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H-ITT's software is now cross platform thanks to open source wxWidgets C++ framework.
Hyper-Interactive Teaching Technology (H-ITT), a leader in hand-held remote technology for the classroom, today announced the release of a Mac OS X and Linux version of their Analyzer Software.
H-ITT's Analyzer, used for grading student responses and communicating with students via e-mail now runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems. This release is yet another one of H-ITT's major advances in audience response technology. With this release H-ITT becomes the first vendor to release software for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. All three of these operating systems are in use in the higher education environment. This allows H-ITT's clients to work with the operating system of their choice.
H-ITT accomplished this feat by utilizing the popular open-source wxWidgets (www.wxWidgets.org) C++ framework. This framework allows H-ITT's software development team to target multiple platforms from one code base. In addition, utilizing wxWidgets allows the applications to have the native look-and-feel of their respective operating systems.
"We started using wxWidgets 4 years ago knowing that if we ever need to do a Mac or Linux version we could. The port went very smoothly. In fact, I wouldn't even call it porting because almost no changes were made to the source code. We can now target all three platforms with ease and we like the native look and feel each application has on its operating system," says Larry, head of H-ITT's application development team.
H-ITT users can now collect data in class from the students on Windows machine utilizing the Acquisition software and grade and analyze it on the operating system of their choice. This is due in part to the cross platform XML file format. H-ITT plans to release a Mac OS X and Linux version of the Acquisition program in time for the start of the spring 2005 semester.
Additionally, a new port has been created - called wxUniversal - which draws all widgets itself instead of using the various native GUIs. This is aimed at embedded devices or special controls on the existing platforms.
The OS/2 port is also improving step by step, although it is not yet ready for general use. Its basics might be used in connection with the wxUniversal code in the near future.
Last but not least, the two main platforms, Windows and GTK+, as well as the generic code, have seen hundreds of improvements and additions.
Today, a snapshot release of the MSW and the GTK ports has been made. The two snapshots are synchronized and have been tested for several weeks and should thus be considered to be quite stable. Among the many new features that have appeared since version 2.0 was release are:
We are glad to announce the start of the work on the new wxWidgets port - wxBeOS which will implement wxWidgets 2 API for BeOS. Thanks to Be for donating licenses to wxWidgets project to make it possible.
If you're interested in helping with this new port, please write to wxWidgets developers mailing list!
wxWidgets 2 launch day!
Check out the Contributions page for more.