Creating a cross platform GUI in C++?

Question

Creating a cross platform GUI in C++?

Answer 1

First lets assumed that this for a desktop application and not defense related. The tough part of this question is for which cross platforms? In order to work, the cross platforms hardware must support a common native graphics language such as OpenGL.



GUIs typically have some basic components such as:

Window

Pointer

Text-box

Button

Hyper-link

Drop-down list

Check-box

Radio button

Data grid



Interfaces for the X Window System implements user interfaces through compositing window managers such as Beryl and Compiz using the AIGLX or XGL architectures, allowing for the usage of OpenGL to animate the user's interactions with the desktop.



In the X Window System, a compositing window manager is a unified X window manager and compositing manager program. The unification facilitates graphical compositing effects that react to window management events such as appearance of new windows. Assuming the cross platforms support an OpenGL graphics architecture implementation a number of tools can be used to achieve the GUI design.



Hope this helps....

Answer 2

You're always going to see differences in how operating systems render a given GUI, even in an allegedly common programming language such as C++.



That said, Borland's C++ IDE / compiler should give you fairly consistent results across platforms.



For best results, I'd switch to Java, which due to running as a virtual machine on all three platforms, will remain the most consistent across all three.

Answer 3

well normally the gui is just a front end.. and well you don't have to worry about calling that.. it's not the most important part.



my friend used to code in vc++ but front end was coded on VB , same for mac.. etc



its the code under the GUI thats important. different things have different libraries.. windows / mac.. u could just use visual c.. but it wouldn't be too tricky to modify for nix.. there are tools for that also.

Answer 4

The three most common libraries used for this are wx, GTK, and QT.



http://wxwidgets.org/

http://gtk.org/

http://www.gtkmm.org/

http://trolltech.com/