From: "Albert L. Wagner" <alwagner@...>
Date: 2001-08-16T05:13:52+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19837] Re: Ruby GUI

I'm not particularly replying to Avdi's post; just seemed like a
convenient place to continue this thread.

Over the last several months I have learned wxPython, FXRuby,
Ruby/Gtk, and Ruby/Tk. In each case I had a specific project I
wanted to do and began drilling down into each one until I hit
impervious rock. I also worked on the same project at work on
Win2k and at home on Linux, carrying Ruby source back and forth.
(Except Wx)  

Tk was stable, somewhat documented, and a real pleasure after the
initial confusion. In Tk you can control things down to a very
low level. But...it was slow and running on a single thread could
not do some things I needed done.

Wx was nice: utilized native widgets for Windows and Gtk for
Linux.  But it was big and, of course, not available for Ruby.

Gtk kept me confused.  I think it was the built in themeing
support. Changing colors and fonts was not straightforward.

Fox is finally what I settled on. It is fast and built according
to a well thought out plan. It's faults are shared with most of
the above: (1) It is not yet thoroughly tested and (2) The
documentation is sparse.  However, development is active.

Personally, I don't care much for built in mega-widgets,
prefering to build my own from lower level widgets.  

I would like Tk's level of control and simplicity of use and
Fox's speed, messaging and refresh features.  Lyle, has indicated
here recently that the Ruby wrappings for Fox will indeed be
enhanced.  I expect Fox will ultimately, given time, become even
more popular with Ruby users. 

...my contribution to this dialog.

Albert


-- 
"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom:
 the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."
 - Walter Lippman