wxWidgets for Android

[Jim]

Hi,

just for your information: some time ago we started a campaign to bring together backers and potential developers to start development of wxWidgets for Android.

This was partially successful. We now have a nameable amount of users that are willing to pay a really impressive amount of money for that. Unfortunately the platform we have choosen is not capable of managing such a thing and bringing people together (it is full of spam and operators are not interested in removing it / do not respond when one tries to get in touch with them).

So nobody of the potential backers had to pay anything here, this first try was abandoned. And even more good news: the project "wxWidgets on Android" is not dead! Motivated by the good results we start a second try soon - this time with a more serious platform to manage this and with more publicity via open source communities and publications.

So many thanks for all people that wanted to help in this first try - we restart it soon, this time hopefully with 100% success!

I'll let you know more soon...

Jim

[Stefano Mtangoo (evstevemd)]

All the best!
>
> Jim

[Steve Cookson]

Hi Guys,

I would like to see if I could help migrating wxMediaCtrl. Is there a
discussion forum? Is it here or on another wxWidgets list.

Regards

Steve.

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[Jim Hart]

Hi Steve,

currtently there is no serious work in progress and therefore no
thread/discussion forum exists regarding this.

I remember a guy that made some modifications for compiling all
low-level, non-GUI classes with Android NDK but I'm not sure if these
changes are already integrated into SVN. Does anybody know what
happened to the work he did?

Nevertheless it would be good to find enough people doing the job here
as community...

Kind regards

Jim

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Kind regards

Jim Hart

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[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:05:39 +0100 Jim Hart wrote:

JH> I remember a guy that made some modifications for compiling all
JH> low-level, non-GUI classes with Android NDK but I'm not sure if these
JH> changes are already integrated into SVN. Does anybody know what
JH> happened to the work he did?

It's in the svn since almost a year, see r70703. But while this is a
necessary foundation for any further work, it's not really much on its own.

Regards,
VZ

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[Steve Cookson]

Hi Guys,

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 07:05:39 +0100 Jim Hart wrote:
>
> JH> I remember a guy that made some modifications for compiling all
> JH> low-level, non-GUI classes with Android NDK but I'm not sure if these
> JH> changes are already integrated into SVN. Does anybody know what
> JH> happened to the work he did?
>
> It's in the svn since almost a year, see r70703. But while this is a
> necessary foundation for any further work, it's not really much on its own.

What is the minimum GUI set to do anything? I would suggest it could
be something like:

- wxFrame
- wxPanel
- wxSizer,
- wxBoxSizer,
- wxStaticText,
- wxButton.

I feel if we could do some sort of easily downloadable
proof-of-concept, then it would create a momentum that people could
build on.

Android is a very popular operating system and I'm sure once it
started people would want to jump on the band-wagon.

As we speak I am already installing UbuntuForAndroid on my Google Nexus.

Regards

Steve

[Jim Hart]

Hi,

I'm not a full-time programmer so may be it's not correct what I'm guessing...

In my opinion very first steps would be:

- create a NativeActivity (
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NativeActivity.html
) as entry point for Android that itself calls into the native code
and hands over the graphics context to it

- create a wxStaticText (just for testing to see if that Activity works)

Things like wxFrame or wxWindow should not be necessary or created
implictely since there can only be one window at the same time? Means
overlapping windows are not possible in Android!?

Kind regards

Jim

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:01:17 -0200 Steve Cookson wrote:

SC> > It's in the svn since almost a year, see r70703. But while this is a
SC> > necessary foundation for any further work, it's not really much on its own.
SC>
SC> What is the minimum GUI set to do anything? I would suggest it could
SC> be something like:
SC>
SC> - wxFrame
SC> - wxPanel
SC> - wxSizer,
SC> - wxBoxSizer,
SC> - wxStaticText,
SC> - wxButton.

There are much more fundamental classes to be written first, notably
wxApp, wxWindow, wxTopLevelWindow and wxEventLoop. Implementing various
controls such as wxStaticText and wxButton would be trivial once wxWindow
and wxControl (which would need to take care of using JNI to map to native
GUI widgets) are written. And even without wxControl we could at least use
wxUniversal if wxWindow existed. But getting there is far from trivial...

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:20:57 +0100 Jim Hart wrote:

JH> In my opinion very first steps would be:
JH>
JH> - create a NativeActivity (
JH> http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/NativeActivity.html
JH> ) as entry point for Android that itself calls into the native code
JH> and hands over the graphics context to it

This is one way of doing it and if it works, probably the best one.
Another alternative would be to write a Java stub for wx on Android that
would call into C++ code.

JH> - create a wxStaticText (just for testing to see if that Activity works)

I think we'd need to implement wxControl as a bridge between wx and native
GUI widgets. I.e. to implement wxStaticText you'd tell wxControl to create
a native android.text view and delegate to it; to implement wxCheckBox
you'd create android.widget.CheckBox and so on.

JH> Things like wxFrame or wxWindow should not be necessary or created
JH> implictely since there can only be one window at the same time? Means
JH> overlapping windows are not possible in Android!?

This is not the worst limitation. Clearly the structure of an application
wouldn't be the same on the desktop and on the phone so UI would need to be
changed anyhow and providing a way to navigate between windows would be
just one of many things to do and, again, not the most difficult one. But
before thinking about the higher level abstractions that would make
developing the applications for both desktop and mobile easier, we really
need to have the low level stuff like wxWindow, wxControl &c done.

[Steve Cookson]

Hi Guys,

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Vadim Zeitlin <va...@wxwidgets.org> wrote:
>
> But
> before thinking about the higher level abstractions that would make
> developing the applications for both desktop and mobile easier, we really
> need to have the low level stuff like wxWindow, wxControl &c done.
>

This looks right. What would a development environment look like? As I recall
there was some sort of SDK that needed to be downloaded. Do you
know/remember what the dependencies were?

Maybe I could create a partition on my laptop with an android dev't
environment. It might be easier than messing around with a five inch
screen!!

Regards

Steve

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:41:42 -0200 Steve Cookson wrote:

SC> What would a development environment look like? As I recall
SC> there was some sort of SDK that needed to be downloaded. Do you
SC> know/remember what the dependencies were?

There is plenty of information at http://developer.android.com/index.html

[Jim Hart]

Integration into Eclipse is quite smooth and well done, so there is no
need to have an own partition/install (or better fail with installing)
Android itself on a Laptop. Many things can be tested in Emulator,
everythign else should work nice on a small screen to - elsewhere
there is a problem in design ;-)

[Steve Cookson]

Hi Jim,

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 4:18 AM, Jim Hart <ope...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Integration into Eclipse is quite smooth and well done, so there is no
> need to have an own partition/install (or better fail with installing)
> Android itself on a Laptop. Many things can be tested in Emulator,

> everything else should work nice on a small screen to - elsewhere

> there is a problem in design ;-)

Thanks for this. Ok this is what I've done:

http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Android

I was not sure whether or not I needed the SDK as well as the NDK, but
I installed it anyway. Maybe Eclipse uses it.

Is this right so far?

The SVN changes that Vadim refers to, would these already be in my
current wxWidgets download, or do I need a specific download? Which
wxWidgets version?

Thanks very much.

Regards

Steve

[Igor Korot]

Steve,

Just get the SVN TRUNK.

Thank you.

>
> Thanks very much.
>
> Regards
>
> Steve
>

> --