# GUI Toolkit **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [April 1, 2007, 8:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773 "2007-04-01T08:12:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 8:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/1 "2007-04-01T08:12:08Z")
Which of the cross-platform GUI toolkits has the best documentation, is most stable, and is as “native-friendly” as possible? I’ve been scouring around but I keep finding different results and different dates, so I’m not sure which to trust. ---
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 9:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/2 "2007-04-01T09:12:53Z")
Mark C. wrote: > Which of the cross-platform GUI toolkits has the best documentation, is > most stable, and is as “native-friendly” as possible? I’ve been scouring > around but I keep finding different results and different dates, so I’m > not sure which to trust. Qt is said to have the best documentation, is stable, very native-friendly and as cross-platform as possible (Windows and Linux and OS X). Though, I failed to compile qt4-qtruby on my machine. Maybe should have downloaded Qt3. Gtk+ is also said to be the most mature, native friendly, and have good documentation. They say it does very well on Linux and Windows, but there’s still no native OS X port. HTH Damian/Three-eyed Fish ---
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 9:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/3 "2007-04-01T09:22:53Z")
Damian wrote: > Though, I failed to compile qt4-qtruby on my machine. Maybe should have Ruby/Tk is very stable and works on most platforms. It’s not “native looking”, and the Ruby/Tk documents mostly say, “see the Perl/Tk documents for more detail on the widgets”. But it’s probably the closest to a “universal” Ruby GUI that you’ll find. – M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P) [http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/](http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/) If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire. ---
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 3:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/4 "2007-04-01T15:37:22Z")
On Apr 1, 2007, at 1:12 AM, Mark C. wrote: > Which of the cross-platform GUI toolkits has the best > documentation, is > most stable, and is as “native-friendly” as possible? I’ve been > scouring > around but I keep finding different results and different dates, so > I’m > not sure which to trust. I attended an excellent talk by Kyle Cordes on this topic recently. See [Ruby GUI Toolkit Talk: Notes and Audio – Kyle Cordes](http://kylecordes.com/2007/03/31/ruby-gui-toolkits/). ---
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2007, 1:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/5 "2007-04-02T01:55:46Z")
Mark C. wrote: > Which of the cross-platform GUI toolkits has the best documentation, is > most stable, and is as “native-friendly” as possible? I’ve been scouring > around but I keep finding different results and different dates, so I’m > not sure which to trust. If native is important, you might want to consider WxRuby: [http://wxruby.rubyforge.org](http://wxruby.rubyforge.org). It wraps the popular WxWidgets toolkit, which uses completely native controls on the major platforms. Binary gems which install everything you need are available for Windows, OS X and Linux/GTK. Historically it has been less stable and complete than the other good toolkits, but the last year has seen a lot of development. Recent releases of wxruby2 have largely complete coverage of the API and people are using them for real work. There’s a full ruby class ref and plenty of samples I’d recommend using it with WxSugar, which provides a much more rubyish API layer on top of the library. a ---
**Author:** ![djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@djmook](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/djmook)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2007, 9:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-toolkit/90773/6 "2007-04-01T21:26:47Z")
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > Ruby/Tk is very stable and works on most platforms. It’s not “native > looking”, and the Ruby/Tk documents mostly say, “see the Perl/Tk > documents for more detail on the widgets”. But it’s probably the closest > to a “universal” Ruby GUI that you’ll find. Check out [Tile: an improved themeing engine for Tk](http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/) for a tk extension that uses ‘native widgets’ on Windows/Unix/OSX. I’m developing a project at work using ruby/tk/tile and it works great. I’ve had the application running on linux, freebsd, netbsd, dragonflybsd, solaris and windows 2000. I’ll be testing windows XP and OSX eventually too, but I don’t expect many problems. It’s also not got the ‘you must make all your code GPL’ thing going on, which, along with qt being a heavier toolkit, were the main reasons I avoided it for a commerical application. I would have used ruby/gtk but gtk doesn’t work worth a damn on a mac. It doesn’t look beautiful, but it looks better than raw tk. Andrew