From: Avi Bryant <avi@...4.com>
Date: 2001-03-04T07:50:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:11949] Re: Seeking Ruby/Tk sensei...


On Sat, 3 Mar 2001, 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?

Gtk+ is the toolkit used in the GNOME desktop, and a lot of linux
apps.  To my taste, it has a much cleaner, more modern feel than Tk.  It
is similar in that it keeps the model of packing widgets hierarchically,
and registering callbacks for events ("signals" in Gtk-terminology), but
it is a completely different widget set and so the docs wouldn't apply.
The main advantage, for me, is the excellent Glade interface builder,
which generates XML descriptions of Gtk interfaces, that can then be
loaded at runtime (see the Ruby/LibGlade module in the RAA).
 
There is a Gtk port to windows; I don't know if Ruby/Gtk builds with it.
If you want to look into it, you can get a package with gtk and libglade
DLLs from http://equusasinus.com/gru/, and the GtkAda package at
http://gtkada.eu.org/ includes a windows Glade binary.
  
For general Gtk information, see www.gtk.org.