[ruby-talk:11940] Re: Seeking Ruby/Tk sensei...

Ron Jeffries wrote:
>Dave Thomas mentioned Gtk to me briefly yesterday (please note
>name-dropping). Why did you port to it? What makes it better than Tk?
>Is it similar to Tk in operation? Do the Perl/Tk docs still apply?

In case you don't realize it, out here in the non-
Smalltalk world, gui toolkit issues tend to be as 
religious as issues around editors and operating 
systems. With that disclaimer, I'll share my own 
personal views, which may be completely different 
from those of other folks. 

My background is with Win32 API coding, and then 
mostly MFC, but I've used several other GUI 
toolkits at times. I'm sure I'll say some things 
that are wrong, or that other people disagree 
with strongly, so I expect some followups.

Right from the start, I found Tk to be difficult. 
The paradigm just didn't line up with any of the 
toolkits I've used in the past. The Ruby bindings 
offer two ways to set properties of windows and 
such, I found both of those ways awkward. The 
Perl/Tk book helped me immensely, but the 
bindings don't match the Perl bindings exactly, 
so everything still seemed like a challenge.

Gtk (actually Ruby bindings to the GTK+ kit) is 
nothing like Tk (for better or worse). Although 
written in C, GTK+ it is actually an OO design. 
In fact, it is VERY similar to the GUI examples 
in the GoF Design Patterns book. 

Although it is more complex than I would like, I 
have been able to get more done more easily with 
Gtk than Tk. Initially I just used the official 
online references, but I also bought a book on 
GTK+ programming. The Ruby bindings are very 
nicely designed, so the C reference material 
applies almost directly to Ruby/Gtk as well.

Gtk is available for Windows, but not for the Mac 
(I think). My impression is that getting Gtk to 
actually work on Windows is probably slightly 
harder than getting Tk to work there, but I do 
have my Gtk app working on Windows. 

I believe that in general Tk is available on more 
platforms, and the Windows version of Gtk has 
traditionally lagged behind the unix version. I 
run Linux, so GTK is well-supported on my primary 
machine.

Gtk feels "snappier", and I think it looks a bit 
better, but those are purely subjective opinions 
and may actually be minority viewpoints. 

There are other options, too: Ruby bindings for 
the FOX toolkit have recently been released, and 
I haven't tried them. Qt bindings are out, but I 
don't personally like the Qt license situation 
(still). I was going to try the Fltk bindings, 
but they required me to install OpenGL, which I 
didn't feel like doing.

For open-source work, focused primarily Linux but 
with Windows compatibility, I think GTK is the 
safest choice. For maximum portability or if you 
already know and like Tk, then Tk makes sense. Qt 
seems great for Linux but will cost you if you 
use it for commercial Windows development. FOX 
looks very promising, and might end up being the 
best for Windows development (?). Fltk looks like 
a really neat lightweight toolkit.

Kevin