The FXScintilla Widget is a beast (like the docs say), but I'm as beginner
of a prgrammer as you can get (I know that's not gramatically correct) - and
I was able to figure it out.

-Rich

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Atkins" <dejaspam / batkins.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2004 7:18 AM
Subject: Need Help Selecting a GUI


> 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?
>
> Bill
>