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 wxEmbedded: wxWidgets for embedded applications
wxWidgets is going embedded! After years of wishing, several recent projects have brought
this closer to being a reality. Here are the current strands in the
wxEmbedded strategy. Some are already working, some are works in progress.
Of the four ports listed, all but wxWinCE and wxGTK use the wxUniversal
themed widget set, which implements the widgets entirely using wxWidgets primitives.
The WIN32 theme is a very authentic reproduction of the Win9x look and feel, and users
would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
Other ports are possible, such as a Linux framebuffer port.
To see which port currently supports which wxWidgets class, please see
the supported classes page.
Let's examine each of the embedded ports in turn.
- 2.1 wxWidgets for X11
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wxWidgets for X11 is a port to the X11 windowing system (essentially, Xlib).
This port can be used as a wxGTK replacement on the desktop, and as an embedded
GUI in conjunction with an X server such as Tiny-X, as used by the
Familiar Linux distribution.
wxWidgets for X11 is recommended for Linux-based solutions over wxWidgets
for GTK+, because of its dependence only on X11.
wxX11 can optionally be compiled in Unicode mode, and text will be rendered
using Pango.
Status: this port is 95% working, with a small number of areas that need attention, such
as clipboard, text selection, tab navigation and speed optimization.
To get and build wxWidgets for X11, download wxWidgets from the CVS repository,
and follow the instructions in docs/x11/install.txt. See also
Getting Started for notes on downloading and
using the ARM cross-compiler.
- 2.2 wxWidgets for GTK+
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The wxWidgets Life! demo
under GPE on the iPaq
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wxWidgets for GTK+ is the standard desktop port, which can be
cross-compiled for targets that have enough memory to run an X
server and the GTK+ and GDK libraries.
This port can be used in conjunction with an X server such as Tiny-X, as used by the
Familiar Linux distribution.
To get and build wxWidgets for GTK+, go to the download page.
You can also download from the CVS repository. See the instructions in docs/gtk/install.txt.
For more information about wxGPE, Robert Roebling's port to GPE,
see here.
Older screenshots are available below.
- 2.3 wxWidgets for Nano-X
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wxWidgets for Nano-X is a port to the Microwindows Nano-X API.
This is similar enough to X11 to allow the port to use the X11 code, with API replacements
and some #ifdefing.
Status: this port is 70% working, with areas that need attention including transparent
pixmap drawing, clipboard, text selection, tab navigation and speed optimization.
To get and build wxWidgets for Nano-X, download wxWidgets from the CVS repository,
and follow the instructions in docs/x11/install.txt and docs/x11/readme-nanox.txt.
- 2.4 wxWidgets for Microwindows
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wxWidgets for Microwindows is a port to the Microwindows WIN32 API.
Essentially it's the wxMSW (desktop WIN32) port, with compatibility files and #ifdefs for Microwindows,
and using wxUniversal for the widgets. Unlike the Nano-X API, only one process can use
the Microwindows WIN32 API at a time, because the GUI calls are not marshalled. This severely
restricts the usefulness of this port, although several applications can be merged into
one to emulate a multi-process environment.
Status: this port is 70% working, with areas that need attention including transparent
pixmap drawing, clipboard, text selection, tab navigation and speed optimization. Because
of the limitations discussed above, this port is not being actively maintained and
so tweaking may be required to get it to compile from CVS.
To get and build wxWidgets for Microwindows, download wxWidgets from the CVS repository,
or get the latest wxMSW development snapshot from here,
and follow the instructions in docs/microwin/readme.txt.
- 2.5 wxWidgets for MGL
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wxWidgets for MGL is a port to the SciTech Software's MGL API,
SciTech's graphics portability layer, supporting Windows, Linux, DOS, OS/2, QNX, SMX, RT-Target
and other embedded operating systems.
wxMGL is the port that wxUniversal was originally written to support. SciTech Software have done us an
enormous favour by sponsoring wxMGL and wxUniversal.
Status: this port is 99% working, with samples running on DOS. Issues remaining include
minor window manager refresh problems. See SciTech's wxMGL page
for information and screenshots. You can download MGL from
here.
To get and build wxWidgets for MGL, download wxWidgets from the CVS repository,
and follow the instructions in docs/mgl/install.txt (instructions coming soon).
- 2.6 wxWidgets for MS Windows CE
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wxWidgets for Windows CE is a port to Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 and above.
Unlike the other embedded ports, wxWinCE mostly uses native widgets, rather than using
wxUniversal.
Status: the minimal sample and others are running under emulation
using eVC++ 3 and 4 and the latest wxWidgets CVS (or wxWidgets 2.5.2).
For a screenshot of the minimal sample running on an iPAQ and industrial hardware,
see this page.
To compile wxWinCE:
- Get the latest version of wxWidgets 2.5.x from CVS HEAD.
- Download and install Embedded Visual Tools 3 or 4
if you don't already have it. Download SDKs for PocketPC and SmartPhone if
you are interested in these.
- Using project files from 2.5.2, open build/wince/wx.vcw, select the appropriate configuration, and
compile. There may be long delays while VC++ computes dependencies. Ignore
warning messages about missing paths.
- Open samples/minimal/minimal.vcw, select the appropriate configuration, and
compile.
For more information, including a to-do list, please visit (and contribute to) the
wxWinCE Wiki
page.
2.7 wxWidgets for Palm OS
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Our contest offering a free Tungsten T5 to
the first person to show the minimal sample running on Palm OS 6
(simulated or real) has been won by William Osborne - so we now
have a firm basis for a wxPalmOS port.
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wxEmulator with an iPAQ skin
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We intend to provide some host tool support for embedded application developers.
Currently there is one such: wxEmulator. This is a wxX11 application that can
show a virtual X desktop window to emulate the small display of a PDA or
other target. It reads simple configuration files to tailor the virtual display size
and background. wxEmbedded uses a standard Xnest binary to achieve this embedded
X server capability.
wxEmulator will help developers to see how their host-targetted applications
will behave on a PDA-style screen. Since the target will be running an
X server (and Linux kernel) with similar capabilities to the host, this is
a reasonable way to do development before cross-compiling and uploading
to the target. It also makes life easier for developers who don't have access to hardware,
or people just wishing to experiment. Of course, it doesn't emulate the available
memory on the target or other target-specific features, since the applications simply run on the host.
A screenshot of wxEmulator with an iPAQ skin running twm and the wxWidgets fractal demo is
here.
A screenshot of wxEmulator running Matchbox and the wxWidgets toolbar demo is
here.
To compile wxEmulator, download the wxX11 distribution and compile
utils/emulator/src. You will need to have Xnest in your path; you
can download Xnest from the XFree86 site. See utils/emulator/docs/readme.txt for
more information. There is currently a problem on some Linux systems whereby
the Xnest window does not integrate with the emulator window: fixes are
invited for this!
The existing desktop application development tools can be used too, including:
- poEdit: an internationalization tool for editing
translations
- Tex2RTF: a documentation tool (distributed with wxWidgets)
- wxDesigner: a commercial sizer-based dialog editor and RAD tool
There are various enhancements that we can make to wxUniversal, to make
it more suited to embedded environments. Here's a selection.
- A special wxUniversal theme that makes best use of
available space, with simpler border styles in particular.
- Ability to set system-wide font, so we can easily shrink font sizes.
- Provide options in the common dialogs for simplified, smaller dialogs. This could also be implemented
by querying a global setting (e.g. in wxSystemSettings).
- A combined toolbar/menubar class as in Windows CE.
- Add missing controls such as wxTabCtrl, wxSpinCtrl.
We aim to build up a suite of applications suited to
a PDA environment, so that eventually we can offer a
complete wxWidgets-based PDA solution. For those interested
in more industrial embedded applications, the suite will
serve as an effective wxEmbedded demo. It will also
be an excellent test suite for the developers of wxEmbedded.
The suite might include components such as:
- Notepad;
- Diary;
- Contact list;
- Database;
- Alarm clock/time zone viewer;
- photo album;
- Hierarchical note database, like Squirrel;
- Simple web browser based on wxHTML;
- Mail client (such as a cut-down version of Mahogany);
- HTML-based e-book reader;
- Control panel;
- Synchronisation utility.

The Life! demo running on the iPAQ
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You can see further screenshots of the wxWidgets 'Life!' demo working on the iPAQ,
here.
Cross-compiling
This tool-chain allows cross-compilation of X11 based apps
for the Linux/ARM architecture. The ARM chip is used in many
handhelds and embedded devices, notably the iPaq and all
other StrongARM based PocketPCs.
Download the cross-compiler archive
here (27 Mb)
and copy it (as root) into
/usr/local
Unpack it by calling
tar -xzvf ArmX11ToolChain.tar.bz2
which will create a new directory called arm. Set the path like this:
export PATH=/usr/local/arm:/usr/local/arm/bin:$PATH
Configure your package with:
configure --x-includes=/usr/local/arm/X11R6/include --x-libraries=/usr/local/arm/X11R6/lib
--host=arm-linux --build=i586-linux
Compiling wxX11
Get the sources from our downloads page.
Configure with the options given above. For reasons of efficiency and
for removing features which make no sense for PDAs, we suggest adding
the following switches to the configure command:
--with-x11 --without-gtk --prefix=/usr/local/arm --enable-no_rtti --enable-no_exceptions --disable-threads
--disable-sockets --disable-joystick --disable-mdi --disable-printarch --disable-postscript
--disable-resources --disable-prologio --with-zlib=builtin --with-libpng=builtin
--with-libjpeg=builtin --with-libtiff=builtin --prefix=/usr/local/arm
For simplicity, you can use this
shell script
which will configure wxX11 as described above. You may need to
edit it so that it actually finds configure. The script
assumes configure to be in the parent directory by default.
Install the library with make install as root.
For compiling your own programme set the PATH environment
variable as described above and use the wx-config
utility to get the compile options and link flags.
Further information
There many places to look at; some important starting
points would be www.LinuxDevices.com,
and www.HandHelds.org which
features the Linux Familiar distribution.
For a particularly easy way to install a dual boot system
for WindowsCE and Familiar look
here.
For more information about cross-compilation, see
Building TinyX for Handhelds and
Building X Client Programs for the iPAQ
on the handhelds.org site.
Instead of cross-compiling, you can use the
Public Development Cluster
at Compaq's Cambridge Research Laboratory.
Code size
When statically linked against wxWidgets for X11, the minimal sample is around 1MB in size (in release
mode). However, increasing sample complexity makes little difference to the size, so it would seem
the linker includes most wxWidgets functionality even in a small sample.
You can reduce code size by configuring with only the wxWidgets classes and features that
you need. You may also wish to add new options to the configuration system to increase
the granularity. For example, you could make the themes configurable - at present all
themes are compiled into wxWidgets, and each theme represents a substantial amount of code.
If you wish to run several wxWidgets applications on your target, then it makes sense to
use the shared library version of wxWidgets. The shared library is about 2.5 MB.
wxWidgets for X11 does not require GTK+, GDK or even the Xt toolkit, so you may
be able to remove these components from your embedded Linux distribution.
User interface issues
Here are some tips for GUI programming on typical embedded targets.
We will add to this over time.
- Consider using a window manager that shows one window at a time,
such as Matchbox (see link below). It's impractical for the user
to shuffle multiple windows on a very small screen. Of course, your
target might have a large screen that makes a conventional overlapping
window manager more appropriate.
- Use sizers, and populate your dialogs with fewer (and smaller)
controls than usual. You can use wxNotebook to split up your dialogs into
more manageable pieces.
- Consider using just a toolbar instead of a toolbar and menubar. You
could use one or more of the buttons to pop up a menu with further
options. Consider also writing a combined toolbar/menubar class
as in Windows CE.
- Use smaller fonts than usual.
- Write your code so that only the left mouse button is required.
- Julian Smart
is an independent software consultant, and former member of the eCos embedded
operating system group at Red Hat. Julian started the wxWidgets project in 1992, and
the X11 port 10 years later in 2002. He has written the wxEmulator wrapper for Xnest.
- Robert Roebling
is a medical doctor, main author of the wxWidgets for GTK+ port and creator
of the wxDesigner dialog editor and RAD tool. Robert is working on aspects of wxX11.
- Marco Cavallini of Koan Software
is helping to develop the wxEmbedded strategy, and was the motivation behind wxWidgets for X11.
He is also working on the Windows CE port.
Marco's wxEmbedded page is here.
- Vadim Zeitlin has been energetically improving and maintaining wxWidgets for many years;
he wrote the wxUniversal widget set sponsored by SciTech Software, and core to the
wxEmbedded strategy.
- Vaclav Slavik wrote the wxWidgets HTML help system, and the wxMGL port.
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