FOX v1.6.0 has been released with the biggest major new feature being Unicode support but also with a raft of new system code such as extra threading and I/O APIs. This should be viewed as an interim release as unicode keyboard input is as yet unfinished.
FOX v1.6.0 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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Updated … in preparation for GCC 4.1 C++-language-change.
Good! I’m having some difficulties with aliases in other packages compiling under GCC 4.1. Maybe I’ll give FOX another look.
I was supporting GTK and Fox simultaneously in some cross-gui library of mine, but even only two GUI toolkits are too different between themselves to make it possible to create a single cross-gui support. Then I decided to off-load some burden, as I need to support the Web as well. Now I only support GTK and the Web.
What I will miss from Fox:
* one of the cleanest APIs of all toolkits;
* very lightweight library;
* very Windows-like look&feel;
What I won’t miss from Fox:
* input from keyboard on Linux with UTF8 seemed to be unsupported — maybe this has been fixed in this latest version;
* the look&feel doesn’t work quite as well on Linux, where we have GTK and its themes;
* the C++ way takes its tool at dynamic creation of windows, because we have to call two events with create and show or something before the windows will work, and if we try to abstract this in a highlevel library, it needs lots of testing to get it to work ok (imagine Tabbook (notebook) with tabs, components and windows created and destroyed dynamically.
I’m really glad that GTK is great and can be abstracted the way I want. With GTK I can support Linux and Windows which is good enough. Also, the Web is becoming the main application distribution medium anyway.
“the look&feel doesn’t work quite as well on Linux, where we have GTK and its themes;”
Theming probably comes next stable release of FOX.
Niall
i’d settle for using icon themes.
You can always change the icons by compiling in new ones. But I agree – dynamically generated icons would be nice and also it would be nicer if the system file dialogs were used instead of emulating the win95 one with no file type icon display.
This will all come with theming. Of course, the resulting toolkit will be far less snappy and much more bloated as a result …
Niall
So I wonder how this will compare with fltk2 ?
Haven’t seen any review comparisons in a while regarding lgpl/bsd licensed toolkits. Both fox & fltk have their annoyances.
In comparison qt is both annoying (in its own way) & expensive.
I’ll write test aps using both and see where I get, I guess.
One man’s meat is another man’s poisen I guess, but I’m curious – how do you find Qt annoying?
Also, Qt is GPL, i.e. free as in speech. If you want to close your source, then you have to pay. Seems fair in my book.
Oops, I’ve inadvertently hijacked the thread, now no-one will talk about FOX’s new offering but will go into the old “Qt license sucks” flamewar (even though it doesn’t suck any more).
Here we go…
Edited 2006-03-22 00:39
Went through lots of GUI tools, and for now I’m settled with Qt.
I wished Cocoa was still available for Windows (YellowBox), but it’s not (an outdated version – circa 1999 is found in the Apple’s WebObjects 5.2).