From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2009-02-11T06:04:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby GUI Survey: Results

Mark Roseman wrote:

> Alex, thanks so much for all the effort you put into this, that is very 
> useful.


Thank you, I'm glad it's useful.


> This result doesn't at all surprise me. Though I am quite curious about 
> a few things (not in the survey, this is more a broader question to 
> those who participated and others):
>   - how many people are still using 'classic' Tk vs. the newer themed 
> widget sets (Tile or ttk)?

Until doing this research, my only experience of Tk was in Perl c2001. 
At the time I was thrilled, because it was the first time I'd created a 
GUI app.

Doing the survey prompted me to try out Ruby's stdlib Tk on OS X - just 
running a couple of the samples. I don't know, is what comes with Ruby 
'classic' by default?

>   - how many are even aware of tile/ttk? :-)

I was vaguely aware of various themeing engines for Tk that were 
intended to improve the appearance.


>   - for how many does the existing Tk documentation and examples just 
> blow?

I didn't look at the documentation. The samples looked wrong simply 
because the widgets looked wrong (not native). But looking at the 
screenshots of the Win XP ttk / tile theme on its wiki page, they look 
OK. I revised my view of the toolkit a little.


> I ask mainly because those are some of the things I was trying to target 
> with http://www.tkdocs.com ... I'm of the opinion that Tk isn't a 
> fantastic GUI option for Ruby, but in recent incarnations it's not as 
> bad as most people are aware, though the lack of awareness itself is an 
> issue.

I'm inclined to agree: I suspect that the negative survey response to Tk 
is at least in part due to reputation. All of the cross-platform 
toolkits have functional limitations and aesthetic shortcomings.

It's another reason why I think Ruby-Tk would be best hived off out of 
the standard library to a separate project. If it takes installing some 
extra packages after installing Ruby to make Tk look as good as 
possible, then why wouldn't a user just install some other GUI package 
that's at the end of a 'gem install xxx' command.

As a separate project, Ruby-Tk would then be freer to optimise the 
experience as it's first installed (eg, using ttk/tile), rather than 
being bound to the necessarily more controlled and conservative core 
Ruby change and release system.

It's not for me, now, but it seems it can stake a claim for a place as 
a 'lightweight' Ruby GUI toolkit.

alex