[wx-discuss] wxTNG: compatibility with wx2 API

[Julian Smart]

At 15:08 16/02/2006, you wrote:
>Count me in here. It's a large effort to work on a big program, this implies
>that it's not easy to change things on the whim to account for the latest
>ground-breaking changes in the new version of the toolkit it uses.
>I'm all for modernization of a framework, but the rate of forced change would
>better be measured in years at least (say, after at least 2 to 3 years
>one would then HAVE to use the new infrastructure).

Or at least, have to content oneself with old versions.

>The downside of not being able to go with the newest toolkit version would be
>having to work on an old "stable" (whatever that means) version that would
>often get unsupported faster than you could say "ouch!", despite all good
>intentions to the contrary. Not to mention that having to use the old version
>would mean one customer less who's able to work on improving 
>features/stability
>of the current, modern version...

Right.

> > (b) the easiest and cleanest way to do that is basically a wxWidgets 2 port
> > wrapping wxWidgets 3. It should be relatively straightforward because it's
> > totally generic (1 size fits all platforms), and (hopefully) will be a
> > thinnish wrapper. So people who don't need backward compatibility won't 
> have
> > the overhead of the wxWidgets 2 API, and those who do can gradually
> > migrate.
>
>Sounds very nice, but that's all just theory and nice words for now ;)

Yep! I'm sure there are some issues, such as:

- which generic versions of classes (e.g. wxSplitterWindow) does one
   use - the wx2 versions, or wrapped wx3 versions?

- you have all the limitations of the wx2 API/version, since it's
   actually wxWidgets 2 with a wrapper for wxWidgets 3 (what's that called -
   wx-wx3? :-)) and we're still having to maintain 2 versions of the
   library.

- the point Vadim's just made about rewriting wxDateTime etc. (OTOH,
   why not simply use wxDateTime within wxWidgets 2 but convert to
   boost (and back) internally?)

However, I don't see that retaining wxWidgets 2 under the hood of
wxWidgets 3 is going to be satisfying to many people, unless we
perhaps shift our view of what wxTNG should achieve.

BTW as well as the full-on wxWidgets 2 compatibility, we could also
provide an intermediate solution: a smallish library of common classes such
as wxString, wxDateTime etc. with conversion to wx3 equivalents.

Regards,

Julian



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