[ruby-talk:7671] Re: GUIs for Rubies, and FLTK

Kevin Smith wrote:
> 
> We've been actively discussing Tk, GTK, FOX, and
> wx. What happened to FLTK? It seems very
> lightweight (plus), already exists for ruby
> (plus), and supports Windows (plus). It may have
> few widgets? (minus), and does not support Mac
> (minus).
> 
> I personally haven't used FLTK, but am curious if
> anyone here has. And if so, what do you think
> about it. If not, why have you chosen one of the
> other options?
>

I would like to repost what I posted in ruby-talk 1710
earlier this year, regarding FLTK. (BTW, the earlier thread
on GUIs for Ruby starts around 1641 <http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/1641>)

The following thread is from the secret-labs opal mailing list, 
dated 3/3/2000:

1.
>>
Have you seen FLTK?
  
I have worked with many multiplatform guis toolkits and frameworks, 
tcl/tk,
gtk, wxWindows, Java AWT, Java Swing, Fox, MFC, and VB.

FLTK 1.0.7 is mature, small, clean, easy to understand, comes with a GUI
builder written using the toolkit, is OO, supports OpenGL and
portable(win32-unix).  FLTK is a toolkit, not a framework.  Version 2.0
soon
to be beta (rumor is April) has someone working on a Mac Port.  Perhaps
you
could provide some help with the mac version, or help with fellows do
the
Py/Perl wrappers.

Its definitely made my life easier.
http://www.fltk.org

Joe Robertson
<<

2.
>>
So, in your opinion, FLTK was much better than wxPython and the python
bindings to gtk?  I take it you were using the Python bindings to FLTK?

Do you believe that FLTK has enough people using it and maintaining it
that it won't be orphaned?

(I've had problems getting wxPython to work, and it is painful to have
to locate and install the various libraries it depends on.)

Thanks much!

-- 
Joe VanAndel              
<<

3.
>>
Actually I am using FLTK with C++.

I have not tried the py binding yet.

I believe that the core programmers and the community will keep FLTK
going.
There is more activity in FLTK than in wxWindows, Fox and some other
tools.
A major update is underway to provide thematic support much like Java
Swing.
This is where you can define styles, the way a 'thing' looks and feels,
so
that FLTK can adopt a win32, motif, mac look and feel (plus whatever
else).
The community is very active, I was helping one person develop an
unbound
data grid type control which is now looking very usable.  This was done
in
an incredably short time frame of about 2 months.

Like I said, I've tried and used many tools, but FLTK is easy and fun to
pick up and use.   

Another very important issue is distribution.  The tool is LGPL, but
more
the entire compiled .a or .dll file is <600kb.  Thus statically linking
the
gui is very easy.  Often only pieces of the lib are needed so many apps
are
quite small.  Compared to Tk where you need to distro the whole lib.


Joe Robertson
<<

4.
>>
---Reply to mail from Joe Van Andel about [secretlabs-opal-list] 
Re: Using uiToolkit without Tkinter

> So, in your opinion, FLTK was much better than wxPython and the python
> bindings to gtk?  I take it you were using the Python bindings to FLTK?

I have tried it today and it is much easier to use than wxPython :) 
I think I'm going to use it as long as wxPython is not finished, at
least
it has a working GUI composer wich worked for python, too. (After some
minor tweaking, some of the flags are not recognized by the converter
but
that was as easy as adding some lines to a dictionary).

> 
> Do you believe that FLTK has enough people using it and maintaining it
> that it won't be orphaned?

Hmm, the X and Win32 versions are usable by now, a Mac port is in the
works and I can't see any reason why Spitzak and the others should stop
working on it.

> 
> (I've had problems getting wxPython to work, and it is painful to have
> to locate and install the various libraries it depends on.)

Yes, that was my problem, too, so I have now switched to FLTK as long as
wxPython is not where I want it to be. 
Regards,
Roland Kaercher
<<


Guy N. Hurst
-- 
HurstLinks Web Development    http://www.hurstlinks.com/
Norfolk, VA - [phone]
PHP/MySQL - Ruby/Perl - HTML/Javascript