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SDL vs wxWidgets

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SDL
37
44
+ 1
4
wxWidgets
21
70
+ 1
19
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wxWidgets vs SDL: What are the differences?

What is wxWidgets? It is a cross platform GUI library. It is a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. It has popular language bindings for Python, Perl, Ruby and many other languages, and unlike other cross-platform toolkits, it gives applications a truly native look and feel because it uses the platform's native API rather than emulating the GUI. It's also extensive, free, open-source and mature.

What is SDL? A cross-platform software development library. It is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D.

wxWidgets and SDL can be categorized as "Cross-Platform Desktop Development" tools.

Some of the features offered by wxWidgets are:

  • Support for gesture events (GSoC 2017 project)
  • Getting JavaScript code return value from wxWebView (also GSoC 2017 project)
  • New wxSecretStore class for securely storing user passwords

On the other hand, SDL provides the following key features:

  • Multiple window support
  • Hardware-accelerated 2D graphics
  • Better Unicode support
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Pros of SDL
Pros of wxWidgets
  • 2
    Actively being worked on
  • 1
    Cross-platform
  • 1
    Fast
  • 5
    Native looking UI
  • 4
    Learning Curve
  • 3
    Cross platform
  • 2
    Permissive license. Commercial with static linkage.
  • 2
    Open source
  • 1
    Pure C++ code
  • 1
    Python
  • 1
    Performance

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Cons of SDL
Cons of wxWidgets
  • 1
    No GUI support
  • 1
    Uses Qt for GUI (wxQt)

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- No public GitHub repository available -

What is SDL?

It is a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware via OpenGL and Direct3D.

What is wxWidgets?

It is a C++ library that lets developers create applications for Windows, macOS, Linux and other platforms with a single code base. It has popular language bindings for Python, Perl, Ruby and many other languages, and unlike other cross-platform toolkits, it gives applications a truly native look and feel because it uses the platform's native API rather than emulating the GUI. It's also extensive, free, open-source and mature.

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What companies use SDL?
What companies use wxWidgets?
See which teams inside your own company are using SDL or wxWidgets.
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What tools integrate with SDL?
What tools integrate with wxWidgets?

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What are some alternatives to SDL and wxWidgets?
OpenGL
It is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit, to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.
Qt
Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.
Electron
With Electron, creating a desktop application for your company or idea is easy. Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor, Electron has since been used to create applications by companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Slack, and Docker. The Electron framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is based on io.js and Chromium and is used in the Atom editor.
JavaFX
It is a set of graphics and media packages that enables developers to design, create, test, debug, and deploy rich client applications that operate consistently across diverse platforms.
Qt5
It is a full development framework with tools designed to streamline the creation of applications and user interfaces for desktop, embedded, and mobile platforms.
See all alternatives

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