From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-09-26T23:02:54+09:00
Subject: Re: GUI programming for WinXP/Linux/OSX?

Roman Hausner wrote:
> mmmkay ... :)
> 
> Thank you all for your valuable answers! As far as I can see
> everyone has their own preference here.
> 
> This is probably partly due to prior experience with a
> framework or the fact that a certain framework was chosen.
> 
> As of now, the following choices seem to be available:
> 
> = Tk: comes with Ruby, so should be easy to deploy.
> = Qt
> = GTK
> = JRuby plus some Java GUI, preferably SWT
> = It seems there is also FXRuby (http://www.fxruby.org/)
>   (non-native widgetset).
> 
> Does anyone know of some objective comparisons of these
> approaches? Especially with regard to learning curve,
> stability, integration with Ruby, interactive GUI design,
> and ease of deployment?
> As I said, I am new to GUI programming, so this all looks
> a bit intimidating at the moment.
> 
> I probably will dig a bit into JRuby -- I guess this will
> make availbale a lot of Java library functions to a Ruby-like
> language -- and I guess, also take away all non-Ruby-only
> packages and extensions from the Ruby side.
> But having the existing set of Java libraries available
> together with Ruby as a programming and scripting language
> does sound very inviting indeed.

I'm at a similar decision point. I don't have a Mac and don't plan to 
test on one, but I don't want to rule out Macs from using my 
application. My personal opinions:

1. Tk is ugly, but it's a "de facto standard" and does come built-in.
2. QT is the best looking, but the Ruby-QT4 bindings are still a tad 
unstable on my development platform (Gentoo Linux testing) and QT3 isn't 
open source on Windows.
3. GTK is ugly -- IMHO uglier than Tk. Maybe I just haven't figured out 
how to make the fonts do what I want yet, but I can't stand the look of 
most GTK apps.
4. JRuby -- I don't know much about it.
5. FXRuby -- right now this is the front-runner. If I can get drag and 
drop to work from the examples that come with it, I'll probably settle 
on this one.

The app I'm building will have a Dia/Visio/XFig/Inkscape-like "drag and 
drop shapes onto a canvas" GUI, but not a full diagramming package. I've 
actually considered using one of the open-source diagramming packages as 
a front end but I haven't found one that's Ruby-scriptable -- Python and 
Guile/Scheme appear to be the scripting languages of choice for such 
codes. :( If I go this way I'll have to have the diagramming package 
export XML or SVG and have the Ruby program execute it.

Hmmm ... has anyone built a "GUI" using ruby-rsvg?