From: Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>
Date: 2008-04-10T05:07:11+09:00
Subject: Re: FXRuby versus Tk

On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Alex DeCaria
<alex.decaria@millersville.edu> wrote:

> I've done some GUI program with Ruby/Tk, and am able to use it fairly
>  well, but am considering a switch to FXRuby.  Can someone give me a
>  comparison of the two and provide me with a reason to either switch to
>  FXRuby or stay with Ruby/Tk?  I'm interested in which is more powerful,
>  easier to use, better documented, etc.

Claims about which GUI toolkit (or programming language, or text
editor, ...) is more powerful, easier to use and better documented are
highly subjective. My advice in situations like this is to go ahead
and try out FXRuby for a few simple things, and decide for yourself
which one you like better. As long as you're shopping around, you
might also want to try out some of the other popular GUI toolkits for
Ruby, like Ruby/GTK, QtRuby and wxRuby.

You don't say why it is that you're considering a switch from Ruby/Tk,
and so I'm not quite sure how to answer your question. FXRuby is
"powerful" in the sense that it's backed up by FOX, a highly optimized
and resource friendly GUI library written in C++. Like most
non-trivial libraries, with a large number of classes and methods and
so forth, it can be non-easy to get started with. The API
documentation is pretty thorough, there are a handful of tutorials at
the FXRuby web site, and a FXRuby book
(http://www.pragprog.com/titles/fxruby/) is available to help people
get started with FXRuby programming.

Hope this helps,

Lyle