From: Mark Wilson <mwilson13@...>
Date: 2002-12-26T10:44:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Tc/GTC/Fox - so many?

Searching on the mailing list archive for ruby-talk will have lots of 
discussion of the various GUIs as well as discussion of whether Ruby 
should have its own GUI or should standardize on an existing GUI.  I 
think the question is a difficult one.  Certainly, there is no need to 
exclude any of the existing GUIs (having more than one doesn't mean a 
developer has to learn all of them).  There has also been talk of 
having an abstract Ruby GUI interface that uses whatever GUI is 
available.

All of the below GUIs apparently work on Linux.

Tk -- very portable (works on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X); included in 
standard distribution of Ruby.  I have worked on learning this because 
I can get it to work on Mac OS X

Gtk -- perhaps not fully implemented in Windows (from what I've heard); 
I've not been able to get it to work on Mac OS X.

Fox -- very portable and fast, but FXRuby (the Ruby API for Fox) is not 
yet working with Ruby on Mac OS X.  Fox is very popular with Ruby 
programmers and is used in FreeRIDE, the new integrated development 
environment program for Ruby.  Fox is very object-oriented.  I plan on 
using Fox once I can get FXRuby working on Mac OS X.

Qt -- used for Linux/KDE; the license is commercial for Windows use; I 
don't know if there is a Ruby API to this GUI toolkit.

Cocoa -- RubyCocoa enables Ruby programs to work with Mac OS X 
frameworks, although I haven't yet tried it.  I may use this, but 
learning it is not my first priority because it is platform-specific.

Java -- presumably one (or all) of the Ruby-Java libraries being 
developed will be able to use the Swing GUI.


On Wednesday, December 25, 2002, at 05:36 PM, Roman Rytov wrote:

> I have no expirience with Perl or Tcl so variety of UI libs a bit
> confuses me. What's the point behind having several ones in paralel?
> Which one is easier to start with, wich one gives more options? Where
> can I find a working UI example?
>
> RR
>