I have been looking at various cross platform user interface toolkits. I aim to target win32 and linux.

QT seems ideal but as my project is unlikely to generate revenue I don't want to fork out money to purchase the non- free win32 version.

I started off looking at the win32 version. I spent way too much time mucking around getting it to compile, I still haven't been able to get a working application to use the library.

I decided to look for an alternative toolkit. While I was looking somebody submitted questions about crossplatform toolkits to both kuro5hin.org and slashdot.org and I was given valuable suggestions.

I decided to evaluate both wxWindows and fltk. I opted out of evaluating wxWindows after it required a hefty download of 9 MB.

fltk on the otherhand is impressively lightweight. It was a breeze to compile under linux and win32. I did run into strange filename problems under windows 95 (fl_color.cxx appears to be the same as fl_color_chooser.cxx etc..), but was able to build the project after carefully checking that all files were extracted and their contents were correct. I had no problems under windows NT or linux. FLTK comes with numerous examples and copious documentation. All in all it is a very impressive offering.

I ran across an interesting quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer in James Blish's "Cities in Flight":

We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.