Should I use a cross-platform GUI toolkit or rely on my own?

Question

On my side, as a programmer, I have to write a C ++ program to convert audio files from / to various formats. This will probably be connected with the creation of a simple graphical interface.

Will there be a large collection of embedded GUIs for Mac and Windows using Cocoa and WinForms instead of cross-platform tools like Qt or GTK?
(I still have to support a separate version of Windows and the Mac version)
The GUI is likely to be very simple and require very simple functionality.

I always felt that the native graphical interfaces feel much more intuitive than their cross-platform brothers ...

Answer 1

If you have experience, use the built-in interfaces, it will effectively double the work you have to do for the user interface, but in my experience the non-native user interface is a little clunkier than their native counterparts.

Answer 2

Have you watched wxWidgets ? Built-in platform controls.

Answer 3

Cross-platform tools, more or less, make the wrong assumption that the difference between platforms is related to button layout and widget style. In some cases, you can do without this - the Qt application will feel pretty native on both Windows (where the UI conventions are very weak) and on Linux, especially in the KDE environment. In general, you can easily navigate between Linux and Windows; the conventions are similar, and the Windows community is weak.

Mac is hard. Its user interface is built around a completely different paradigm than Windows or most Linux environments.

But in general, in the native application it is easier to speak the native language of the platform more than just the widget style.

Answer 4

I would agree that, if possible, the source interfaces are the way to go. I have not used wxWidgets recently, and I heard that it has come a long way, but when it was wxWindows, we created an application with it that was supposed to be built in X / Motif. When we finished the effort and delivered it, the client said that it does not look like X / Motif, and we had to redesign the entire user interface at our expense ... Joel Spolsky wrote a good article about this, but I can I don’t remember the name . What he said, IIRC, was a problem with Java, and another cross-platform interface was that "your dog barks at my application" - these are small inconsistencies that annoy people.

Answer 5

Yes.

But seriously, it depends on your goals. I agree that my own user interface libraries, putting a lot of effort into them, will bring much better results, but for many applications a very simple user interface is sufficient and much less effort if you take one of the existing cross-platform frameworks.

Perhaps starting with the CLI and getting functionality, the work is most suitable for a sound conversion application.

Answer 6

I am going to write my own Cross Platform GUI for this in the near future. Depending on the complexity of your application, this may be part of what is required for QT, GTK or FOX.

The reason is that we are seeing a trend that platform vendors (first Apple) are trying to create a system there to make it look unique. This greatly complicates the constant synchronization with the latest widgets for QT, GTK, FOX and other platform tools.

When bedding technology becomes more and more the same, OS vendors have no choice and then branding on the look of the platform.

Answer 7

wxWidgets uses the standard C ++ syntax and preprocessor, so you can easily change it from simple C or C ++. And it will create a very natural look where it appears, whether on GTK, X11, MS-Windows or Mac.

It has matured since the 20s of its 1st release, has comprehensive documentation with easy navigation, and is supported by a large community around the world. Encoding in your favorite IDE or using the prominent Eclipse-IDE and wxFormBuilder as a graphic designer. You can build the wx library and install the IDE / Toolchain at this link: http://yasriady.blogspot.co.id/2016/01/raspberry-pi-toolchain.html

Develop your application on the Linux desktop and also provide a compiler for Raspberry Pi2 (the target application is tested on the plugin on Raspbian Jessie) ............