At work we write A LOT of 3D graphics code that has requirements to run on winders/linux/macintosh. Qt has definitely proved the way to go (5 years now) with only minor changes required and then it worked on ALL platforms. Java and Python were too slow and required too many code changes for each platform, whereas Qt worked with our existing C/C++ code nicely. BTW, a real good book that's out now is "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" by Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield. It starts very basic from Hello World. It's worth the $30.
I'd have to say, so far from what I've seen Wine still has a long way to go before it's ready for production, and reliable use... it's getting there but just not there yet. It's great for porting apps, but too poorly documented for actual development. I mean this forum is about it and you're lucky if you can get answers. But thanks to all the helpful people here, maybe it will grow.
Shaun
On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 17:39:14 -0500 (EST), "Dimitrie O. Paun" dimi@intelliware.ca wrote :
You ask:
I am willing to re-write my best Windows software from scratch, but I insist that the result is native or almost on Linux so there are not any weird GUI glitches. Do you think Wine is the way to go for me, or am I better off writing individual versions and keeping the Windows software native and then producing QT or GTK versions for *NIX? I'm at a
cross-roads
here, since I'll be dedicating years of work in whatever direction I
take.
IMO Wine is the perfect tool for you. We know, it's not perfect. But the best use of your time (and the most efficient) would be to:
- Fix any problems in your apps (like reliance on strange Windows corner cases, use of very obscure features)
- Help out fix Wine so that your apps run properly.
This will not only help us a lot, but it will help you make good use of your time, and it will allow you to do cross platform development (even for Windows) from your Linux box.
Please direct questions to wine-devel@winehq.org, where people can help you out.
-- Dimi.
On April 1, 2004 6:30 pm, greensh@knology.net wrote:
I'd have to say, so far from what I've seen Wine still has a long way to go before it's ready for production, and reliable use... it's getting there but just not there yet. It's great for porting apps, but too poorly documented for actual development.
You are correct in that we're not as good as we'd like to be. We've done a lot of work, yet there's plenty more in front of us. That being said, I'd like to note a few things: 1. Qt/wxWindows/etc. is a good cross-platform solution if you start afresh. However, I strongly feel Wine is a better tool if you're porting a large application. 2. Even if you start fresh, there may be reasons you would still want to use Wine: you don't want to use C++, you know Win32 and you don't want to learn something else, you don't want to buy the commercial Qt license, you have some 3rd party binary DLLs that you have to use. 3. I don't think we suffer from so poor documentation. 99.9% of Wine is all about Win32, and the MSDN is a pretty good, freely available over the web source of documentation. Not to mention innumerable number of books and so on on the subject. We try hard to fit into existing standards, and in theory you should require very little Wine-specific documentation. We're not there yet, so in the interim feel free to ask on wine-devel.
Bottom line, Wine is IMO an interesting option for a lot of projects. We just need a bit more manpower to iron out some of our bugs :)
-
Dimitrie O. Paun -
greensh＠knology.net