[ruby-talk:7816] Re: GUIs for Rubies

Mike Wilson wrote:

# (At Conrad's request, I'll try to respond after the actual post
# (etiquette and all), although, I'm not sure how well this will
# work with this mail program, so bare with me)  Read below

Thanks; hopefully other newcomers will also do this.

# John Shields writes:
# 
# # My thoughts on a "preferred" GUI for Ruby:
# #
# # For me, it is really important for the toolkit that I use to
# create # applications that look like a native application.  If
# I create an app I
# want
# # it to look _exactly_ like a Windows app when compiled under
# windows and
# look
# # _exactly_ like a GNOME/GTK+ app when compiled for that
# environment.
# 
# >Out of "Ruby/GUI marketing curiosity", why is that? Pure
# personal preference, non-negotiable customer demand, or what?
# 
# 
# Here's how I view this, in case anyone cares (I'm sure they don't,
# but anyway :). 

Well, it might help increment someone's motivation to port some GUI more 
to your liking.

# The appeal of things looking the same across a
# multitude of platforms is only a gain for a very few people, and the
# programmer.   I'm honestly sick and tired of hearing the sales pitch
# that "No matter what platform you're on, the interface will look
# exactly the same".  This makes no sense for the user.  Very few
# users ever need to use the same application on multiple platforms.
# The loss of the native look and feel isn't a huge deal for seasoned
# users, but it really affects the usability of a program to the
# novice grandmother who's just trying to get a little bit of work
# done.
# 
# User interfaces shouldn't be about how easy it is to port from one
# platform to the next, and it shouldn't be about providing the
# occasional NT/Unix/Network admin with the same interface over all
# his/her platforms. 

Maybe not, but behind the sales pitches (rationalizations), there are 
still resource availability/trade-off costs (even with volunteer time), 
first to market considerations, and lowest common denominator trade-offs. 

Hence my original question about whether native look and feel was a real 
show-stopper, or just (very) desirable (and to whom).

#  Any experienced user will easily pick up the
# "different" (but actually the same as the other apps on that
# platform) look and feel of an application whether it's on NT or
# Unix.

FWIW, on a somewhat related tangent, C. Laird's Jan. DDJ article discusses 
several Perl/<GUI> ports. My (very) superficial impression from skimming 
over it is that Perl/Tk gets by far the widest usage, with Perl/GTK+ 
showing very strong growth. Perl/wxWindows seems to be 
incomplete/languishing due to lack of serious development support (which I 
find surprising, given the huge size of the Perl community, plus the fact 
that wxWindows seems to be the type of GUI system that you and 
presumably/supposedly most application users would prefer), and Perl/Qt is 
too new to say much about. 

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)