GUI for a C++ Tool

[vmohanaraj]

Hi all,

I am a newbie to GUI development. I am not quite sure whether I am posting my question to the right group. But I would appreciate if you could give me a hint to take the first step.

Problem:

I have developed a command-line tool In C++ for searching (not a straight forward search, that is a different story) a melody(say a word) within a song(say within a file). Now I want to develop a front end GUI for this tool. In this tool I should have two panels, one for specifying the notes of the song and another for the melody. This data can either be entered directly into these panels or read from files. I need some other parameters too for the search to be done.

In other words, i need to develop a simple GUI in C++. This tool should be portable, atleast between Windows and Linux. I am using GCC compiler with the IDE CODE::BLOCK. Could anyone suggest where to start: any tutorials, any specific libraries or how should i go about this developement.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mohan.

[Banfa]

I think you will find it hard to develop a GUI application that is portable between Linux and Windows, they basically handle their displays in 2 completely different ways.

At a very basic level the entry point for a Windows application is WinMain which (I imagine) does not exist on a Linux system.

[vmohanaraj]

Thanks a lot for your response. That really makes sense. This GUI idea I am going to do in addition to what I promised to do for my college project. So I can afford to drop the Linux GUI idea for the time being.

So could you suggest me..the starting point for windows GUI? What libraries to use and any good IDE for this? For example, does Code::Block support GUI design and development?

[Banfa]

I quick look at the Code::Block website suggests that it can not edit Windows resources, you could try using MS Visual Studio VC++ Express, a free version of the MS Visual Studio range.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/default.aspx

Then to get you started quickly try creating a Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) application as this handles a lot of stuff for you. If you don't you have to create a Window class (not this is not the same as a C++ class and has been around longer than C++ too), create a Window and write a message handler and handle a fair number of messages. The MFC basically does all this for you allowing you to specifically handle the few messages you are interested in.

[vmohanaraj]

Many many thanks for your help. Now I hope that I have a good point to start at.

[lottalava]

As far as i known, you could master what you want using gnome libraries, there´s a version of GTK for windows and other plataforms, just create your code and compile it to your desired OS.

[vmohanaraj]

Thanks for that suggestion. Here I came across this as well: http://en.wikipedia.or g/wiki/WxWidgets.

[aris002]

If you don't want to spend a lot of time mastering different extra libraries and approaches (needed e.g for wxWidgets etc.) then your choice should narrow to Qt and Ultimate++ as complete RAD development environments with their own IDEs.
But if you want to sell your programs in the future without any licence problems then you should consider BSD licenced libraries?
Qt is problematically "dual". Ultimate++ is BSD.