Microsoft-isms

[kaluin]

Hello,
I work for a company that wishes to change over to use wxWidgets. For legacy
reasons I have to ask these questions:
- is wxWidgets compatible with COM?
- is wxWidgets compatible with MFC?
- is wxWidgets compatible with .NET framework?
Thanks!

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Tue, 12 May 2009 19:45:08 +0100 kaluin <***@googlemail.com> wrote:

k> Hello,
k> I work for a company that wishes to change over to use wxWidgets. For legacy
k> reasons I have to ask these questions:
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with COM?
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with MFC?
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with .NET framework?

What do you mean by "compatible"? If it means whether you can use
COM/MFC/.NET together with wx in the same application then the answer is
yes for the first two (see activex and mfc samples) and might be yes for
the last one but AFAIK nobody ever tested this.

Regards,
VZ

[legalize+ (Richard)]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Post by kaluin
- is wxWidgets compatible with COM?

wxWidgets neither requires nor precludes using COM. If you use COM,
your code is only going to run on Windows as I'm not aware of any COM
implementations for other platforms.

Post by kaluin
- is wxWidgets compatible with MFC?

wxWidgets neither requires nor precludes using MFC. However,
wxWidgets covers all the same functionality as MFC, so there's no
point in attempting to use MFC and wxWidgets in the same application.

ATL is commonly used with COM. Express editions of Visual Studio
don't include ATL or MFC, so if you use either ATL or MFC then you are
locked into a paid version of Visual Studio.

Post by kaluin
- is wxWidgets compatible with .NET framework?

wxWidgets is a native C++ API, not a .NET API. You could create your
own interoperating layer between .NET and wxWidgets, but it would not
be an easy matter and is probably not worth the trouble. The easiest
path for interoperability between .NET objects and native C++
applications is to expose the .NET object through COM interop and
treat it as a COM object from native C++ code. There are many
examples of exposing .NET objects through COM interop. Again, this
will limit you to Windows operating environments because other
environments don't have a COM implementation and don't have a COM
interop implementation.

[legalize+ (Richard)]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Post by legalize+ (Richard)

Post by kaluin
- is wxWidgets compatible with MFC?

wxWidgets neither requires nor precludes using MFC. However,
wxWidgets covers all the same functionality as MFC [...]

There are probably areas where wxWidgets doesn't cover *everything* in
MFC, but they are both GUI toolkits for making typical kinds of GUI
applications. I'm pretty sure you know what I mean without nitpicking
my words :-).

[kaluin]

Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application. There is also a slim possibility of future
need to include .NET as well. Over time then we could strip out the
Microsoft-isms that would allow our product to become multi-platform. So
just for peace of mind then is this something that other posters here have
had to face before and are there any specific gotchas that I should maybe
made aware of as I hope to start this task in the near future?
Finally, am I right in thinking that the wx.NET project is something
external to core wxWidgets functionality? Is this then being actively
developed and is it stable?
Thanks again for all your help,
Kaluin

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Laurent Humbertclaude <

Post by kaluin

Post by Vadim Zeitlin
k> Hello,
k> I work for a company that wishes to change over to use wxWidgets. For

legacy

Post by Vadim Zeitlin
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with COM?
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with MFC?
k> - is wxWidgets compatible with .NET framework?
What do you mean by "compatible"? If it means whether you can use
COM/MFC/.NET together with wx in the same application then the answer is
yes for the first two (see activex and mfc samples) and might be yes for
the last one but AFAIK nobody ever tested this.

See this website if you require writing your code in .Net
http://wxnet.sourceforge.net/
Regards
Laurent

Post by Vadim Zeitlin
Regards,
VZ
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[legalize+ (Richard)]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Post by kaluin
Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application.

If it were me, I'd just bite the bullet and port from MFC to
wxWidgets. But it seems weird that if you're already using MFC that
you want to switch to another GUI framework. What's the benefit?

[Werner Smekal]

Post by legalize+ (Richard)
Hi,

Post by kaluin
Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy
transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application.

If it were me, I'd just bite the bullet and port from MFC to
wxWidgets. But it seems weird that if you're already using MFC that
you want to switch to another GUI framework. What's the benefit?

Cross platform? (as was already stated by the original author)

Post by legalize+ (Richard)
--
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[kaluin]

Outside of work I have been using wxWidgets for a while now and I personally
really like it. Going back to working with MFC is abysmally poor in
comparison, in my opinion. For all the opportunities that wxWidgets could
give the company, we would like to switch over so that we could use it as
soon as possible. There is about nine years worth of source code to sort
out, so I am trying to get as much information as I can before starting a
mammoth transition.
Our software currently also embeds a third party software that uses COM and
MFC ( this may change in the future ), so I am trying to gauge how doable
this all may be. Again, any advice or inside knowledge welcome.

From looking at the mfc sample, am I right in thinking that you can embed

wxWidgets inside MFC, and vice versa?
Thanks for all the help,
Kaluin

Hi,
Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!

Post by legalize+ (Richard)

Post by kaluin
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application.

If it were me, I'd just bite the bullet and port from MFC to
wxWidgets. But it seems weird that if you're already using MFC that
you want to switch to another GUI framework. What's the benefit?

Cross platform? (as was already stated by the original author)
--

Post by legalize+ (Richard)
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html<http://www.xmission.com/%7Elegalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
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[Peter Barker]

Post by kaluin
Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application. There is also a slim possibility of future
need to include .NET as well. Over time then we could strip out the
Microsoft-isms that would allow our product to become multi-platform. So
just for peace of mind then is this something that other posters here have
had to face before and are there any specific gotchas that I should maybe
made aware of as I hope to start this task in the near future?
Finally, am I right in thinking that the wx.NET project is something
external to core wxWidgets functionality? Is this then being actively
developed and is it stable?
Thanks again for all your help,
Kaluin

Does MFC and wxWidgets really co-exist? Can I have a main window/menu
in wxWidgets and a dialog implemented in MFC? That it what's been
implied in this thread (by me anyway!).

I didn't think it was true and seriously doubt it would be possible.
For example: wxWidgets doesn't have a CWnd which would need to
supplied as the parent of the MFC dialog.

Or was the implication that you could use non-GUI bits of MFC with wxWidgets?

Regards,

Pete

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Wed, 13 May 2009 15:45:37 +0100 Peter Barker <***@gmail.com> wrote:

PB> Does MFC and wxWidgets really co-exist? Can I have a main window/menu
PB> in wxWidgets and a dialog implemented in MFC?

Yes, look at the mfc sample.

PB> I didn't think it was true and seriously doubt it would be possible.
PB> For example: wxWidgets doesn't have a CWnd which would need to
PB> supplied as the parent of the MFC dialog.

You can create both wxWindow and a CWnd from HWND which both frameworks
use. Of course there are many other problems too but if you are careful you
can use both in the same program.

Regards,
VZ

[i***@earthlink.net]

Peter,

-----Original Message-----

Sent: May 13, 2009 7:45 AM
Subject: Re: Microsoft-isms

Post by kaluin
Wow, thanks very much for all the replies everyone!
The reason I am asking the above questions is that we very much wish to move
to completely using wxWidgets but there would be a lengthy transition period
where likely we would have a combination of wxWidgets, COM and MFC all being
together in a single application. There is also a slim possibility of future
need to include .NET as well. Over time then we could strip out the
Microsoft-isms that would allow our product to become multi-platform. So
just for peace of mind then is this something that other posters here have
had to face before and are there any specific gotchas that I should maybe
made aware of as I hope to start this task in the near future?
Finally, am I right in thinking that the wx.NET project is something
external to core wxWidgets functionality? Is this then being actively
developed and is it stable?
Thanks again for all your help,
Kaluin

Does MFC and wxWidgets really co-exist? Can I have a main window/menu
in wxWidgets and a dialog implemented in MFC? That it what's been
implied in this thread (by me anyway!).
I didn't think it was true and seriously doubt it would be possible.
For example: wxWidgets doesn't have a CWnd which would need to
supplied as the parent of the MFC dialog.
Or was the implication that you could use non-GUI bits of MFC with wxWidgets?

Please see the "mfc" sample in the wxWidgets samples directory...

Regards,
Pete

Thank you.

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[Peter Barker]

Post by Vadim Zeitlin
PB> Does MFC and wxWidgets really co-exist? Can I have a main window/menu
PB> in wxWidgets and a dialog implemented in MFC?
 Yes, look at the mfc sample.

I will do when I've more time. Thanks for putting me straight on that
as I'm new to wxWidgets.

Regards,

Pete