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| Developer(s) | Jeroen van der Zijp, FOX community |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 1.6.58 / May 13, 2024; 10 months ago (2024-05-13) |
| Preview release | 1.7.86 / August 15, 2024; 7 months ago (2024-08-15) |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Development Library |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License with License Addendum allowing static linking[1] |
| Website | fox-toolkit |
TheFOX toolkit is anopen-source,cross-platformwidget toolkit, i.e. a library of basic elements for building agraphical user interface (GUI). FOX stands for Free Objects for X.
It features a hard-wiredWindows 95-styletheme available for bothMicrosoft Windows itself as well as theX Window System (which is used on manyUNIX andUNIX-like operating systems).[2]
The FOX toolkit has been released under theGNU Lesser General Public Licence. Development began 1997 by Jeroen van der Zijp while he was affiliated at CFDRC. Since then, Jeroen van der Zijp maintains the core library and test applications, with the help of user community.
The FOX toolkit is written inC++, withlanguage bindings available forPython,Ruby andEiffel. The FOXsource code distribution supports building with many different (commercial and free) C++ compilers.
FOX differentiates itself in the following way from other cross-platform toolkits:
All of these toolkits have some support for programming natively on theclassic Mac OS and/ormacOS platforms, which FOX currently does not support.[citation needed]
FOX uses a technique similar to theJava Swing-style approach to display a graphical user interface to the screen, using only graphical primitives available on that platform, as opposed to the original JavaAWT-style approach which used native widgets. This means that applications will have a similarlook and feel across platforms. In theory, porting FOX to a new platform should also be easier than implementing support for native widgets.
On the downside, it usually means that FOX applications will look and feel different from native applications for those platforms, which some users may find confusing. Also, certain native platform features may not be available immediately, such as comprehensive printing support or internationalized input handling, because they will need to be re-implemented in a cross-platform way before they can be used in FOX. Some applications, likeXfe File Manager, allow changing the color scheme to better integrate with the system's theme colors.[3] OnArch Linux, an app called FOX Control Panel is available to change the color scheme of all FOX applications system-wide. It ships with the main FOX Toolkit package.
FOX offers a transparent bi-directional messaging system. Each widget sends its message to a certain target. Each message is composed by a selector that identifies its kind and an id that is unique and provided by the widget's enumeration. The advantage is that each widget can call a target widget's method in a transparent manner, even if the method does not exist. Vice versa, in the implementation of the individual message handler, since the sender is known, the target can also dispatch a message to the sender. This is a particularly important feature in component oriented software, where components may be written by different people, or even different organizations.
The FOX messaging system simplifies the GUI update strategy: during widget update, the widgets can ask from their targets to update them. This means that a command message does not also have to explicitly update any widgets as it is typical. In case an application implements N command messages each updating M widgets, then M*N updates must be executed and at most M*N messages must be implemented. On the other hand, if widgets request for update, only N command messages and at most M update messages are implemented. This strategy separates the GUI update from data changes, making the GUI a real-time reflection of the underlying data structures.
Under hood it depends on the cross-platform libraries, which include the following:[4]
The following example creates a FOX application and a dialog with a button on C++:
#include"fx.h"intmain(intargc,char*argv[]){FXAppapplication("Hello","FoxTest");application.init(argc,argv);FXMainWindow*main=newFXMainWindow(&application,"Hello",NULL,NULL,DECOR_ALL);newFXButton(main,"&Hello, World!",NULL,&application,FXApp::ID_QUIT);application.create();main->show(PLACEMENT_SCREEN);returnapplication.run();}
It is also possible to create dialogs withPython 2.2 andRuby:
FXPy
#!/usr/bin/env python3fromFXPy.foximport*importsysdefrunme():app=FXApp("Hello","Test")app.init(sys.argv)main=FXMainWindow(app,"Hello",None,None,DECOR_ALL)button=FXButton(main,"&Hello, World!",None,app,FXApp.ID_QUIT)app.create()main.show(PLACEMENT_SCREEN)app.run()if__name__=="__main__":runme()
FXRuby
require'fox16'includeFoxapplication=FXApp.new("Hello","FoxTest")main=FXMainWindow.new(application,"Hi",nil,nil,DECOR_ALL)FXButton.new(main,"&Hello, World!",nil,application,FXApp::ID_QUIT,LAYOUT_FILL_X|BUTTON_TOOLBAR|FRAME_RAISED|FRAME_THICK)application.create()main.show(PLACEMENT_SCREEN)application.run()
