WxWidgetsExtensions Library

Overview

Extended dialog class

• wxExtDialog class eases creating and adding controls
• adaptions to work with a MFC main window (under MSW, requires small modifications to wxWidgets library)
• simple support for dialog zoom
• simplification of control-change notification

New message box class

• wxMessageExtDialog has support for arbitrary named buttons
• support for automatic line-wrap and use of scrollbars in case of long message texts
• optional HTML mode: it is possible to display HTML messages

Type-safe printf() replacement

• wxMessageFormatter/wxFormat/wxFormatMessage provide type-safe string formatting similar to printf
• unlike with the C++ stream operator "<<", the format string must not be split up into pieces
• parameters are added with the "%" operator to wxMessageFormatter, alternatively, the overloaded function wxFormatMessage() can be used
• format string refers to parameters with "%N" or "%{N}" (with N being the N-th parameter added) - this makes it possible to reorder parameters in the output, which may be useful when translating the format string to other languages
• "%+" may be used to refer to the "next" parameter

Helper functions

• convertAsciiToHtml() to escape HTML control characters
• formatDate() /parseDate() to correctly output and parse dates in the current locale
• load (e.g. PNG) images from memory or Windows resource file

Validators with immediate status output

• wxTextCtrlStatusValidator gives immediate feedback of validity of entered text via wxStatusMessageTarget (which output a status message into a wxTextCtrl)
• has support for "Undefined" (unspecified) values
• specializations:
  • wxNumberValidator (allows specification of a range of valid values (int, long or double))
  • wxDateTimeValidator (format according to current locale, currently date only)
  • wxStringValidator (a maximum length for the entered string can be specified)

Text/slider control pair validators

• allow mutual update if one of both associated controls (wxTextCtrl or wxSlider) is changed by users input
• if entered text is valid: associated slider is updated immediately; otherwise the user will get immediate feedback via wxStatusMessageTarget (class is is derived from wxNumberValidator/wxTextCtrlStatusValidator)
• both required controls and both required validators can be created with minimum effort by calling wxExtDialog::addTextCtrlSliderPairWithLabel()

Image(DIB) filter managing class

• wxFilteredDIB provides an interface to filter a DIB image using ImageMagick filter functions (the input and result image format is DIB)
• automatic transformation of palette-based or 16-Bit color DIBs to true color IM image if filtering is desired
• for palette-based images, color adjustment is realized by modifying the palette in-place, which is much faster than modifying all pixels - the old palette is stored automatically for a later undo or a new modification
• image rotation must be 0, 90, 180 or 270 degree - if only the rotation angle (or mirroring) has changed since last filtering, rotation/mirroring will be made relative to the last result (improves performance)

Type-safe access to entries in wxConfig

• wxConfigEntry and wxConfigEntryManager allow typesafe reading/writing of values from/to wxConfig
• keys (access paths) and default values are centralized in the wxConfigEntry objects and therefore duplication can be avoided
• allows writing all values at once (e.g. upon program termination, or to give the user an overview of all sections/keys and their (default) values
• allows to reset to default values at once
• specializations of wxConfigEntry class:
  • wxIntegerConfigEntry (range of valid values can be specified)
  • wxStringConfigEntry
  • wxBooleanConfigEntry

Sample Application

Compilation

To compile the sample application, one of the provided makefiles may be used. Most makefiles were generated by 'bdsgen', a makefile generator written by me using C++ as input and implementation language, which is planned to be published under an Open Source license in the future.

The sample program was tested under a Debian Linux (wxGTK, wxMOTIF and wxX11 ports) and under Win9x/WinNT4/WinXP (wxMSW port). Specifically, the following compiler/port combinations were tested:

• GCC 2.95.2 with wxGTK (using GTK 1.2.7), wxMOTIF and wxX11/wxUniversal
• Visual C++ 6 with wxMSW
• DigitalMars C++ 8.40 with wxMSW
• Borland C++ 5.5.1 with wxMSW

• wxWidgets 2.4.1 (stable release)
• wxWidgets 2.5.2 (development snapshot)

Note: For compilation under Linux, the makefiles currently assume the 'wx-config' program to be located at '${WxWidgetsBuildPrefix}' (as is the case after compiling wxWidgets from the sources).

To debug an executable compiled with debug-information with GCC, point a debugger like 'ddd' to the executable; to debug an executable compiled with debug-information with VC++, simply open the executable with the Visual C++ IDE.

Problems

• The layout mechanism in wxWidgets version 2.5.2 (development snapshot) is currently broken under some ports.
• Some ports (e.g. wxMSW) of wxWidgets version 2.5.2 (development snapshot) ignore the font set for the dialog. This results in incorrect sizing when a dialog is scaled (zoom factor other than 1.0), because the controls will always use the default font size.
• The height of the text/HTML control of a wxMessageExtDialog (in text-mode) is one line only with the wxMSW and wxX11/wxUniversal ports of wxWidgets version 2.5.2 (development snapshot).
• The sizing logic for the wxGTK port currently assumes GTK 1, and must be extended for GTK 2 control sizes.

Sources and Download

• individual files
  • ConfigEntry.h   [pretty printed]
  • ConfigEntry.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • DescriptionTexts.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • MessageExtDialog.h   [pretty printed]
  • MessageExtDialog.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • StatusValidators.h   [pretty printed]
  • StatusValidators.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • TextCtrlSliderPairValidators.h   [pretty printed]
  • TextCtrlSliderPairValidators.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • WxExtDialog.h   [pretty printed]
  • WxExtDialog.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • WxExtLibTest.cpp   [pretty printed]
  • WxExtLibTest.rc   [pretty printed]
  • WxExtLibTest.xpm   [pretty printed]
  • WxMisc.h   [pretty printed]
  • WxMisc.cpp   [pretty printed]

  • ImageMagickExtensions.h    [pretty printed]
  • ImageMagickExtensions.c    [pretty printed]

  • safecast.h   [pretty printed]

• tar package (includes makefiles)
  • WxExtLib-0.7.1.tar.gz   (91 KB - 2004 Jul 21 - [MD5])