Picking a GUI toolkit for use with Ruby on windows

Ruby
1

Hi guys,

I’m wondering which GUI toolkit I should use for experimenting with GUI
programming with windows.

My selectionpoints:
Free for non commercial use
A graphical designer
Simple to use
Not 2 awfull to look at
Runs on the windows platform

It’s nice if it also runs on other platforms but I can live without them
:slight_smile:

Would RubyCLR be a good option or should I look at other roads ?

Regards,

Mischa

2

It’s nice if it also runs on other platforms but I can live without them :slight_smile:

Would RubyCLR be a good option or should I look at other roads ?

RubyCLR will do what you need. You can use the visual designer in VS
or the VisualStudio Express Edition to get going quickly. The only
thing to be sure of is that your controls will need to be public
accessible or you will not be able to get to them from Ruby. John L.
has more information on designing this way on his blog at
www.iunknown.com.

Michael T.

3

Mischa K. wrote:

Runs on the windows platform
Ruby/Tk is probably your best bet to start with. Given that FreeRide is
bundled in the One-Click Installer, Fox is another possibility. I’ve
forgotten what the graphical designers for those toolkits are called,
but I know they exist.

QT4 is in my opinion the best looking and has the best designer. But I
don’t think the Ruby/QT4 interface is fully baked yet (if someone from
the QTRuby team is here, I’d love for you to prove me wrong here!).

You might also want to consider getting ActiveState’s Komodo IDE. I’d
wait until 4.0 is released, though – 3.5 is on the way out and 4.0 is
in beta. It’s a tad expensive – $250, although they have a lower cost
“personal edition”.

It’s nice if it also runs on other platforms but I can live without them :slight_smile:

Would RubyCLR be a good option or should I look at other roads ?

There are actually now three Ruby - .NET environments to choose from,
plus jRuby if you like the Java way. I’m not at all familiar with .NET,
so I won’t pretend to evaluate them.

4

Mischa K. wrote:

Runs on the windows platform

It’s nice if it also runs on other platforms but I can live without them :slight_smile:

Ruby/Gtk2 meets all of these requirements. :slight_smile:

I’ve used it to develop Windows apps at my current job and they have
been working fine for months. I think it looks fine on Windows.

HTH,

Jamey

Confidentiality Notice: This email message, including any attachments,
is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain
confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended
recipient(s), you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution of this email and
any materials contained in any attachments is prohibited. If you receive
this message in error, or are not the intended recipient(s), please
immediately notify the sender by email and destroy all copies of the
original message, including attachments.

5

Vincent F. wrote:

far (well, except one I think I fixed).

Cheers !

Vince

QT4? I know the QT3 Ruby interface is solid, but QT4 is the only usable
version for Windows – I think it’s a licensing issue, not a technical
one.

6

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

QT4? I know the QT3 Ruby interface is solid, but QT4 is the only usable
version for Windows – I think it’s a licensing issue, not a technical one.

I speak about Qt4, which I’m using everyday (on Linux). Apart from a
few glitches, it really works great for me. I confirm that you
definitely can’t get qt3 on windows, as Trolltech didn’t publish a GPL
version of Qt3 for windows, and never will. So you would need a Qt3
license to develop qtruby and to use it. Better use Qt4 :wink:

Vince
7

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

QT4 is in my opinion the best looking and has the best designer. But I
don’t think the Ruby/QT4 interface is fully baked yet (if someone from
the QTRuby team is here, I’d love for you to prove me wrong here!).

Well, I’m not developping QtRuby, just packaging it (Debian), and I
would like to hear what you think is missing - or painfull - with the
current versions ? [just, if that has to do with the way it builds under
windows, I’m afraid I can’t be of any help]. I agree the ModelView stuff
needs a bit more polishing, but I didn’t come across other problems so
far (well, except one I think I fixed).

Cheers !

Vince
8

Curt H. wrote:

If you don’t need cross platform, then you’ll probably like VRuby
(Windows only), which is included in the One-Click Ruby installer for
Windows. You can read about VRuby here:

http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/~nyasu/vruby/vrproject-e.html

That page scares the heck out of me. Weird magical constants that are
gods know why not defined in the toolkit? camelCase method names?

Though if I guess right, VRuby is a wrapper around the Win32 API, so the
lot probably makes enough sense for someone that worked with that. For
someone who doesn’t have low-level Win32 experience, it’s probably not
quite the best pick.

David V.

9

On 10/30/06, Mischa K. [email protected] wrote:

Runs on the windows platform

It’s nice if it also runs on other platforms but I can live without them :slight_smile:

Would RubyCLR be a good option or should I look at other roads ?

Regards,

Mischa

If you don’t need cross platform, then you’ll probably like VRuby
(Windows only), which is included in the One-Click Ruby installer for
Windows. You can read about VRuby here:

http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/~nyasu/vruby/vrproject-e.html

Curt

10

If you mean the sample scripts (
http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/~nyasu/vruby/vrproject-e.html#sss ), are you
sure you aren’t looking at the ‘swin’ version? I think it’s just
posted as a comparison, the VRuby one doesn’t seem so nasty. Not that
I’ve ever used either one, of course.