Which UI toolkit

Ruby
1

Hi.

I’ll be building a small app which should look and feel native on
Windows and Mac OS X and optionally run on Linux. I’m thinking Ruby/Tk
and deployment via Erik V.s sweet ruby2exe work.

I do not have any UI toolkit experience at all, anyone care to share
some insight in what other toolkits could be interesting?

Thanks.

Morten

2

unknown wrote:

Hi.

I’ll be building a small app which should look and feel native on
Windows and Mac OS X and optionally run on Linux. I’m thinking Ruby/Tk
and deployment via Erik V.s sweet ruby2exe work.

I do not have any UI toolkit experience at all, anyone care to share
some insight in what other toolkits could be interesting?

Thanks.

Morten

I’m in the process of learning Ruby. I’m writing a sudoku game as my
learning vehicle. I’m using Ruby/Tk, mainly because it seems to be the
Ruby default GUI. Most of the introductory texts purport that, anyway.
If you haven’t settled on a Ruby GUI yet, there is a Syngress book out
called Ruby Developer’s Guide (ISBN: 1-928994-64-4) that provides
“Complete Coverage of Ruby GUI Toolkits: Tk, GTK+, FOX, SWIN/Vruby
Extensions, and Others.” I have the book and have briefly read through
that chapter; it includes source code for a sample GUI application of an
XML viewer in all four toolkits. It may be helpful if you want to do a
compaison before you make a decision about which of those, or other one,
you decide to use. I’d be happy to be kept aprised of your project’s
progress, and may even be ale to be more helpful down the road as I
develop my GUI “chops”. Best regards,

David

3

Looks like GTK+ is rapidly becoming an option. The MS Windows port has
been around for a while. The Mac OS X port was announced back in
October 2005 I think: http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Gtk_Mac_OS_X .
Looks like it’s coming along pretty well (the site provides build and
install instructions).

4

Morten wrote:

Thanks.

Morten

You have a lot of other options, such as Qt
(http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ruby/index.html), Wx
(http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/), Fox (http://www.fxruby.org/), GTK
(http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?Ruby%2FGTK), Widestudio
(http://www.widestudio.org), VisualuRuby
(VisualuRuby download | SourceForge.net), etc. Once you find a kit you
like stick with it and write some test programs using it. Experimenting
with a couple at a same time can confuse you. At least from my humble
experience.