On 5/6/05, Martin DeMello <martindemello / yahoo.com> wrote:

> I like FXRuby's API, but the wx widgets look nicer.

To follow up on Martin's and Jamey's comments, it might be worth
noting that wxRuby and FXRuby use two fundamentally different
approaches for providing cross-platform GUIs.

FXRuby uses what is sometimes called a "lightweight" approach, in the
sense that it uses the host platform's low-level drawing routines to
draw the widgets. An advantage of this (depending on your point of
view) is that it gives you more flexibility in terms of customizing a
widget's appearance and behavior and you know what it's going to look
like, regardless of which platform the application's running on.

wxRuby, in contrast, uses what is usually referred to as the "native
widgets" or "heavyweight" approach. That means that the wxRuby Button
class provides a wrapper around a Win32 button widget when it's
running on Windows, or a GTK button widget when it's running on Linux.
This means that your application is going to look a lot more like an
application that was written specifically for the platform it's
running on; the disadvantage would be that you will, generally
speaking, have fewer opportunities to customize that appearance and
behavior.