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List:       ruby-talk
Subject:    Re: Need Help Selecting a GUI
From:       ptkwt () aracnet ! com (Phil Tomson)
Date:       2004-05-15 19:53:49
Message-ID: c85qrl01p6f () enews2 ! newsguy ! com
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In article <e6056acc.0405150514.6e085bdb@posting.google.com>,
Bill Atkins <dejaspam@batkins.com> wrote:
>As anyone can tell by looking at the topics of my recent posts, I'm
>having trouble picking a Ruby GUI to use for a project.  Here are some
>of the toolkits I'm considering and the pros and cons of each.  My
>project, by the way, is a simple open-source, instant messaging client
>that would have to work on Windows and NIX systems.
>
>1. Tk
>pros: comes with Ruby; pretty much everywhere; powerful TkText widget
>cons: messy, mostly undocumented API; unconventional appearance;
>requires tcl; no tree control; it's Tk :)
>
>2. FOX
>pros: consistent and attractive appearance; very OO
>cons: no substitute for TkText - FXScintilla might do the trick, but
>it's API is a lot more complicated than TkText; somewhat C++-ish API;
>FxTreeList doesn't allow setting styles for individual items
>
>3. Qt
>pros: supposed to be really nice
>cons: costs money on Win32 - out of the question
>
>4. Gtk
>pros: plenty of widgets; antialiasing
>cons: supposed to be unstable on Win32; requires large download on
>Win32 machines; X-ish interface
>
>5. Wx
>pros: well-designed Rubyish API; supports changing tree item styles;
>seems pretty stable for a young project; native widgets
>cons: brand new - could have problems; on Linux, requires a large
>download (wxGTK) in order to work (6MB)
>
>Wx would be my choice except that it requires such a large download on
>Linux.  I would really prefer that the user download as little as
>possible, aside from Ruby itself.  Considering that my project's
>source will be under 300K, it seems silly to require large GUI
>downloads just to make it work.
>
>Also, antialiased fonts would be extremely nice, but no toolkit seems
>to support them, except Gtk (right?) which I can't use because of the
>large Win32 dependencies.
>
>Any thoughts on these?

FLTK?  The FLTK shared lib and ruby bindings are smaller than 1MB.

Problem is that it's still not released 'into the wild' (at least the 
source code for the bindings, that is).  On Monday I'll try to remember to 
see if there has been any progress on that front.

Phil

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