Use VCL to develop standalone applications

[Chris Sherlock]

Sent from my iPhone
> On 7 Mar 2017, at 11:34 pm, ThatRM Z <rzpublicmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ok.
> 
> Thanks for the responses.
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 12:14 PM, Michael Stahl <mstahl at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On 07.03.2017 12:50, ThatRM Z wrote:
>> > Hi
>> >
>> > I have been looking around for GUI/widget toolkits that I can use to
>> > develop a standalone cross-platform desktop application for UML diagramming.
>> >
>> > I feel like I can use VCL - the way different LO apps use it for their GUI.
>> 
>> that sounds like a really bad idea.
>> 
>> > But I am wondering how heavy this would get for a new standalone
>> > application?
>> > Is there a "bare minimum" example app that builds in all of the VCL as a
>> > starting point?
>> >
>> > Would this "backendtest" be the answer I am looking for !?
>> > https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/vcl/backendtest
>> >
>> > And would anyone be able to tell me which other LO components or
>> > libraries I would need to bring into a project like this?
>> 
>> there is no obvious answer to this, other than "a lot more than you want to have".
>> 
>> VCL is not intended to be used outside of OOo-lineage office applications, depends on lots of things that most applications don't need (e.g. URE), has no stable API, and features will be removed from VCL as and when LO doesn't need them any more.
>> 
>> just use some toolkit that was actually designed to be reusable, like GTK+, Qt, Tk, WxWhatsitsname, etc.

FWIW, I have idly considered whether I could turn VCL into what it originally started as - a stand alone cross platform library. But that ship has sailed, and in fact the best framework I've seen for C++ for cross platform GUIs is actually wxWidgets.

wxWidgets actually pretty much does what the VCL does - it is a framework that runs as a thin layer (really a fascade in many ways) over he native platform's capabilities at doing things like creating Windows, drawing on them, printing, etc.

It's actively maintained and has an enthusiastic user community. It currently implements a GTK+2/3, Win32 and Motif/Lesstif (ugh) backend. It has support for OS X also, pretty sure this is stable.

Give it a shot:

https://www.wxwidgets.org/

Chris
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