From: "Daniel P. Zepeda" Date: 2003-01-11T11:06:50+09:00 Subject: Re: Why Fox On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 08:16:12 +0900 Daniel Carrera wrote: > Could someone explain to me why Ruby is adopting Fox as its standard > GUI?\ Where is it said that FOX is being adopted as the standard GUI? There are quite a few ruby bindings for other GUI toolkits as well. I don't think there is a "standard" yet, if ever. > > I'm not bashing Fox, this is an honest question. Fox is not the > standard GUI of any OS. My experience indicates that it's difficult to > install under Unix/Linux. Because it's not based on the native GUI it > always looks out of place (IMHO) and (for the same reason) it's slow (at > least in my limited experience). It is *not* difficult to install if you read the docs and follow some simple instructions. It took me less than 1/2 hour to install it on a new Linux system just the other day. Maybe it is hard for someone with no Linux experience, but then any other standard GNU/FSF package would be hard for *them*. If you can type tar xvzf fox-whatever.tgz; ./configure; make; make install, then you can install FOX! It isn't any harder than many a program I've hand to install, re-install, re-install for Windows. It may look out of place, I'll grant you that, but it isn't any slower than any of of the other toolkits that have scriptable bindings. Compared to Tk, hell, even Java Swing (which I detest), it is acceptable. If you want speed of application, write a FOX app in C++. I think this has more to do with the interpreted nature of the scripting language rather than FOX itself. In fact, on the 'looks out of place' Swing loses there too, and so does Tk. I've no experience using GTK, nor the newer Qt bindings available for Ruby so I can't compare them, but I'd bet they'd lose on the speed, 'look-and-feel' front too. What's left? Oh, WxWindows, that uses the native GUI set, so it should in theory anyway be faster, but then you have cross-platform problems with the widgets etc. I'll tell you why *I* use FOX/Ruby: They are a *joy* to code in! I must be a nerd because I get a giddy feeling inside when I've finished a project in half the time than I thought it would take me, and the code looks so clean and elegant! It is truly cross-platform (If you code it that way of course) and the License is right. Qt, you have to pay a ton for a Windows license, Tk, looks Ok, but it's API is horrid. (No offense it was great in it's time, but is aging now), and WxWindows, well, again, the API isn't so cool as FOX and the cross-platform widget problems are there and aren't they going the way of FOX anyhow? I'll bet there are a lot of people that feel the way I do about coding in Ruby/FOX, that may be why you get the impression that FOX is becoming the standard GUI toolkit. Hope this helps, D > > I'm sure that there is a very good reason for choosing Fox. I just want > to know what it is. > > Thanks a lot. > > Daniel Carrera > Graduate Teaching Assistant. Math Dept. > University of Maryland. (301) 405-5137 > -- "Daniel P. Zepeda" (Remove commas for address)