SmartWin++

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SmartWin++ is an Open Source BSD licensed GUI library for C++ developers, it is not portable which for SmartWin++ means that it only compiles on Windows systems such as Windows XP (and others) plus WindowsMobile and WinCE based systems. Currently WineLib is being worked on though. It is a small library and comes with very little overhead and is free both as in "freedom" and as in "free beer". It was initially created in 2003 by Thomas Hansen but is now being maintained by more than 10 people from all over the world.

1 Architecture
2 History
3 Example code
4 External Links

[edit] Architecture

It relies heavily on the C++ concept of templates. A template is a compile time construction in C++ used to make generic programming and meta programming possible; this makes the library very easy to extend and very typesafe, but it also makes it more difficult to understand the internals. A template construct called policy based design (ref. Andrei Alexandrescu) is one of the sources for the increased compexity. It expects certain types to have certain functions and members in order to be compilable. SmartWin++ also uses multiple inheritance extensively, which also makes the code more difficult to understand in some cases. However, it also helped reduce the amount of code significantly.

[edit] History

The library was initially created as a protest against Qt's dual license philosophy. The author himself wanted to have a library which was slick, small, standard conforming (C++ standard) and FREE to use for commercial applications. (free as in free beer) All these factors put together made the library very popular in third world countries and in countries where the licensing costs for a commercial license of Qt just is too much to cope with for a small company or an independent developer.

[edit] Example code

#include "SmartWin.h"
using namespace SmartWin;

class MyWidget : public WidgetFactory<WidgetWindow, MyWidget>
{
private:
   void clicked( WidgetButtonPtr btn )
   {
      createMessageBox().show( btn->getText() + ": is text of button" );
      btn->setText( "I was clicked, YOHOO!" );
   }
public:
   void init()
   {
      createWindow();
      setText( "Testing of SmartWin++" );
      WidgetButtonPtr button = createButton();
      button->setText( "Click me" );
      button->setBounds( 100, 100, 100, 50 );
      button->onClicked( &MyWidget::clicked );
   }
};

int SmartWinMain( Application & app )
{
   MyWidget * widget = new MyWidget();
   widget->init();
   return app.run();
}

The above sample code creates a Widget which has a button which can be clicked in order to make a message box and which then changed the text of the button.