[SC.LUG] ManLUG meetings for June 2003 and July 2003

[Dr A V Le Blanc]

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ManLUG meetings for June 2003 and July 2003

21 June 2003, 14:00, in the Undergraduate Training Room (also known
as Area 2), next to the Lascelles Williams room on the ground floor
of the Kilburn Building at the University of Manchester.  (For more
information, see our web site: http://www.manlug.man.ac.uk, under
'How to find us'.)
Reminder: Please bring a 'photo ID' to show the porters if you are
asked.

     Cross-Platform GUI Development with WxWindows
     Smylers (Simon Myers)

Graphical user interfaces are used in many programs.  The command line
certainly has its power, but there are some tasks -- and some users --
for whom a GUI is all but essential.  Windows has a GUI.  Linux has
many GUIs.  But all these GUIs are incompatible, both programmatically
and in what users encounter on their screens.  This is a problem for
developers who wish to make applications available on multiple
platforms, or who merely have a hankering that they may wish to do so
at some point in the future.

WxWindows is an attempt to resolve these issues.  It provides a
consistent programmatic interface to incompatible GUIs, enabling an
application developer to describe its user interface in neutral terms
then have it deployed with a Windows, GTK, or Mac GUI, looking just
like a native application on each platform.  You can consider
WxWindows to be some sort of 'meta GUI'.

This talk shows what WxWindows does and how it can be used.  It is
compared with alternative technologies, discussing advantages and
disadvantages.  For example 'Mozilla' attempts to solve the
cross-platform problem with XUL, which has the advantage that
'Mozilla' looks pretty much the same on all platforms, but the
disadvantage that on any platform 'Mozilla' sticks out decidedly from
that platform's other apps.  A WxWindows program, on the other hand,
will look different in each environment, in its chameleon-like attempt
to fit in with its surroundings.

As a Linux developer WxWindows allows you to develop GUI apps that
will run under Windows while you remain in your comfortable Linux
surroundings.  Or you can write a program for use on Windows now, safe
in the knowledge that it can be used on Linux later if needed.
Features include advanced widgets such as checklist boxes, status bars
providing menu help text, and even non-graphical tasks such as
forking, performed in a cross-platform way.  One of its major
advantages is the comprehensive documentation, with all of the many,
many classes and methods explained in readable terms, as well as a
smattering of sample programs.

The talk also covers problems that may be encountered, and the
limitations of WxWindows.

WxWindows can be used from C++, Perl, and Python.  There are a small
plethora of graphical tools available which can be used for building
WxWindows user interfaces (for those that like that sort of thing,
anyway -- the author avoids GUIs where possible and sticks to writing
WxWindows code in 'Vim').


     Leo - an outliner with support for programmers
     Richard Jarvis

Leo is a useful outliner which can be used to arrange a tree of 
headings and associate some text with each node in the tree. The 
resulting  file can be saved in an XML format. Of course, there are 
many programs that do this. However,  leo provides additional 
support for programmers who wish to import source code into the 
outline - automatic generation of source files from the outline and 
coloured code being two of the most obvious. This makes leo a 
useful way to examine unfamiliar code and maybe even create new code.   


19 July 2003, 14:00, usual place.

     Networking Basics
     Simon Hobson

A fairly hands-on demonstration of the 'dirty' layers of networking, 
the hardware bits that are required to make it work. As is usual, 
I'll take a ramble through a bit of 'not so distant history' and 
'alphabet soup' of networking hardware, and then set up a small 
network.  I expect this to be interactive and I'll be calling for
volunteers from the audience to participate in demonstrations!


     Poptop (VPN support)
     Robert Morris

Details to be supplied at a later date!


     -- Owen
     LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk


For PGP key 1024 bits 4BDCFB31, see http://www.man.ac.uk/~zlsiial/
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