wxWidgets

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Categories: Free development toolkits and libraries | Widget toolkits | X-based libraries

WxWidgets

Developed by	wxWidgets Developers and Contributors
Initial release	1992
Latest release	2.8.7 / November 27, 2007
Written in	C++
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Development library
License	wxWindows Library Licence
Website	http://www.wxwidgets.org/

wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with minimal or no code changes. It covers systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux/Unix (X11, Motif, and GTK+), OpenVMS, and OS/2. A version for embedded systems is under development.^[1]

1 History
2 License
3 Implementation
4 Software using wxWidgets
5 RAD tools and IDEs for wxWidgets
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

History

wxWidgets (initially wxWindows) was started in 1992 by Julian Smart, who is still a core developer. On February 20th, 2004, the developers of wxWindows announced that the project was changing its name to wxWidgets, as a result of requests from Microsoft of Julian Smart to respect Microsoft's United Kingdom trademark of the term Windows.^[2]

License

wxWidgets is distributed under a custom made licence, similar to the GNU Lesser General Public License, with an exception stating that derived works in binary form may be distributed on the user's own terms. This licence is a free software licence, making wxWidgets free software.^[3]

Implementation

The wxWidgets library is implemented in C++, with bindings available for many commonly used programming languages, among them, Python (wxPython), Erlang (wxErlang), Haskell (wxHaskell), Lua (wxLua), Perl (wxPerl), Ruby (wxRuby), Smalltalk (wxSqueak), Java (wx4j) and even JavaScript (wxJavaScript). For a complete list, with links to the respective project sites, see the external references at the end of this article. There is also PLT Scheme, which uses an incompatible branch of wxWindows (version 1), created in 1995. The toolkit is deeply integrated with the language run-time (garbage collection, resource administration) unlike in other languages, which simply provide a library binding.

wxWidgets is best described as a native mode toolkit as it provides a thin abstraction to a platform's native widgets, as opposed to emulating the display of widgets using graphic primitives. Calling a native widget on the target platform results in a more native looking interface than toolkits such as Swing (for Java), as well as offering performance and other benefits.

The toolkit is also not restricted to GUI development, having a built-in ODBC-based database library, an inter-process communication layer, socket networking functionality, and more.

Software using wxWidgets

A great many applications currently use wxWidgets as their GUI library, some of which are listed here.

RAD tools and IDEs for wxWidgets

Boa Constructor (Python)
Code::Blocks (via wxSmith plugin)
wxDev-C++
wxGlade
wxPack embed wxWidgets, wxFormBuilder and a plug-in for Visual Studio (For Windows).

References

^ wxEmbedded: wxWidgets for embedded applications. Sourceforge.net. Retrieved on 2007-04-23.
^ Smart, Julian; Robin Dunn (August 2004). Name change. Sourceforge.net. Retrieved on 2007-04-23.
^ "Licence" page on website. “The wxWindows Licence is essentially the L-GPL (Library General Public Licence), with an exception stating that derived works in binary form may be distributed on the user's own terms.”