From: Tom Sawyer <transami@...>
Date: 2002-07-30T16:13:00+09:00
Subject: Re: wxWindows for ruby

On Tue, 2002-07-30 at 00:38, Pierre Brengard wrote:
> native toolkits styles : Windows, Motif, SGI, CDE, Platinum,... and if 
> you are not satified with them, you can design your own style.

...

> That's exactly what Qt provides but I am not sure of 'running under Qt' 
> means...
> I don't get the difference between  "mimicry" and "parley", could you 
> explain it more ?

no problem.

first, there's an import distinction to make here. when qt offers styles
similar to windows, motif, or what have you, you're still running under
qt. what we're talking about here is actually running a cross-platform
application on different platforms.

if your application uses a GUI toolkit such as FOX, which is a
cross-platform toolkit, what you'll get is a FOX look and feel
regardless of the platform your running on. This is becasue FOX is
self-contained --it takes car of everything itself. but it does not
offer mimicry, i.e. it won't pretend to be a native application with the
look and feel of windows under windows, or qt under qt (with whatever
style it is using), etc. wxWindows on the other hand is not
self-contained. it translates its toolkit into the native platform's.
this is what i mean by "parley". thus your application will have the
look and feel of the platform your running on (b/c it is). 

but the "parley" approach entails sacrifices. you're simply not going to
be able to cover all the bases of all the possible native GUI's your
translating to. it also takes a toll on speed and efficiency.

what i am suggesting is that the optimal approach would be one of a
self-contained toolkit, like FOX, but that also mimics the native
platform it is running on. hence, the best of both worlds.

 
~transami