M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
I have a friendly pet snake I’m often trying to give to lovely young
ladies. 
What about GUI programming?
Marcelo wrote:
What about GUI programming?
A Pythonista will immediately counter with, “What about Python/TkInter?”
–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
I wrote a blog entry on my experiences of going from one to the other.
http://straw-dogs.co.uk/blog/04/06/the-journey-from-python-to-ruby-pt-1/
You may find it interesting.
Oh, yes, I saw that page, but for what I saw, most of them are in early
development or dead. The only one apparently working is the Ruby/Gnome.
Am I wrong? Who is doing GUI development in Ruby and what are they
using? (please, Tk is awful both in Ruby and Python) I think that in
GUI development, Ruby is far behind Python, and that is something that
keeps me from stepping into Ruby.
Any help would be appreciated, and sorry for my English.
Marcelo
You can use Wx, Qt, Fox, and a variety of other standard GUI toolkits
that are used in other programming languages. There’s even non-standard
ones such as http://www.widestudio.org. Tk is primitive and just more
of a starter option in my eyes, but it goes allow a newbie to get their
feet under them. Past that there are plenty of other GUI toolkits as
you will find out…
What I wanted to know with my previous post was what are rubyist using
IN PRACTICE NOW. That’s to say, what are the GUI toolkits more used
(except Tk)
Marcelo wrote:
Oh, yes, I saw that page, but for what I saw, most of them are in early
development or dead. The only one apparently working is the Ruby/Gnome.
The most mature and the most feature-rich is FXRuby. I wrote my master
degree using it. It was quite complex application using opengl and swig
interfacing with c++. I had some minor problems with it. As can be seen
from wxruby homepage, it is also under active development.
lopex
Marcin MielżyÅ?ski wrote:
Marcelo wrote:
Oh, yes, I saw that page, but for what I saw, most of them are in early
development or dead. The only one apparently working is the Ruby/Gnome.The most mature and the most feature-rich is FXRuby. I wrote my master
degree using it. It was quite complex application using opengl and
swig interfacing with c++. I had some minor problems with it. As can
be seen from wxruby homepage, it is also under active development.
And if having a well-written tutorial matters, check out the Pragmatic
Programmers’ book on QTRuby (with additional info on Korundum and
Kommander).
–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky
On Mon, 10 Jul 2006, Marcelo wrote:
What I wanted to know with my previous post was what are rubyist using
IN PRACTICE NOW. That’s to say, what are the GUI toolkits more used
(except Tk)
FXRuby - actively maintained by Lyle Johnsen and well enough documented.
On 7/10/06, Marcelo [email protected] wrote:
Oh, yes, I saw that page, but for what I saw, most of them are in early
development or dead. The only one apparently working is the Ruby/Gnome.
Then you’ve gotten some bad information. FXRuby is a little over five
years old, and FOX (the GUI toolkit it’s based on) is at least eight
years old. Both FOX and FXRuby are being actively developed, with a
new major release in the last few months.
You mentioned Ruby/GNOME. There’s also the Ruby/Qt bindings, which I
understand to be very good, and wxRuby seems to be coming along very
well.
Am I wrong? Who is doing GUI development in Ruby and what are they
using? (please, Tk is awful both in Ruby and Python) I think that in
GUI development, Ruby is far behind Python, and that is something that
keeps me from stepping into Ruby.
I don’t think there’s one GUI toolkit that dominates the field. Other
than Ruby/Tk, I get the impression that the “big three” right now are
Ruby/GNOME, Ruby/Qt and FXRuby.
I would LOVE wxRuby when it is done.
This is the last state, from SourceForge:
Development Status: 4 - Beta
wxRuby 0.6.0 November 21, 2004
Not as near as wxPython 2.6.3.
It’s a shame.
Have you actually read the feature list of both Wx projects to
determine their completeness? Or are you just basing things on the fact
that the wxRuby project hasn’t been updated since late 2004? I wouldn’t
always base things solely on revision dates. There are some mature
projects out there that aren’t updated on a monthly basis.
I also have seen:
http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?What_Classes_Are_Implemented_In_Wxruby
especially section: Classes missing in both TODO for wxruby2
I don’t know if I have something more to see, so that’s why I’m asking.
After reviewing both sites in terms of their documentation it does
indeed appear that Ruby’s Wx implementation lacks a considerable amount
of classes. That taken with your observation that the last release
update was almost two years ago, might place wxRuby down there is the
ranks of GUI toolkit consideration if you are looking for a current and
complete offering.
That narrows things down to Fox, GTK, and Qt. From what I have read and
experienced the Ruby Qt implementation is current and very active. As
in version 4.x. The original Ruby-GNOME project is obsolete and been
replaced with Ruby-GNOME2, which also appears to be current and active.
As in the last revision update being this month. Then as others have
posted, FXRuby is worthy of consideration. It’s last revision update
was just a couple of months ago and it is gaining popularity from what
I have seen.
Personally, I haven’t used FxRuby but have used Ruby implementations of
GTK and Qt. Of those two to me I felt more comfortable with Qt. Taking
all of the licensing bias aside it just seemed a better fit in terms of
Ruby’s OO and mindset. The GTK option just felt more “jammed in” to
make it fit into Ruby’s world. Just my feelings using them.
On 10/07/06, gregarican [email protected] wrote:
That narrows things down to Fox, GTK, and Qt.
Although it only works on OS X, RubyCocoa is pretty nice (possibly due
to the Smalltalk influence shared by Ruby and Objective-C). By
contrast, Wx, Fox, GTK and Qt are all pretty horrible on OS X from a
user’s perspective.
Paul.
On 7/10/06, Marcelo [email protected] wrote:
I would LOVE wxRuby when it is done.
This is the last state, from SourceForge:
Development Status: 4 - Beta
wxRuby 0.6.0 November 21, 2004Not as near as wxPython 2.6.3.
It’s a shame.
wxRuby2 development was really cooking in May and early June. Work on
it seems to run hot and cold. Note the most recent news on the wxRuby
page:
| “June 12, 2006 Updated information about applications written using wxruby
| added to website. wxRuby2 is close to a release quality - please consider
| downloading from CVS and trying it out.”
—John
Very good summary. I’ll take a look on Fx and Qt. Thanks.
- Ruby groks better than Python … at least for me.
- Meta-programming is much, much easier in Ruby than in Python (this
is what makes Rails the dreamboat framework that it is) [did I just
type “dreamboat” - sheez!] - Principal of least surprise
3a) In Ruby, when you learn how “each” works for an array you know how
it is going to work for every other object
3b) In Python I find myself continually looking through the
documentation - Matz answers questions on the ruby-talk mailing list – I’m not
saying Guido does not answer questions on the Python mailing lists,
it’s just cool that Matz takes the time to listen and help out the
community on top of everything else he does
What I do like about Python is how the documentation is built right
into the language. That is the biggest feature I wish Ruby had. That
and Python’s speed – long live YARV.
Blessings,
Tim P.