From: Robert Warning <cleeker@...>
Date: 2002-08-23T07:28:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Tk and Gtk

Sean Middleditch wrote:

>On Thu, 2002-08-22 at 17:25, Robert Warning wrote:
>
>>Okay this isn't exactly a ruby question, but in the near future I want 
>>to do a GUI aplication in ruby. Now  two obvious choices that come to 
>>mind are tk and gtk. To me tk looks a bit dated (graphics wise not 
>>functionally). For instance the new netscape browser look like it was 
>>done with Tk (probably valid since Aol owns netscape and they seem to 
>>love Tcl/Tk) and it looks kinda ugly. But it has pretty darned easy to 
>>learn a great deal about it because I looked in the Perl/Tk book by 
>>O'Reilly and it seems pretty straight forward translation from Perl to 
>>Ruby. But GTK looks more modern (again graphics wise) and apealling to 
>>the eye. Also the tutorial presented for Ruby/GTK is very helpfull. Plus 
>>I have had a bit of experience with PHP-GTK (not enough to do much 
>>usefull). My question is what are the major pros and cons of Tk and GTK. 
>>Sorry if that was a bit off the ruby topic but I didn't know where to ask.
>>
>
>Netscape is deinitely not done in Tk.  ~,^
>
>But, pros/cons (aside from Ruby specific ones):
>
>Tk is more flexible by far.  Tk is also a lot more portable than GTK+.
>
>GTK+ does indeed look nicer.  In most languages (Ruby's I believe as
>well) the GTK API is more like what you'd expect (All Tk interfaces I've
>seen make the language look like TCL... gross ~,^).
>
>In the end, it depends on a lot on preference and need.  For example, if
>you really don't like the way Tk looks, then use GTK+.  However, if you
>need great portability (i.e., to non-UNIX platforms) you're better off
>staying away from GTK+.  Personally, I'd always go with GTK+ (or full
>GNOME) since that's the desktop I run, and it makes it fit in.  Which
>brings up the fact you could use Qt if you are a KDE person.
>
>The popular Ruby toolkit I see a lot of reference to is FOX.  It's a
>nice C++ library (although it looks like Windows on all platforms, and
>if you could see my desktop, you'd realize I'm not into that plain a
>look ~,^).  You may want to look at that toolkit tho.
>
>
>
>
Well netscape sure looks like Tk ugliness (down to the menus checkboxes 
and that silly scollbar) to me even if it was not done in Tk  :) I use 
either GNOME or just Openbox. Since the program I'm planning is done 
just for Openbox, I (hopefully ;) won't have a portability problem. Even 
if one is a non Gnome user most boxes I've encountered have GTK+ on 
them. Oh well I think I'm going to use GTK rather than Tk and I'll look 
into FOX too. GTK mainly because I can emulate the Openbox look and feel 
better than Tk.