I work in the embedded world, using mainly C and no GUI at all (because there is no display screen).
Moving over to the non-embedded world, in which I have nearly no experience, what is the best programming environment (langauge/IDE/etc) for me to build a simple window-form application that will run on all the common platforms: windows/linux/mac-os ?
I do not want to build a web-app.
I have my eye on Python and one of it's widget libraries, QT or WxWidgets. Is that a good option ?
I like GTK+ personally but that or any of the ones you mentioned should be OK. I don't know which is the best in terms of least RAM usage.
Both wx and QT have embedded/universal versions where the widgets are drawn directly.
They can both be called from python,but if you have a very small system python or py2exe might not be available.
Unless you want to embed HtmlWindow I'd go with wxWindows... works everywhere without problems so far for me.
I have both worked with PyQt and wxPython extensively.
PyQt is better designed and comes with very good UI designer so that you can quickly assemble your UI
wxPython has a very good demo and it can do pretty much anything which PyQT can do, I would anyday prefer PyQt but it may bot be free for commercial purpose but wxPython is free and is decent cross platform library.
Qt is a good choice to start with. In my opinion it has a best (easy to use, simple & informative) API Documentation. Package also includes many examples - from very basic to complex. And, yep, it`s truly crossplatform.
Check Qt Licensing page, the library is free only for GPL projects.
I`m using QDevelop as text editor, but there are many other alternatives - Eclipse, KDevelop, Code:Blocks, VS plugin & etc.
Why not use swing and java? It is quite cross platform, and looks reasonable for form apps. If you squint a bit and ignore the java, its quite pleasant - or alternatively, use one of them dynamic languages on the JVM (Groovy is my recommended one).
What kind of application is it going to be? Have you considered a web-based application instead? Web-based apps can be super flexible in that sense - you can run them on any platform that has a modern browser.
By far the simplest choice for creating native cross-platform applications is REALbasic. Give it a try and you'll have a working app for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux in minutes. No run-times or other stuff to worry about.
I think you should try Html Application.It is something like web page it contain DHTML,java script,ActiveX but it is execute like .exe .
Edit:
Sorry for advice you html application.I just know it can run on windows only.
Related
I want to develop a Windows application. Honestly I care little about cross-platforms for now (but still would be good)
I want to use Ruby, since it has quite a simple syntax and is so.. well, simple and easy to learn.
My application is like a "game level creator", where you can design your own level and then run it with another application which is a "game level player" by reading the project file created by the creator app. You get the idea.
Now, I got a new PC and is completely clean. Absolutely no trace of my old Ruby experiments and fails.
First of all, I will need to choose a GUI platform for my Ruby application! Can you recommend me one? I have heard of Shoes and Tk, but want to know what you think.
Have you considered IronRuby? It's an implementation of Ruby that runs on the .Net platform, which means you have access to all of the standard Windows Forms libraries, if you decide to run in Windows. http://ironruby.net/
According to david4dev, it also runs well on Mono, which makes it great for cross-platform compatibility, as the Mono platform runs on Mac OSX and Linux, as well as Windows.
Jorg W Mittag says that using the WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) is an even better option for creating GUI's since Mono has a very strong implementation of the WPF. The WPF was created to be platform agnostic and is better suited for cross-platform development over WinForms, since WinForms is tightly coupled with the Windows OS.
I recommend using Shoes out of the 2. Shoes is a nice simple way to build small applications using Ruby. The reason why Shoes is better than TK for your application is that it makes it very simple to create graphics.
Shoes is well suited to small apps and it will be quite hard to create a game creator using it.
You are probably better off using an SDL based game framework such as Rubygame . This works on Linux, Windows and OSX.
For the simple, typical editing most GUI kit will do just fine. However, for the more complicated (and especially the level creation/editing) you're mostly gonna end up using a lot of self-made rendering in DirectX/OpenGL.
I don't know a lot about Ruby though, but I'd consider GUI kits Or frameworks with that aspect in mind.
Just thought I'd share my 2 cents :)
After a long evaluation period of mainstream toolkits Qt, WxWidget, GTK i came to the conclusion that it does not make sense to religiously equalize the different platform. Now more then ever before.
In the days before Java portability meant, that platform dependent code was located in known places and should be small but not none. No write once, run everywhere marketing.
Is there any GUI tookit - experimental or commerical (even outdated or dead projects) - that is going this way. It would need to give me native widgets of course. I would like to have a look at them before i start my own toolkit
If you think this is a stupid idea tell me why (cause everybody else is doing it differently there may be a reason i don't see)
As someone who zealously believes that GUIs should be drawn with native widgets, I must say I've been very impressed with wxWidgets, although you mention that at the beginning.
As far as I know, wxWidgets uses native widgets whenever possible, and indeed it does also include platform-specific features that are neither possible nor relevant on other platforms. A good example of this is how you can use the native Mac OS X menu, while on other systems it won't do squat. There are other and better examples.
I must mention wxPython in particular, in case you either don't want to or just don't have the time to write a C++ program. wxPython astonished me when I tried it out first, and I even managed to make a stand-alone .exe file from it that worked on a fresh install of Windows 2000 without any updates or particular runtime environments.
If wxWidgets doesn't suit your needs, I wonder what would. :) Hurray for wxWidgets!
AFAIK, wxWidgets uses the platform's native widgets whenever possible.
Have a look at SWT, it tries to use the widgets of the underlying platform as much as possible.
I am working on a new small utility desktop application but I am not really able to choose the GUI framework to use. I have worked on both JAVA,C# and C++, so language is not really a constraint. My criteria are:-
A very well designed architecture, something like QT. It's better if it follows typical C++ design methodologies.
Layout management should be easy, intuitive and not really cumbersome. I hate adjusting pixels on screen.
Its license should be open.
It should look good :)
Mentioned QT seems to comply to all your requirements. QT has "deploy everywhere" attribute, whilst Java needs no deploying at all (it depends on what is use of your utility).
Ad. 2 QT has really convenient GUI designer.
Ad. 3 LGPL. Usually it is enough.
Ad. 4 It is always matter of taste. IMO QT4 looks awesome under linux, but it's windows look'n'feel is correct at best. It's strong point is, that without additional tweaks it almost everywhere looks native.
I've been using Swing, and it works fine. NetBeans (a decent IDE by itself) even supports graphical GUI building.
It's well designed (basically
everything is done with listeners,
functions that are registered for a
certain event). It has bindings, so
you don't have to write code to set
up a value in a text field or read
it out
Layout is not perfect, but
acceptable within NetBeans. It's
WYSIWYG (almost). Look-and-feel can
be changed on the fly.
License is free. Source-code is not
available, I think.
Looks fine on Windows and Linux,
less so on OSX.
You could always try SWT. The advantages of Java with the standard L&F of supported operating systems.
Well designed. Lots of
documentation, and very easy to
develop with. (If you know Swing,
you can pick up SWT in no time.)
I believe layout managers do exist
that support SWT. I'm not positive
about this though, as I typically
don't use layout managers too much.
Uses the Eclipse Public
License. Should meet most of
your requirements.
From Wikipedia on SWT:
SWT is written in Java. To display GUI elements, the SWT implementation accesses the native GUI libraries of the operating system using JNI (Java Native Interface) in a manner that is similar to those programs written using operating system-specific APIs. Programs that call SWT are portable, but the implementation of the toolkit, despite the fact that it is written in Java, is unique for each platform.
Hope that helps you.
I'd suggest wxWidgets if you want to program in C++ or wxPython (the python language binding of wxWidgets if you know or don't mind learning Python.
Architecture is similar to QT I think.
Layout using sizers. Quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Liberal open source license.
Widgets are native on all platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux).
We are planning to develop an application for monitoring and configuring our service (which is running on remote server). After long time of discussion, we decided for python as platform for our app, because we love and know python. But we don't know, what GUI toolkit preferred for our aims. We need fast (for development and running) app, whose users will be Admins, Maintainers and Account managers.
There are two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT.
Anybody have arguments regarding pro and cons? And maybe someone knows any commercial applications, using these products (only python version of toolkits)? Links are desirable.
Thanks.
I choose wxPython after much research. The reasons were:
"wxPython in Action" book by Rappin & Dunn
The voluminous examples that come as part of the wxPython download
The number of projects that have used wxWidgets
The fact that wxPython code runs equally well on Linux, Mac OS/X and Win32
I did consider pyQT and other researchers are successfully using it. After writing many examples in all API's that I considered, I found wxPython ticked the most boxes for me.
As for Tkinter (TIX), I think it looks rather dated.
Unless you are using IronPython or Jython I would not consider using the associated native windowing APIs. For another project which is to be delivered exclusively on .Net, I plan to use WinForms after lots of great feedback from StackOverflow members.
Well, I am a fan of QT: it has a more modern look and feel. However - your choice should be based on your actual requirements. Simple trade studies are helpful for this. Make a list of what features your toolkit must have and what features would be nice to have and then weight each item appropriately. Then look at all your options (TKinter also) and then score them according to your feature list (using the weights you assigned to each feature requirement). At the end it should be evident which one is right for your project.
I've always liked Qt's "signals and slots" conceptual model, though I guess it may take a bit of learning for developers who are more used to other models of event propagation and handling. Personally, given a choice, I'd pick PyQt because of this programming aspect.
You wrote "There is two GUI toolkit for python, which we know: wxPython and pyQT." You are forgetting about the most obvious toolkit: tkinter. That's actually part of a core python distribution, no extra downloads required.
Some people don't like Tk but that's often due to ignorance. Tk is a fine choice for a cross platform toolkit. It uses native widgets on windows (and has for many years) and the latest versions of tk use themed widgets on all platforms.
i've been using wxpython for 3 years .. and now we had to switch into pyqt since qt is integrated in maya 2011 .. however , wxpython is more straight forward and you can easily start working on it and learn it from zero fast .it provides and awesome resources and decumentation . but QT provides more powerful features that you cant find in wxpython , for example ( the multi touch detection) , QT also provides good support for drawing devices like pc tablets and so on .
qt also provides a good designer that makes u create interfaces faster.
one of qt disadvantages is it's license since it's not free like wxpython
A Windows (and Mono) option for a GUI toolkit is provided by IronPython. It provides access to the Winforms and WPF libraries. For examples, see Developing with IronPython & Windows Forms, and many others.
If you want to expand the list of options, consider building a Web App instead of a (local) GUI app. You say your service runs on a remote server, so networking is part of your requirements.
Once you start down that road, Python provides a bewildering amount of options.
I want to point out two strengths that wxPython has compared to pyQt:
It uses native widgets on every supported platform. So the apps have a native look and feel. I'm aware that PyQt uses native styles, but the behavior ("the feel") is reported to be somewhat non-native especially on the Mac.
It provides a wider choice of widgets out of the box.
You should also check out PyGTK. It is similar to pyQT in programming model but does not have any licensing cost since it is LGPL. I always found it nice to work with as a developer. The main drawback over pyQT is that in some cases they take away functionality in things like file chooser dialogs in favour of simplicity for the user.
I want to write a front-end to an application written in C/C++.
I use Solaris 10 and plan to port the application to some other architectures (Windows first).
I'd recommend taking a look at wxWidgets to provide some cross platform UI widgets that will work on Solaris and Windows.
Qt 4 is the best tool for this job. If you want to work with other languages, it also has bindings for Java and Python
On a Mac, this would be easy. The Cocoa API is great when programming in Objective C (which compiles fine with C/C++ files).
Otherwise the situation is a bit more grim. As for Rapid prototype, you might want to check the CodeGear (Borland/C++ Builder) tools. I think their VCL library is cross-platform.
Otherwise, you could interface with a scripting language like Ruby and use fantastic front end libraries like Shoes. Python also interfaces with wxWidgets to make writing cross-platform front ends easy. Keep in mind that this all requires taking time to make sure your C/C++ code can talk to the scripting language. This is not trivial, and the amount of effort required depends upon the style of your code base. (Oh my God.)
Lastly, you could just use wxWidgets itself. This might be your best bet since it requires no additional overhead than coding the UI itself. That said, C++ is not the greatest language for designing UIs.
And super lastly, consider writing a code generator that converts from say Shoes to whatever wxWidgets code is needed to generate the same Shoes app. That way you can do easier UI design but still get C++ code in the end. Likewise, you could code gen off of the Python/wxWidgets code. Then sell such a code generator. :-)
GTK-- and Glade.
Thats' the C++ bindings on GTK
GTK will work on windows ( just look at GIMP )
Works everywhere, no QT license to mess with your millions-making.
I use wxWidgets myself. It makes good use of the C++ language features and uses smart pointers, so object and memory management is not that hard. In fact, it feels like writing in a scripting language.
Coupled with a dialog editor/code generator like wxFormBuilder or wxDesigner, (links to screenshots) it becomes a good toolkit for rapid development.
Have a look at FLTK which supports X11 and Windows.
Ultimate++ is a cross platform rapid application development framework for C++. It is aimed specifically at rapid development. The Ultimate++ website provides some comparisons to other frameworks mentioned such as Qt and wxWidgets.
I have used ASP.NET Web Forms to make UI front-end to collection of command line application written in legacy language, RESTful-ish web service, and bash scripts.
Once it works on Firefox, it should work at least on Firefox on other architecture. If you haven't played around with it, you should give ASP.NET a try (ASP.NET MVC seems to be the current trend). Not quite the same as RAD, but it does give you visual design of forms etc.