I Hate the Stingray Objective Toolkit
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If you don't mind me asking ... Why not???
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Just wish to know...is there any Toolkit you love? Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
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If you don't mind me asking ... Why not???
A number of reasons, the most immediate of which are: - Their tab controls aren't derived from the MFC stuff. This wouldn't be so bad if they had at least made them function or look like the MFC tabs. For instance, you don't get scroll buttons when there are too many tabs to fit across the top - they simply turn the tab labels into ellipses. - Their button bars are CPU cycle hogs. Hover the mouse over any of their derived controls or windows , and CPU usage shoots up to anywhere from 40-70%. Move the mouse around on their windows, and it goes up to 100% and stays there as long as you move your mouse around. (This doesn't happen in Visual Studio's windows or toolbars). - Their support sucks. They're supposed to be running a news server (news.stingray.com), but it's either poorly maintained or just plain not responding at all. You have to leave a message on their web-based support page, and then wait for them to respond (as much as 72 hours in some instances). - Problems you have are never their library's fault, yet Boundscheker is reporting over a dozen resource and/or memory leaks in the Stingray code. Even if I could afford their stuff for home use, I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in a corporate environment either.
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Just wish to know...is there any Toolkit you love? Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
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No, but I find the CJ Tools, or BGC Library pretty acceptable. If the Dundas stuff wasn't so expensive for a hobby programmer, I'd buy that.
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A number of reasons, the most immediate of which are: - Their tab controls aren't derived from the MFC stuff. This wouldn't be so bad if they had at least made them function or look like the MFC tabs. For instance, you don't get scroll buttons when there are too many tabs to fit across the top - they simply turn the tab labels into ellipses. - Their button bars are CPU cycle hogs. Hover the mouse over any of their derived controls or windows , and CPU usage shoots up to anywhere from 40-70%. Move the mouse around on their windows, and it goes up to 100% and stays there as long as you move your mouse around. (This doesn't happen in Visual Studio's windows or toolbars). - Their support sucks. They're supposed to be running a news server (news.stingray.com), but it's either poorly maintained or just plain not responding at all. You have to leave a message on their web-based support page, and then wait for them to respond (as much as 72 hours in some instances). - Problems you have are never their library's fault, yet Boundscheker is reporting over a dozen resource and/or memory leaks in the Stingray code. Even if I could afford their stuff for home use, I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in a corporate environment either.
I have to agree with you - to a certain extent. I'm not a great fan of Objective Toolkit either. Too many things are nowhere near up to date with Windows' UI styles. I once asked when it would be getting an update to keep up with Microsoft's changing styles and to correct Toolkit's own errors and I felt they tried to call my bluff, asking for a list of required changes. So, I compiled and sent them a list, pretty much filling their web form (~4000 chars?). ;-) Sadly, I've yet to see any hint of a new release in the pipeline, although I did give up checking a few months back. That said, I disagree with you on the support thing. I think their web-based support is pretty damned good. I also think it's pretty important to make sure we don't tar their Objective Grid with the same brush as used for the Toolkit. Grid is excellent and the support for it is excellent, too. Mal.
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A number of reasons, the most immediate of which are: - Their tab controls aren't derived from the MFC stuff. This wouldn't be so bad if they had at least made them function or look like the MFC tabs. For instance, you don't get scroll buttons when there are too many tabs to fit across the top - they simply turn the tab labels into ellipses. - Their button bars are CPU cycle hogs. Hover the mouse over any of their derived controls or windows , and CPU usage shoots up to anywhere from 40-70%. Move the mouse around on their windows, and it goes up to 100% and stays there as long as you move your mouse around. (This doesn't happen in Visual Studio's windows or toolbars). - Their support sucks. They're supposed to be running a news server (news.stingray.com), but it's either poorly maintained or just plain not responding at all. You have to leave a message on their web-based support page, and then wait for them to respond (as much as 72 hours in some instances). - Problems you have are never their library's fault, yet Boundscheker is reporting over a dozen resource and/or memory leaks in the Stingray code. Even if I could afford their stuff for home use, I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in a corporate environment either.
I've never used the Stingray stuff, but it has looked interesting. Alas, Stingray was bought out by Rogue Wave a few years ago; that company has no interest in the Windows community (they are chasing the cross-platform thing) and I would be surprised if they kept the libraries up to date. Honestly I was surprised that they bought them in the first place.
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No, but I find the CJ Tools, or BGC Library pretty acceptable. If the Dundas stuff wasn't so expensive for a hobby programmer, I'd buy that.
Well, I cannot say much about CJ, BCG did a good job but try doing Active Document server/Container with it :(( I have just grabbed the Dundas GoldRush, and for the cost it is worth it. But if you have to purchase the separate parts I wonder if you can really justify the cost of most of them. The Ultimate Edit, for instance, is just Windows RichEdit control with syntax highlighting :(( God Bless Andrei!!! The Grid library is cool, the m++ which comes with GNUPlot and others will remind you of hunting well for open sources, the Diagram does a lot of nice stuff but its undo/redo design of simply saving the current screen and replaying it keeps it out of large editing works (except you can guarantee enough memory), the hyperview sends you back to download Microsoft ActiveX Pad for its form editor! Hmmmmm...life is simple not easy anywhere! It is unfortunate, but there is really no serious library in the rank of QT in the Windows market!!! For fancy GUI the choice is obvious--BCG. For hobby programming, the choice is clear use the codeproject and codeguru well. Dundas sources could be a good learning resource, but the "hobbyist and inconsistent commenting" will not help you much. Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
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Well, I cannot say much about CJ, BCG did a good job but try doing Active Document server/Container with it :(( I have just grabbed the Dundas GoldRush, and for the cost it is worth it. But if you have to purchase the separate parts I wonder if you can really justify the cost of most of them. The Ultimate Edit, for instance, is just Windows RichEdit control with syntax highlighting :(( God Bless Andrei!!! The Grid library is cool, the m++ which comes with GNUPlot and others will remind you of hunting well for open sources, the Diagram does a lot of nice stuff but its undo/redo design of simply saving the current screen and replaying it keeps it out of large editing works (except you can guarantee enough memory), the hyperview sends you back to download Microsoft ActiveX Pad for its form editor! Hmmmmm...life is simple not easy anywhere! It is unfortunate, but there is really no serious library in the rank of QT in the Windows market!!! For fancy GUI the choice is obvious--BCG. For hobby programming, the choice is clear use the codeproject and codeguru well. Dundas sources could be a good learning resource, but the "hobbyist and inconsistent commenting" will not help you much. Best regards, Paul. Paul Selormey, Bsc (Elect Eng), MSc (Mobile Communication) is currently Windows open source developer in Japan, and open for programming contract anywhere!
actually, while just out of my first 6 months of COM fuzziness, I did find the source to OTLKit,slightly interesting read. But definately, today, it's codeguru/codeproject thats the place to be.:) I'm an alien, I'm an alien it's a beautiful life.... Bush
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Don't get me started on Objective Toolkit. I've been heavilly using OTPro for some 3 years and while it does what it it claims (more or less) it is overly complex, overly tricky, very poor docs, support costs an arm and leg once your out of the free 60 day period, reported bugs never seem to get fixed (including very serious ones), the library is sadly out of date and .... My main use of it is the docking views and docking windows capability in general. I've checked all the other libraries, code on CP, CG etc. and none handle docking all that well, whereas OTPro does this quite well. The biggest problem with other libraries is when you undock and redock windows they often don't dock where the average user expects them to. Also most don't support the ability to use a CView derived class in a docking window. If I had my time over I would probably write my own code for this from scratch. I certainly wouldn't use any Objective Toolkit or probably any other Stingray/Rogue Wave product. Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows http://www.getsoft.com
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I am using BCG Library. It is really very good and inexpensive for shareware authors. Mustafa Demirhan
>I am using the BCG library. It is really very good and inexpensive for shareware authors. That's true. The BCGControlBar library is excellent. Right on! Sincerely Yours, Brian Hart "And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and the children are above-average." - Garrison Keillor
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Anybody wants to discuss pros and cons of these products? :-D Tomasz Sowinski -- http://www.shooltz.com
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Historically, the cons of all of the products mentioned so far (Stingray, Dundas, CJ Tools, and BGC) involve the sample programs and documentation. (This documentation/sample stuff is my pet peave.) Sure, the samples show you basic library use, but they don't give applicable real-world examples, and/or they don't explain (through comments in the source code) *why* certain library calls are made in the places they are, nor alternative approaches to the same problem. The help is usually sparse, and there's usually no [appropriate] snippet of sample code to go along with the help topic. Also, the closer to the metal you get (in terms of moving down into their own class dependancies), the more sparse the documentation gets. The defense used for the lack of sufficient documentation and/or samples has always been that the company provides the source code, so extensive help isn't necessary. Well, that's a crock of monkey dung - I'm trying to write *my own* program, and I don't have the time or inclination to decipher someone else's source code to determine how I should be using it. The library is supposed to make our job easier not make us sit there wondering what the hell to do next. The current version of Stingray OT is over 3 years old, and like someonme else said, there's no sign that a new version is even being worked on, and the bugs in the current version certainly haven't been fixed. The price of the toolkit is exhorbitant as well (and I stand by my claim that their support sucks). The last general item is the cost (where hobby programmers are concerned). Being hobby programmers, most of us can't afford $1000 for a toolkit, $500 for one year of technical support, and the costs involved in a constant barrage of upgrades. I realize that the companies involved have to make money, but when you look at it from the hobby programmer's side of the fence, there's no way we'll be able to afford it. How many of us have [legal copies of] VC6 Pro, MSDN Pro, *and* a 3rd party class library for home use that they personally purchased? I would bet that not many of us do. As far as feature sets, that's tough to align. Someone that is intimately familiar with ALL of the libraries needs to do up a comparative chart that shows what each one does/doesn't do so we can "hold them up to the light", as it were.
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Historically, the cons of all of the products mentioned so far (Stingray, Dundas, CJ Tools, and BGC) involve the sample programs and documentation. (This documentation/sample stuff is my pet peave.) Sure, the samples show you basic library use, but they don't give applicable real-world examples, and/or they don't explain (through comments in the source code) *why* certain library calls are made in the places they are, nor alternative approaches to the same problem. The help is usually sparse, and there's usually no [appropriate] snippet of sample code to go along with the help topic. Also, the closer to the metal you get (in terms of moving down into their own class dependancies), the more sparse the documentation gets. The defense used for the lack of sufficient documentation and/or samples has always been that the company provides the source code, so extensive help isn't necessary. Well, that's a crock of monkey dung - I'm trying to write *my own* program, and I don't have the time or inclination to decipher someone else's source code to determine how I should be using it. The library is supposed to make our job easier not make us sit there wondering what the hell to do next. The current version of Stingray OT is over 3 years old, and like someonme else said, there's no sign that a new version is even being worked on, and the bugs in the current version certainly haven't been fixed. The price of the toolkit is exhorbitant as well (and I stand by my claim that their support sucks). The last general item is the cost (where hobby programmers are concerned). Being hobby programmers, most of us can't afford $1000 for a toolkit, $500 for one year of technical support, and the costs involved in a constant barrage of upgrades. I realize that the companies involved have to make money, but when you look at it from the hobby programmer's side of the fence, there's no way we'll be able to afford it. How many of us have [legal copies of] VC6 Pro, MSDN Pro, *and* a 3rd party class library for home use that they personally purchased? I would bet that not many of us do. As far as feature sets, that's tough to align. Someone that is intimately familiar with ALL of the libraries needs to do up a comparative chart that shows what each one does/doesn't do so we can "hold them up to the light", as it were.
There has been some really strange stuff going on with Stringray for the last year and with RogueWave for 2 or 3 years. Last fall, several Stingray people started doing .NET interviews. It appeared that they had been working on it for quite some time. But, I believe I just saw where RogueWave had cancelled a lot of work and canned many people at Stingray. But they did just announced a new version of Objective Studio. RogueWave's base product - Tools.h++ (now repackaged and called SourcePro C++) is a great library. They have a whole set of great code derived from it (Threads.h++ and DBTools.h++ are without peer). This stuff has always been very expensive, but of excellent quality and usefulness - our only technical problem has been getting programmers that understand C++ well enough to effectively use this stuff. We've had several internal people who thought this stuff was all just cross platform - but those who know how to use it have about doubled their productivity over those just using what comes in VC++ 6 (which isn't much as far as containers and threads goes). That said, RogueWave's licensing issues make this stuff impossible to use in commercial development. High priced initial cost is one thing - but outrageous demands for a percentage of our gross sales figures in order to sell software with their libraries is another (especially since they modified the license after the fact - it used to be free distribution). :mad: But it's all moot now anyhow - most of the best features of Tools.h++ (and especially Threads.h++) are now native in the .NET Framework Class Library. :) Dale Thompson
