Introducing wftk
'wftk' means 'WorldForge Toolkit': a widget library, written in C++, that is designed to allow quick, easy creation and management of GUI applications. The wftk logo, to the right, depicts a hammer and wrench in stained glass - tools used to decorate a window.
About the library
'wftk' is a fork of the 'libuta' library, based off the 0.4.4 release. The API for this first official release of wftk is very similar to libuta's, which is why the first official version of wftk is given the version 0.4.99. Like libuta, wftk uses SDL for video display, SDL_mixer for audio playback (mp3, ogg, and wav capable), libpng for surface I/O, libsigc++ for signal / callback functionality, and freetype for anti-aliased font rendering.
Version 0.4.99 of wftk sports the following enhancements over libuta:
- Support for freetype2
- Support for either libsigc++ 1.2 or 1.0.3
- Doxygen documents
Future Plans
Version 0.5.0 of wftk will have the following features:
- Improved support for resizable widgets
- Better internal handling of resources
Version 0.6.0 of wftk includes these features:
- A widget packing scheme
- Polling using select() within the application main loop
- Logical seperation between SDL wrapper(s) and widget handling code
Other planned features are an embedded default font, heavier use of SDL's built-in RLE acceleration code, support for OpenGL
Helping Out
As with all the other projects within worldforge, wftk can always use some help. The code is available in our CVS, as the module forge/libs/wftk; a Request Tracker queue has been designated solely for wftk-related bugs and feature requests.
The two areas where wftk needs the most attention are in the documentation and the code samples. The existing generated documentation is available online and patches to augument the documentation is most welcome. As for code samples, we have a few good demos for wftk in the CVS tree, but more are needed. For example, a demo that uses (and describes!) the simplest code possible or a demo that runs through all of wftk's features.
Thanks To
Karsten O. Laux and Uta Sczymanek, and the rest of the libuta coders
Ron Steinke, Alistair Riddoch, Martin Pollard and Michael Koch (and the rest of Worldforge, of course) for coding, suggestions, and valuable insight.
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