should be already.
There are a few if you can accept either WxWindows or GTK or QT as a toolkit.
In the order of my personal preference would be:
Eiffel Studio
D with the D-GTK binding
F#
javascript?
might be not the fastest one and doesn't fully address all your needs, but hey... its everywhere and easy to learn
didn't read after the list, but with prism You can probably achieve most your goals.
or You can try Qt and c++ autopointers
Silverlight could actually give you enough cross-platform availability to use C#/.NET, but I am not sure it fits all your requirements.
Sounds like Action Script 3 will make you happy. But it's more web oriented but you could try to make a projector or an Air application. I think it's a good solution because you can do anything with AS3 (image, video, text, sound video text keyboard and mouse input, pear to pear and 3d since flash 10, ...) and it's cross platform and you can use it on the web or your desktop :)
If you are a pure root coder (using vim and only command line for ex) you can make your whole app without using the flash ide, by just writing your as files and compiling them with mxmlc (that comes with the free flex sdk).
I suggest Python. Although it doesn't fit your first requirement of coding style, but it fits all your other requirements!
GUI Development: Easy, elegant, and platform-Native styling --> Yes
I'd suggest that you try wxPython (wxWidgets for Python). This is so "native" on Python that about 90% of all the wxWidgets code examples on the Internet are for Python! I've personally used TkInter, Gtk and wxPython. All of them are well supported on Python. My personal choice is wx.
Community: Widely documented, active development, friendly & helpful, unity of focus --> YES
Object-oriented --> Yes
Garbage Collection, no worrying about pointers, etc --> Yes
Native compilation, NO 3rd-party runtimes like GTK or .NET --> Yes. - You can eiter:
pack a single dll with your code - or
use py2exe which is able to create a single executable out of your project
Multi-platform (can be compiled on *nix, Windows, Mac) --> Yes.
Reasonably fast --> Yes. Well, it's not the fastest out there, but close enough that some serious projects are done in Python only.
Mixed typing (soft-typed, OR both soft- and strict-typed -- i.e. Pike) --> Yes.
Regarding your first requirement I'd say that you should give Python at least a try. It requires very little effort to get started. There is a 2-hour tutorial which gives you a serious introduction. There's a Basic to Advanced tutorial where I'd almost guarantee that you'll be writing your first application on the second day.
I also feel your pain Brian. Most time when I ask questions about desktop GUIs the only answer I get is: "Make it Web". You really nailed it, since your question is still open inspite some really non-constructive answers...
I've been watching closely JavaFX 2, it solves some of Swing problems and seems very promising. This may be the only thing Oracle did right since getting Java from Sun.
UPDATE:
.NET is finally becoming an open-source, cross-platform solution. .NET Core allows native compilation for multiple devices.
The new .NET experience is exactly what I was looking for when I asked this question several years ago.
Original:
Lots of good suggestions, despite being salted with negativity throughout.
I think I'm going to go with C# and Mono. I like C# well enough syntactically (I've been accused often of being shallow, but the syntax of a language is just as important to me as its features, because I spend a lot of time writing in that particular syntax). Although similar to Java, it has a few unique features that I appreciate, and I think the community seems more open-minded.
My biggest complaint about Java besides performance, frankly, is the community. It seems infected with an excess of arrogance, and it also seems to be very fragmented in terms of support for and development on various overlapping libraries, tools, and so on. The community surrounding Mono seems much more organized.
Actually, so does .NET itself, for that matter. Sun is a big enterprise company that seems every bit as confused about what it IS and what it DOES as Microsoft or IBM, yet they seem to be doing an even worse job of leading and organizing their platform than Microsoft, which is pretty tragic.
I'm a Windows (native, not .NET) programmer and I'd like to port an application to the Mac.
Actually, I believe it will be more of a rewrite, as the original depends on many activex controls.
As I have never used a Mac in my entire life, I'll need some guidance. O:-)
a) What book(s) would you recommend to make the move from Win32 to Mac OS?
b) Is there anything similar to Delphi (RAD) for the Mac?
c) Can anyone recommend (or not) Lispworks (www.lispworks.com)?
d) Is there anything similar to the Windows market of 3rd party COM components (so I don't have to write everything)?
e) Anything else I should be aware of the Mac market?
f) Oh, BTW, what Mac should I buy? O:-) (must be a laptop)
Thanks in advance
I've taught Cocoa programming to several Windows-experienced programmers. You may find a previous post on the subject useful.
Cocoa is a very different way of thinking then MFC and its kin. You will do much, much better if you take the time to learn how Cocoa approaches things and adapt to its mindset rather than trying to find the quickest way to implement your current way of thinking in ObjC. It is possible to write MFC-style code for Mac, but you will always be fighting the framework if you do. I've seen a lot of Windows developers struggle with this.
The best book to learn Cocoa is Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. Assuming you are a C++ developer with a solid OOP background, this is the book to start with. If you have limited Object Oriented background, then start with Programming Objective-C 2.0.
You would be amazed how fast Objective-C can be to code once you understand the patterns. It really can be stunning compared to C++ in my experience. There are more RAD-like systems like REALbasic, and you can develop Cocoa apps in Ruby now which can be a bit quicker. But there really is no substitute in the Mac market for ObjC. It's hard to make an app that works like a Mac app without using the Mac frameworks, and Mac users tend to be much fussier about such things than Windows users.
I have no background in LispWorks, but LISP seems a terrible language for developing the kind of rich UIs that Mac apps are known for. I like LISP (quite a lot actually), but Functional Programming's "no side effects" philosophy seems at odds with most rich UI goals (especially as the Mac UI becomes more and more animation-centric). If anything, Mac programming is moving towards Declarative rather than Functional programming (Core Animation and Grand Central Dispatch have a lot of Declarative concepts creeping in).
There is not as large a third-party component market as there is for Windows. Some of this is because Cocoa already provides such a rich set of components, which MFC does not, and because well-behaved Mac apps are expected to use those components so that you work like all other Mac apps. There is definitely little market for commercial components in the vein of RadControls for .NET (very nice toolkit, that one). But there are quite a few nice free components out there with flexible licenses (generally MIT-based). A few of my favorites:
Positive Spin Media's excellent tabbar control
OmniGroup's frameworks (though I never use them "as is;" they're better used as examples of how to do things)
Growl
Sparkle
RegexKit
CocoaDev's ObjectLibrary list of other stuff
As I mentioned before, Mac users are picky about their UI. Much, much more so than Windows users. They expect things to be polished, and they expect things to integrate with all the little things that make Macs nice. That means drag-and-drop, Spotlight, services, Applescript, Expose, QuickLook, integrated spelling check, etc. etc. It's very hard to do all these things right if you don't use the built-in frameworks. That's why I recommend new Mac developers start at the beginning and learn the frameworks.
For a Mac, if you have a bunch of hardware lying around (like keyboards and monitors), then a Mac Mini is a nice cheap box. iMacs are great if you want an all-in-one, and any MacBook is appropriate if you like portability. There is no Mac on the market today that is not a perfectly fine development box. Obviously if you do a lot of work, an 8-core Mac Pro makes compiling much faster, but I've done a lot of professional development on a 13" MacBook. If you want to get in as cheaply as possible, look for refurbished or used (I love my refurbished Mac Mini). Any Intel-based Mac is going to be fine for development, at least while you're getting started.
If you are familiar with C, you may want to learn Objective C since that is the Macs "native" programming language. It's also what you have to use to write iPhone applications. Cocoa is Apple's primary API that will have a lot of the tools you are looking for.
a) Read this thread for book recommendations: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7571/cocoa-and-objective-c-resources
b) Apple makes Xcode for developing in. There are certainly better ones out there, but it's not bad.
d) Cocoa is Apple's main API, which provides "core" services like CFNetwork for networking. There is also core data, core audio, core animation, core image, core location,... Underneath it all, OSX is Unix, so you have access to many unix/linux libs.
e) The iPhone is a big part of the Mac market. The iPhone and OSX development environments are not that different, so you can learn both.
f) Any Mac is sufficient for most development. If you want a laptop, it's really a question of screen size and price. But I would recommend at least a 15 inch screen. You don't need to spend extra for a faster CPU, but you may want to get a larger hard drive.
If you've done your native Windows programming in C and/or C++, you may have an easier time migrating your application to C#/.Net, and then running it in Mac using Mono. At least some of the available third-party .Net components will run on Mono (see http://www.mono-project.com/Third_Party_Controls_Status).
I have no idea what Mac you should buy - I recommend getting one of the pretty ones.
a) ...
b) You could use Python coupled with wxPython and be cross platform. Python is included by default with Mac OS X.
c) ...
d) I'm sure there is, but I can't tell you more. If you use Python, you get tons of third party libraries for free.
e) They don't take kindly alien GUI guidelines:
Word 6.0, launched in 1993, is widely considered to be the worst version of Word ever for the Mac, as it was based on the same codebase as Word 6.0 for Windows. That meant that it looked and worked more like Windows software than a Macintosh program. Mac users were so up in arms that Microsoft actually released a Word 5.1 downgrade to unhappy Word 6.0 owners.
f) Mostly any iMac will be good enough for programming. Choose the one that you like the most and has lots of RAM.
e) Its a small market.
f) An iMac. Edit: since it says laptop - Macbook Pro 13 is a great deal.
We are selling an image processing application (about 120k lines of code) developed with wxWidgets. We planned everything to be as most cross platform as possible in case the porting from Windows to other OS was needed. And in fact we are going to realiza a version for Mac.
We haven't tested wxWidgest on Mac yet, but we haven't read very good things about it.
In general, do you think is it worth to port from wxWidgets to QT? Do you believe it will be an hard and long job?
Is QT for Mac much better than wxWidgets implementation?
Is QT much more productive that wxWidgets?
I would like to add that we would'n like to keep code bases for gui, so the choice is just wxWidgets vs QT.
Test your application on Mac, and then decide. If there are only a few wrinkles to iron out, why put in all that extra work to switch toolkits?
It will be a long hard job. Without knowing more about your application and situation, it is hard to say whether making the switch is worth the effort. I do know that I would rather work on a Qt app than a wx app.
I have a friend who recently switched a significant wx application to Qt, and he is quite happy with the change. Mac support is one of his (boss's) important features, but I think wx's support for Mac was adequate, if not stellar.
My experience has been that Qt is definitely more productive than wx.
It is worth noting that wxWidgets on the Mac is transitioning to Cocoa. This should be done for wxWidgets 3.0, but is testable with the development release wxWidgets 2.9 now. Is Qt Cocoa or Carbon based?
We have an application that runs under Windows and the Mac, built using wxWidgets. The application performs very well on both platforms.
I recommend switching over to Qt. wxWidgets is a GUI toolkit, whereas Qt is an application framework with much, much more features.
I can't say anything about their mac implementations, but i can clearly say that i am far more productive using Qt. When i was using wxWidgets, i was a student and then when i got a job, i started using Qt.
wxWidgets gave me a feeling of incompleteness, but as i said, this may be caused by the fact that i was an inexperienced student but nonetheless, i think Qt is way better.
Until you have investigated more and have a good reason(s) to switch toolkits, then absolutely not.
We are using wxWidgets for Linux & the like, Mac, and Windows. It's a great toolkit and certainly much more than just a GUI.
Like dtw and NuSkooler, we are using wxWidgets on Mac (carbon/cocoa), Linux (32/64), Windows (32/64) and all works fine. In wx, we use gui, filesystem, threads, html libs.
+1 for Qt
I have used both wxWidgets and Qt extensively on different projects for the Windows platform writing C++ applications.
Having used both and compared the two after, I would absolutely use Qt over wxWidgets. You need to consider (as some of the others have pointed out) if the re-factoring effort is is something you have time for and are willing to do.
Also consider the cost -- this may not matter in your situation, but unlike wxWidgets, the Qt Library is not free for commercial use. I have spoken to TrollTech at length and read through their licensing agreement to verify this; you definitely have to pay unless you GPL your application.
Regarding licensing see:
http://qt.nokia.com/about/licensing/frequently-asked-questions
"Will you continue to offer Qt under a
commercial license?"
"Yes, absolutely. Our commercial
licensing will continue."
"Why would I want to buy a commercial
license? What is the difference?"
"The commercial Qt license includes
email support, access to upgrades and
allows you to develop fully closed
source software. The LGPL carries some
restrictions regarding the ability for
users to relink libraries and other
restrictions that may impose
architectural requirements that some
organizations might not be comfortable
with."
Qt is definitely worth the money though, even if you are not doing cross-platform development. It has a lot more and better documentation. Qt and wxWidgets are not perfect... The fact that they are bloated and provide APIs for networking, data structures, and database handling is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes sticking with the STL or Boost libraries (if you're coding in C++) is a much better solution.
Good luck.
-bn
+1 for wxWidgets. A big project of mine used wxWidgets and found it a nice framework to use, and an easy enough framework to get your head around to modify if you need to (to support Mac specific features).
Try it: you could be 80% there when you first generate the binary.
Ok, this is an interesting question to ask because everyone has a say in it.
What is your favorite library to program in for GUI's and the language that you program it in. Give a short reason why. (ex. Gtk, Qt, Windows, etc..) Just an FYI, this includes any scripting language that you program a GUI in Python, Perl etc...
Frankly I've always done Gtk in C, but I'm starting to warm up to Qt in C++ with the new KDE. I've never been a big fan of Windows programming.
ChrisW. stated that I did not give a reason for Gtk/Qt so here goes. I started with Gtk because when I started programming GUI's I was working in Linux and there was more Gtk information available. Started utilizing Qt when I started working more in KDE but really the move to Qt was based on trying to move to C++ and learn more languages. I've never been a fan of basic Windows programming, but I do enjoy a little DirectX now and then :P
Recently I had the opportunity to work with both wxWindows and QT, while some time ago I wrote some small programs using FLTK and Gtk. My conclusion is that widget libraries tend to be very similar; each one has its strenghts and its quirks.
Instead of advocating a specific library, then, I would like to advocate the use of high level languages in GUI programming: the development cycle is way faster and GUI programs are rarely CPU bound, so the performance hit is rarely a problem.
If a GUI program has to perform some intense computations, just develop a core library in C or C++, but keep the interface in Python or whatever other interpreted language.
People like to bash Swing for being old, slow and ugly, but it's just not true. Swing is mature, is faster than ever on Java SE 6/10, looks decent enough, and is tolerable to program. Above all, I've found Java + Swing to be the most trouble-free cross-platform combination. It also works remarkably seamlessly with Jython (Python on JVM).
SWT could also be an option, but so far I've been happy with Swing.
I realise you're focusing on application GUIs but if you want a quick, powerful and fun way to visualize anything on your computer, you can't go past Processing
From the site:
Processing is an open source
programming language and environment
for people who want to program images,
animation, and interactions. It is
used by students, artists, designers,
researchers, and hobbyists for
learning, prototyping, and production.
It is created to teach fundamentals of
computer programming within a visual
context and to serve as a software
sketchbook and professional production
tool. Processing is an alternative to
proprietary software tools in the same
domain.
WPF in particular, and XAML in all its reincarnations (WPF, Silverlight, Moonlight).
C# on top of .Net 3.5/Mono: $0
Visual Studio Express/MonoDevelop: $0
Being able to tell the designer "make my program pretty" and continue coding features: priceless.
I liked writing to video memory under DOS: for an animated game (i.e. an Asteroids clone), that was as fast (performant) as I knew how to do it (certainly faster that using the BIOS API).
This is really a somewhat subjective question, so there is no best or correct answer to it. The following is based on my (limited) experience:
I personally like wxWidgets with PLT Scheme for writing simple but flexible GUIs. There are much more advanced toolkits, but I usually do not need their features. wxWidgets is flexible and the Scheme interface follows Scheme traditions of being powerful with a relatively simple structure. I like the fact that wxWidgets is portable, and yet tries not to actually draw its own widgets, but can use native or common toolkits of the environment it is used under. It is written in C++ but I never used its C++ interface.
That is not to say that in my opinion Scheme will generally be the optimal language to write your application in. In fact there are many kinds of applications I would not write in Scheme, even though I like the language. But regarding the GUI programming part, that is my favourite because of its straight-forwardness, and the way that a functional language like Scheme goes well with declarative-style GUI programming.
Of course you will not have the same level of control when using that as when having your program involved in every stage of the window construction and input reaction, by using an event loop (such as with Win32API or Xt/Intrinsics). But that is not always convenient and often unnecessary, and seems to become decreasingly common.
Note: The wxWindows toolkit was renamed wxWidgets, but my installation of a rather recent version of PLT Scheme still comes with the older wxWindows. I am not sure whether there is an updated package of wxWidgets available or if it is going to be included in a future version of PLT Scheme.
Qt4 without question for me. Now that it has an LGPL license it makes sense for all kinds of applications that previously weren't possible. Additionally, it changes C++ in ways that dramatically improve the experience of using the language. (Things like a foreach and forever loop, atomic operations on integers, and memory management)
Gtk and is the primary window-drawing graphical subsystem I have experience working with (and is therefore my favorite XD).
As far as general graphics subsystems go, however, OpenGL (typically in combination with GLUT) has been an easy and productive ride for me. Regrettably I have little DirectX experience to compare to, though :S
For writing souped-up versions of standard Windows components, I loved Borland's VCL, and am very pleased with .NET.