Best Cross Platform GUI Development Tool?

[Rick Sivernell]

On Fri, 18 May 2007 10:32:30 +1000
James McDonald <james at jamesmcdonald.id.au> wrote:

> Alma J Wetzker wrote:
> > Looking for opinions here.
> >
> > What is the best tool set for creating cross platform GUIs?  I need
> > something that that comes together fairly quickly and can access a
> > database backend.  Must run on Windoze (I will develop on linux.)  It
> > may be a web based application.  What should I use?  Why?
> >
> > There are no right or wrong answers here, I just need to find something
> > vaguely familiar that I can throw an application together in a month or
> > so.  'C' is my favorite programming language.
> >
> > TIA
> >   
> I recently looked at Win32::GUI (wasn't really cross platform), bypassed 
> perltk (too old style AFAIK) and settled on wxPerl because the wxGlade 
> RAD tool worked well and it gave GTK2 alike on Linux and Windows XP 
> alike on windows.
> 
> I am writing a simple gui interface to submit a batch job to MFG/Pro to 
> stop the profound number of errors created by typos.
> 
> Here is a screenshot of the GUI on Windows XP 
> http://www.jamesmcdonald.id.au/gallery/v/public/Tech-Stuff/wxPerl/windows_wxperl.png.html
> 
> Here is a screenshot showing the development being done under Linux at 
> Home, at night (what's wrong with me).
> http://www.jamesmcdonald.id.au/gallery/v/public/Tech-Stuff/wxPerl/linux_wxperl.png.html
> 
> I am not a programmer but the code generated by wxGlade (which can 
> output wxPython, C++, lisp, Perl, XRC) was very useable after I 
> downloaded the wxPerl samples from wxPerl.sourceforge.net particularly 
> the controls.pl demo. Because the wxGlade designer allows you to define 
> names for each control event and then generate the code you can find the 
> sub bearing the name you gave the event and plonk your code in it and 
> you're done.
> 
> Documentation is still fairly light on.
> 
> The problems as I see them with this is as follows.
> 
> Code obsfucation & packaging. The file generated by wxGlade is a perl 
> script. I have tried pp -o myexe.exe input.pl but this creates something 
> like a self extracting archive that unpacks to and executes to a random 
> tmp directory everytime it's run so you can't bundle a text file full of 
> settings with it very easily (with out hard coding the path and, damn 
> it, I want it to run anywhere)
> 
> You may have to look at a professional perl2exe style packager because 
> to distribute the application you would have to install ActiveState Perl 
> & Wx & yourscript.pl (<= That is naff)
> 
> On Windows. If you run the control with perl.exe you get an ugly console 
> window. Use wperl.exe but beware that you need to specify gui based 
> warnings and exceptions in the code so the gui doesn't just exit because 
> there is no console to display the warnings. e.g. die kills the gui and 
> the script without a graphical error popping up.
> 
> The example screen shots above were created by me with about 2 days of 
> experience. I am not familiar with glade so it's been a bit of a 
> struggle to get things laid out properly but hey you are much more 
> experienced at programming so it should be a breeze.
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Not bad job for two days. I have not used wxGlade or Glade at all. I use an
editor ( SCITE ) and scons to to build the code. Scones is a python script
builder. It works on most platforms. There is a plugin for MS Studio for all
versions to use wxWidgets, older versions are free newer are under $50 dollars.
There is a GUI builder to, not free, not bad either compared to M$. There work on
M$ and Nix. I am building a new GUI IDE, 4 years in development and several more
I am afraid to finish, just not enough time here.

-- 
Rick Sivernell
Dallas, Texas  75287
972 306-2296
ricksivernell at verizon.net
Registered Linux User