I'm probably way out of the loop, but it seems weird to use a native look GUI library and then - if you're not using wxGTK - shoehorn in a text renderer from a different GUI library. What's the deal here?
I think I understand your point. Using GTK (and Pango Cairo) on Windows, by telling wxWidgets to use internally GTK seems duplicating window managers.
It's just a matter of taste. GTK in Windows does call Windows API to do windowing. But some users like the GTK-way for windows, menus, and other controls instead of the native Windows-way, and wxWidgets provides this feature (in addition, of course, of the native usage, keeping native look&feel).
Anyhow, GTK on Linux calls internaly X11 or Wayland for handling windows and menus. Do you also call this "duplicating"?
The question seems to stem from a mistaken assumption, so it's hard to answer it, let me rather explain how things really are instead:
Cairo-based wxGraphicsContext can be optionally used under MSW because this allows to produce exactly the same graphics output under all platforms, which can be important for some kinds of applications. However it is not used by default, you need to explicitly request it, and if you don't you'd be using GDI+ or Direct2D, both of which are perfectly native libraries.
Related
I have a desktop app based on HTML/JS that needs WebKit to function at a reasonable speed. Normally, I would live with IE behaving badly, but its JS engine is just too slow.
I would normally go to Appcelerator for this, but it seems they have discontinued their desktop SDK and left it for the "community"...
This needs to function on Windows PCs, or I would just use Fluid (http://fluidapp.com)...
Is there a simple Webkit wrapper that I can use, or should I build one really quick in something like Qt. I haven't used Qt in a while, so I'd have to look at it again and make sure WebKit is implemented in it...
While it is somewhat node.js-oriented, AppJS may offer what you're looking for. If it doesn't already support other scripting languages, it might at least provide a good example to start from.
Update: in the time that's passed since my original answer, it seems node-webkit fills a similar role but has gathered and maintained more momentum than AppJS. It's a little more focused, in that it doesn't attempt to provide much additional "framework" on top of simply exposing the node.js API to the window's JS context.
There's also https://github.com/atom/atom-shell, which I just learned of and may be similar.
One other thing to note is that (presumably with either, but at least with node-webkit), you MUST be cautious of any XSS-like vulnerability in your app that an attacker could exploit to gain complete access to the user's native machine. So if you are simply needing to package an offline web app in a downloadable desktop distribution, you may wish to research more PhoneGap-like solutions (e.g. Mac OS X as PhoneGap platform) or a plain web view wrapper (like mentioned in the OP) that do not expose an entire OS-level native API — as node.js does — into the JavaScript environment.
I've been thinking to give GUI development a try lately and am torn with the choice of between wxPython and Mono.
Judging from what I've seen out there, wxPython people seem to use the WebKit trick to produce nice (doesn't have to be beautiful) UI.
How hard is it to do the following in each of the platform:
1) Custom Control
2) Use HTML rendering
I don't quite understand how far the HTML rendering works via WebKit in wxPython (i.e.: does it support separate CSS/JS files? how's the JS support? do we need to write extra wxPython code to run the JS? how hard it is to integrate between JS events and wxPython widgets? what are the usual strategy of integrating WebKit with wxPython?)
Mind to share your thought on this subject? I specifically pick either wxPython or Mono, not Java Swing for no reason.
PS: I'm aware of certain limitation of cross-platform UI (as in: it won't be 100% native) and I could care less of such things.
wxPython has wxWebkit available via the new WebView widget, but WebKit is only available on Mac and Linux right now. WebView uses a different rendering engine on Windows called Trident from IE (see http://wxpython.org/CHANGES.html). So you'll want to keep that in mind.
Either way, we're talking about browser engines that display HTML, CSS, etc. They should, theoretically, display whatever those engines support. You'll have to look up their specifications to be sure and also make sure to check if the port supports everything. As I understand it, they should definitely support the usual HTML and CSS and I would assume normal javascript. If I were you, I'd just create a simple window in wxPython and then load the web page you've created and see how it works.
I don't know how the javascript communicates with wxPython or if it even does. You'll want to ask on their mailing list for that kind of information.
Does anyone know how programs like iPhoneExplorer manage to list/add/remove files on an iDevice?
I would like to do something similar (but more basic) in a Cocoa Touch application.
It's technically not an Apple-approved™ method, so don't plan on putting this in the App Store. But it is possible. First, import the MobileDevice framework from /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks. Then use the reverse-engineered header for the MobileDevice framework:
http://code.google.com/p/ziphone/source/browse/trunk/ZiPhone/MobileDevice.h
It includes all the methods necessary to communicate with an attached iOS device.
There's also a C++ wrapper for it that's a bit easier to use, especially for detecting the device in the first place. It also includes methods specifically for jailbreaking, but they're not required.
http://code.google.com/p/independence/source/browse/trunk/libPhoneInteraction/PhoneInteraction.cpp?r=323
I have a .NET application, which I want to port to OSX. Up to now I used a DirectShow DLL for WebCam handling. Can I use an Objective-C DLL for Mono? How? I'm a newbie on Mac. Is there an existing (WebCam handling) solution for this? Is there a better solution?
You want to use the QTKit framework to do this, in particular you can use the QTCaptureView as a reusable NSView that you can embed in an existing window or in an application to do the actual video capturing.
I have just added support for capturing to the MonoMac bindings a few minutes ago after I saw your question, so you will need to do a little bit of work.
Steps:
Install Mono, MonoDevelop and the MonoMac addin as described here: http://mono-project.com/MonoMac
Download the latest sources for MonoMac and MacCore from Github: http://github.com/mono/maccore and http://github.com/mono/monomac
Update the MonoMac.dll to the latest version, by going into the monomac/src directory and typing "make update"
At this point you should be able to use the QTCaptureView in your MonoMac applications like any other NSView. A tutorial showing the use of the API in Objective-C is here:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/QTKitApplicationTutorial/BuildingaSimpleQTKitCaptureApplication/BuildingaSimpleQTKitCaptureApplication.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008155-CH8-SW1
You can just use the equivalent versions in C#
I'm not sure what you mean by "an object-c dll for Mono".
Your absolute best approach is to learn the platform you're targeting and port only the logic and general architecture.
To access cameras, microphones, line-ins, etc. on Mac OS X, use QTKit (Quicktime Kit). It's mind-numbingly simple to set up a web cam view, record to files, grab frames, etc. It's built in and designed to make this sort of thing mostly drag-and-drop for developers.
MonoMac is just one alternative. There are Monobjc, CocoSharp, NObjective, MObjc / MCocoa and ObjC# (I cannot choose between them). Theese are all "bridges" between Mono and Cocoa, what mean you can use Cocoa API in Mono application. But I don't want to use the API directly. I just want a dinamically linked library, which provide me some function for WebCam handling (as I said, I did this up to this time on Windows). In other words: I need a wrapper in Mono for QTKit.
PS: If I rewrite the application in object-c that means several months, and double work in the future when the application will grow. I love object-c but I hate to work unnecessary.
I tried the accepted code in XCode, and when I tried to port to Monodevelop, several classes are missing, eg. QTCaputureSession, QTCaputreDeviceInput, CVimagebuffer.
(Sorry, I cannot edit my previous messages, this is another account.)
OK, this is basically just about any non-default OS API running on all different OS. But for my example let´s consider platform Windows, API SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer).
Actually this question came to my mind when I was reading about SDL. Originally, I thought that on Windows (and basically any other OS) you must use OS API to make certain actions, like writing to screen, creating window and so on, because that API knows what kernel calls and system subroutines calls it has to do. But when I read about SDL, I surprised me, because, you cannot make computer to do anything more than OS can, since you cannot access HW directly, only thru OS API, from Console allocation to DirectX.
So, my question actually is, how does this not-default-OS APIs work? Do they use (wrap) original system API (like MFC wraps win32 api)? Or, do they actually have direct access to Windows kernel? Or is there any third, way in between?
Indeed, SDL is a wrapper for OS-specific calls, although with many simplifications and convenience functions. On Windows, SDL uses DirectX.