wxUiEditor can import most wxFormBuilder project files. Because wxUiEditor generates source code for each top level form, you can import multiple wxFormBuilder files into a single wxUiEditor file. If multiple forms are specified in a single wxFormBuilder project, only the first form will have the generated filename set. All additional forms will use a placeholder name (filename_base) -- you will not be able to generate code for the additional forms until you specify a filename to generate.
Note that wxUiEditor projects are roughly 90% smaller than a wxFormBuilder project due to optimization in what gets written to the project file.
When you import a wxFormBuilder project, wxUiEditor will #include XPM files in the generated source code. All other external images are first converted into a C++ array and generated in the source file of the first form in your project that uses it. All further references to the same image will use a extern reference.
The code that wxUiEditor generates will often look quite different than the code that wxFormBuilder generates. Your UI will usually work the same in spite of the differences in the code. However, there are some differences you should be aware of:
- wxUiEditor will connect to events using Bind() rather than Connect()
- wxUiEditor will not disconnect events in a destructor since wxWidgets already does this
If you inserted a static line before a wxStdDialogButtonSizer, the import will remove that line and instead generate the code in a platform independent way (on Mac, there should not be a line above the standard buttons).
When you import wxFormBuilder projects, wxUiEditor will default to generating the same filename that was generated before. If you would like to compare the differences, then in wxUiEditor change the default source and header extensions to .cc/.hh or .cxx/.hxx so that the new code won't overwrite the old code that wxFormBuilder generated.
If you select an object in wxFormBuilder and from the Edit menu choose "Copy Object to Clipboard" then you can select a node in wxUiEditor and paste that node directly into an existing project.