From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2008-01-17T23:49:22+09:00
Subject: Re: FXRuby or Shoes?

Doug Livesey wrote:
> Sorry I've posted this in the generic Ruby thread, but I wanted as
> unbiased a set of responses as possible.
> Now that the PP FXRuby book is out, I really have a yen to begin
> developing desktop apps again.
> I've looked, but struggled to find, any comparisons between FXRuby
> (which now has a book) and Shoes (which I just have a hunch I'll
> appreciate).
> Whilst I do appreciate that the best way to get a good comparison is to
> learn 'em both & do it myself, I was hoping that others may have
> experience in the frameworks & be able to illustrate some of the pros,
> cons, & differences in philosophy between the two.
> Sort of to help me choose which to learn first, if you will!
> Cheers for any & all responses.
>    Doug.

I'm in a similar muddle. I just downloaded Shoes a week or so ago and
started trying to figure out how to use it, and along came the FXRuby
book. I think the real decider for me would be portability -- will a
Shoes app run on Windows or a Mac, or am I stuck with Linux?

That said, there are now *two* GUI toolkits with books behind them for
Ruby, Qt and Fox. There still isn't a book for Tk, Gtk2 or WxWindows --
you need to figure those out from books for other languages, or from the
pieces in "The Ruby Way" and "The Ruby Cookbook".

I don't know about the rest of you "hardy hacker types who like to
figure stuff out for themselves", but in my own case, I have plenty of
other things to figure out for myself, so *I* want a book for things
that are already figured out! Use the source, Luke? Sometimes ... only
sometimes.