Fast Light Toolkit:Reviews

Review of Fast Light Toolkit by PaulBlay

Usage background

Preferred IDE : Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition

Preferred Platform : Windows XP

Other requirements sought : Unicode support / Works with SQLite

Experience with Fast Light Toolkit

I had some initial problems getting the Hello World project to compile with FLTK. This was due to an omission in the online instructions. When compiling with VC++ you need to explicitly define WIN32 (e.g. /DWIN32 in the C/C++ compiler command line). Also where it says COMCTRL32.LIB it should say COMCTL32.LIB. Having sorted those points out I actually got my “Hello World” displayed! The functions provided by FLTK appear refreshingly simple to understand and I’m hopeful I’ll be able to do what I need to with it.

Conclusion

I have confirmed that Japanese text can be displayed via UTF-8 with FLTK functions. It is a little hard to get used to - but I think that’s just because I’m not used to C++. The FLUID tool (once I noticed it) is a neat way to generate initial code and I’m hopeful I’ll get the hang of it soon. Although Qt looks more professional this approach appears to be more flexible and may well pay off better in the long run.