wxFormBuilder

wxWidgets is an excellent framework for creating multi-platform applications with or without a graphical user interface. While several applications exist to assist in visually creating dialogs, certain practical issues have motivated me to develop a new application. These issues include a limited widget set or the inability to incorporate non-graphical components. The goal of wxFormBuilder is to become an application that not only supports visual development and generates corresponding code but also allows the inclusion of non-graphical components and provides facilities for easily extending the widget set through plugins, much like other applications such as qt-designer. An interesting aspect of wxFormBuilder is that it stores information in XML documents rather than embedding it within the code itself. This not only simplifies the application's code but also makes it easy to further modify object properties and generated code without requiring recompilation. Code generation utilizes a series of "templates" defined in class information documents, which are processed to produce the corresponding code. The code generator includes a small parser that allows the use of a simple set of directives in the templates to handle functions, such as referencing object properties, executing conditional code generation, loops, and other possibilities. This approach simplifies the application's code while providing a straightforward mechanism for adding components. Visual components also require the implementation of a plugin to be used in the visual editor, but this does not mean losing the ability to "personalize" the generated code for that component (using templates). Moreover, the plugin can be as simple as a routine that creates an instance of the object based on its property values.

wxFormBuilder is an application supporting visual development and code generation for creating cross-platform apps based on wxWidgets. Its core value lies in allowing non-graphical components, easy widget extension via plugins, and storing information in XML for modification without recompilation.