C++ GUI libraries

Started by legacyblade, December 12, 2012, 02:12:08 pm

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legacyblade

Hey everyone. I know I haven't posted in ages, and it's bad form to come back to a forum just to ask questions. But I'm up against a brick wall.

I've been developing in c++ for a bit now. I've actually gotten pretty good at the coding aspect (for me anyways. I recently discovered how pointers work, how to properly create and dispose of them to prevent memory leaks, etc), but getting libraries to work is a royal pain in the butt. I've been able to get a graphics library (SFML) and the boost library working, but I'm also trying to learn how to make cross platform non-game applications. So I need things like drop-down menus and other such common application stuff.

I've been trying unsuccessfully for a good month or so now to get ANY gui library working on my PC.

I've currently tried


  • WX Widgets

  • QT

  • GTK

  • Fox

  • FLTK


and a good deal of other ones who's names I can't remember.

Does anyone know of an easy to install and get working GUI library? I really want to work in C++. I hate the rigidness of the language, I prefer ruby (though getting that to work outside of just doing RMXP scripting has proved just as much of a nightmare), but I want to be a professional programmer and make games. And C++ is apparently one of the most efficient languages since it's low level.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really can't figure this out on my own x.x Thanks for reading this far.

Ryex

I myself have gotten WX working under C++, it was fairly simple with a few include problems. what exactly were your issues?
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Blizzard

I use April + AprilUI, but that's mostly for games and they aren't using a Windows GUI but you have to make your own as stuff is rendered through DirectX9.
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legacyblade

@Ryex, I usually get a lot of errors when building it. I've tried it in visual c++ 2008 and 2010, as well as visual studios 2005 (and whatever the most recent one is). I've also tried it in codeblocks. I'm running a 64 bit windows 7, so that might be a big part of the problem.

@Bliz, for the gaming aspect, I just make my own GUI classes like in RMXP. I need the windows GUIs because I want to make editors so I can hand off part of the design to my artist, since she doesn't have much to do after the initial character artwork. I'm currently making a clone of Super Smash (it's freaking hard btw), and I want to have another program for the character files, levels, and such. I guess I could write the editors in another language, but then I have to try and do what I'm doing now in a language i'm less familiar in, so it'd present a similar problem.

Thanks for responding, btw. I appreciate it.

Ryex

well basically I installed the source to c:\dev\<wxvesion> and added the envierment variable WXWIN to point to that path. and used the included VS studio project to build the debug and releases versions of WX.

then I set up my project to include WX
http://forum.chaos-project.com/index.php/topic,12499.0.html

there is a "cycylebyte test" project in that Download that is set up to include WX properly. take a look at the C++ and Linker sections in the project properties
I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

legacyblade

@Ryex, I can't open the project file. Apparently it was made in a newer version of the program. What version of visual c++ express edition do I have to use to open it? Also, I redownloaded and build WXWidgets just now. I (somehow) got it to build without any of the errors I've normally been experiencing. I followed the instructions here (http://www.kbasm.com/cpp-wxwidgets-install-compile-vc-2008-express.html) about how to install and use WXWidgets in visual studios 2008, but I get the following error "c:\users\legacyblade\documents\visual studio 2008\projects\wxtest\wxtest\main.cpp(1) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'wx/wx.h': No such file or directory" Any suggestions?


Ryex

I'm pretty sure I used 2010 to build WX itself, but it had to convert the WX project files from 2008.
for Cycle byte I built with 2010.

If you manages to Build WX itself your good to go, you just need to set up the proper include and link directories as well as tell it to link to the right libs. as I said I set that up in the CycleByteTest project so you can pretty much copy paste the properties (minus the CycleByte dependence) just remember you have to set up the include dirs and the link dirs as well as the libs to link too and make sure you pass the right envierment variables. It's pretty strait forward there is just a lot of pieces.

I cant find the page I got my instructions from they included creating a system envierment variable WXWIN the pointed to the source path of WX that page doesn't seem to include that step
I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

legacyblade

Thanks :D that seems to be doing it. I'm on the clock right now, so I can't test it fully, but I was able to get a sample project to compile. Thanks so much Ryex. I've been running up against this wall for literally months now o.o I really appreciate the help.