wxWidgets and a dark future

[Jackdaw]

People have been asking for wxWidgets dark mode on windows for sometime now. With the release of the development branch v3.3.0.
It's finally arrived.

Whether it will be any good and stable when 3.4 is release remains to be seen. Microsoft doesn't look like they have any plans to update the Win32 API to support dark mode. And what hacks MS have used to get some of the original applications to use dark mode have not been documented, and my change in the future.

There are a number of projects that I had been working on, but put on hold until they get it sorted out.

[MikeHart]

Hui, that sounds good. Do they look more modern these days? Back in the day they kinda looked old school to me, but then I didn't had an intensive check.

[MikeHart]

Mmmh, had a look at the wxwidgets site. I like the look of this example very much.

https://wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/#coppercube-1

[MikeHart]

Ìs there any WX blitzmax module, that is in a current state, available somethere?

[Jackdaw]

Ìs there any WX blitzmax module, that is in a current state, available somethere?

The only one I know of is here.

[Dabzy]

I use wxMax for Launchpad, mostly for its wxScintilla sub-module, it's very old like, and there is a few bugs I've met up with while developing it, more so with Win11 where stuff behind the scenes have seemed to change and broken it... I've got over them in some cases, but be prepared to put up with a fight if your going to create a big app with it because quite a few times I've nearly just dumped it and moved over to C++, but the amount of work I put in beforehand stopped me from doing so really.

So, all in all, it works, but as rickety as hell.

Dabz

[Jackdaw]

Mmmh, had a look at the wxwidgets site. I like the look of this example very much.

https://wxwidgets.org/about/screenshots/#coppercube-1

I suspect that either it's running on a Linux system, or using custom icons.

[Jackdaw]

I use wxMax for Launchpad, mostly for its wxScintilla sub-module, it's very old like, and there is a few bugs I've met up with while developing it, more so with Win11 where stuff behind the scenes have seemed to change and broken it... I've got over them in some cases, but be prepared to put up with a fight if your going to create a big app with it because quite a few times I've nearly just dumped it and moved over to C++, but the amount of work I put in beforehand stopped me from doing so really.

So, all in all, it works, but as rickety as hell.

Dabz

I've just tried wx.mod on Linux with BlitzMax-NG. The module will not even build with the bcc 0.138 and bmx 3.53. Fix one thing and it breaks another. The issue with it as far as I can see is that the compiler has issues with determining function return types. It doesn't help that people have been adding fixes without fully testing that those fixes are going to work across all platforms. Which is why I had to hack the C and Objective-C sources to get just the basic stuff to work on the latest macOS and xcode 15, because someone decided to add a compiler switch instead of fixing the code.

The module may work with a later version, but I'm not going to even bother.

In my opinion, without a dedicated team and funding to keep BlitzMax-NG going. Using BlitzMax/BlitzMax-NG is just flogging a dead horse.

Periodically. I'll play around with Lazarus, but I wouldn't rely on it to create commercial  software. It's taken nearly twenty years for it to be almost usable, and even then it's still buggy has hell.

[MikeHart]

Thanks for the input guys. Frustrating but it is what it is.

[Dabzy]

@Jackdaw

See, the thing is, I've still got an old copy of BlitzMax-NG, in fact, I have 2, both for different projects, because like you say, people have tangled it, and only real updates come in the form of the more popular modules such as Max2D!

What BlitzMax-NG on GIT needs is a totally skinning back to it's "Game related" basics really, and not even bother with other mods, let users add themselves, share if they want to, but... It defo needs a clean up like, it's a bit of a mess in its current form.

Dabz

[Jackdaw]

What BlitzMax-NG on GIT needs is a totally skinning back to it's "Game related" basics really, and not even bother with other mods,

If anything. It needs to be written from scratch again. And not using BlitzMax as the bootstrap, but a common free compiler that can be used for a bootstrap.

The main reason that the Monkey-X C++ sources are on github, was because I made the suggestion to Mark that it was pointless just putting the Monkey source files up if someone has to go looking for a binary to build them that may not exist in the future.

[Dabzy]

@Jackdaw

Very true!!!

Dabz

[MikeHart]

So I take from you two that bmx ng isn't in a worthwhile state. I was really hoping for it.

[MikeHart]

BTW how did you come to this conclusion? Actively working with it on projects?

[Dabzy]

Well, for me, it is probably usable on windows, but it will all depend on what your doing with it... For a Windows game, yes, good to go more then likely, but if you need to venture into the likes of MaxMods and other third party mods, your talking roulette time if something will build or not.

And again, I use 2 old versions, because some of the mods I need worked on one install of it, try the same on another and it just blows up, and vice versa.

I havent even tried new BlitzMax-NG updates because I simply think none of them will work anymore on my projects.

Hence my suggestion of a clear out and start again, there's loads of resources, but many are simply past being usable and you get hit with a wall of build errors, and it's all a bit of a module hell.

Dabz