What Windows API do I choose for a rich client application?

Question

I develop rich client software on Mac OS X and Linux. I wish to port an application to Windows and not being a user of Microsoft products, I'm not very familiar with Windows in general.

What I'm familiar with:

On Mac OS X, I have the option of Cocoa and Objective C or Carbon and C/C++. On Linux, I have the option of GTK+ and C/C++ or Qt and C++. I prefer Cocoa on Mac OS X and GTK+ on Linux. Interface Builder for Cocoa and Glade for GTK+ make my life easy. It's fun to create rich clients in these operating systems.

My core classes, or "model" in MVC, is written in cross-platform C++. The user interface classes, or "view and controller" in MVC, is written in the "preferred" language and GUI API for each respective platform.

C++ is the language I'm most familiar with. I use the Boost libraries extensively. Especially smart pointers, threads, and asio networking libraries. For Unicode, Localization, etc., I use International Components for Unicode (ICU).

Question 1: What is the "preferred" language and GUI API for the Windows platform that's compatible with my cross-platform model classes?

Question 2: How do I access my cross-platform model classes?

For example, on Mac OS X, I access my model classes through controller classes. The controller classes are implemented in Objective-C++. Objective-C++ is a mix of C++ and Objective-C. View objects "talk to" controller objects in Objective-C while the controller objects "talk to" model objects in C++.

On Linux, all classes are implemented in C++.

Answer 1

There isn't really a "preferred" language and API on Windows, more like lots of choices. The obvious ones are raw Win32 calls direct to the operating system (so really just C calls), or a thin abstraction on top of that (e.g. WTL, Windows Template Library, which is C++), or a thicker abstraction (e.g. MFC, also C++).

Microsoft these days are pushing pretty hard WPF, but that's part of the managed .NET world. You can write C++ in that, so you might be able to port your application, but I would expect it would be significant effort.

Given that you're using GTK+ or QT on Linux, the obvious thing would be to look into using both of those on Windows, as both exist - that way you could keep the Linux and Windows versions nearly identical. They're not natual choices for a Windows-only application, as they're not originally from the Windows world, but given your background they would make lots of sense. You might need to put some time into tweaking them to get the Windows application look and feel just right, but that should be more than compensated for by the lack of a need to write a whole new presentation layer.

Answer 2

Qt works fine with windows. Moreover it is platform independent.

Answer 3

If you can get your C++ to compile with the Visual Studio toolchain (rather than gcc or mingw), I would very much recommend that you make a .lib and then link it into a C++/CLI assembly where you expose a managed API to your library.

Then you can use C# and WinForms API or WPF and have an extremely rich and native windows looking app. This work is pretty straight-forward and if you are willing to rewrite the GUI, it will have the best result and be the easiest to deploy.

One caveat is if you need it to work on machines where .NET might not be present -- if so, I would stick to .NET 2.0 (and WinForms). You should also have your installer detect and install it. If you are willing to install .NET 3.5 if not present, then go for WPF.