Re: wxLua, and general questions

[Enrico Colombini <erix@...>]

On Tuesday 17 February 2004 16:02, hyperbob@walla.com wrote:
> Is there any reason to prefer wxLua over the other wxWindows ports 
> other than a taste for Lua's syntax?

Lua is much smaller than Python; you can compile a stand-alone executable 
including the whole of Lua, wxWindows and wxLua (in fact, that's just what 
the stand-alone version of wxLua does).

> 2. How reliable is wxLua and how completely are the features 
> of wxWindows ported?

I found wxLua quite reliable (a small problem was quickly corrected by the 
author) but I didn't use all of its features. 
As for completeness, I used the wxWindows-wxPython online manual and found 
most of the functions implemented (sometimes with slightly different calling 
conventions). Useful wxWindows macros do not seem to be available (I didn't 
understand if there is a simple way to setup keypress capture without having 
access to macros; things may have changed in recent months, I had no time to 
check).
The most incomplete thing of wxWindows appears (appeared?) to be the 
documentation; I had to compare the wxWindows-wxPython online manual with the 
function list included in wxLua. That takes some time, at least until one 
gets used to it (again, I have not checked wxLua recently).

> 3. How likely am I to encounter more bugs programming in wxLua 
> relative to programming with wxWindows in C++?

As for any added layer, you should account for possible wxLua bugs on top of 
the library's. However, I found it to be quite solid.

> 4. How much will it affect performance to use Lua instead of C++ 
> for the GUI?

The differences in UI responsivity seemed negligible to me (I used a Lua 
coroutine to handle the interface). Of course, if your program stops long 
enough to collect garbage you could have a perceptible pause.

I'd say "Have a look at my complete wxLua example and do some tests":
 http://www.erix.it/progutil.html#gpeddler2
...but my web site will be offline for about a week due to server relocation; 
should you be interested in having a look at my wxLua demo, I could send you 
a copy (~70 KB).

  Enrico