Fox --> GTK ?

[Hal Fulton]

Who has experience converting Fox to GTK and might like to
offer a little assistance?

Specific areas are MDI and tree lists.

It's about Tycho (http://tycho.rubyforge.org) where I've more or
less hit a wall.

I don't want to proceed until I can fix the biggest bugs, and I think
I've reached the critical point where Fox is just too hard for me.


Thanks,
Hal

 

[Stefan Schmiedl]

I don't want to proceed until I can fix the biggest bugs, and I think
I've reached the critical point where Fox is just too hard for me.

Out of curiosity, Hal:
Why do you think that Gtk would be easier?

Mind you, I don't know much about Ruby GUI bindings either, but
I'll have to do some work there soon, errr ... now, in fact.

So I'm very interested in your point of view here.

Thanks,
s.

 

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Out of curiosity, Hal:
Why do you think that Gtk would be easier?

Mind you, I don't know much about Ruby GUI bindings either, but
I'll have to do some work there soon, errr ... now, in fact.

So I'm very interested in your point of view here.

My opinion: FOX is cool, GTK is just way more powerful (by several
leagues, really.. printing, rich text, docks, canvas support...).
although I think GTK has no support for MDI in the way Hal wants it.

emmanuel

 

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Who has experience converting Fox to GTK and might like to
offer a little assistance?

Specific areas are MDI and tree lists.

tree lists won't be a problem, but for MDI I think gtk has no support at
all for windows-inside-a-window style MDI. But you'll get way better
rich text etc.

emmanuel

 

[Hal Fulton]

Out of curiosity, Hal:
Why do you think that Gtk would be easier?

Mind you, I don't know much about Ruby GUI bindings either, but
I'll have to do some work there soon, errr ... now, in fact.

So I'm very interested in your point of view here.

I'm not certain Gtk would be easier.

But as I get deeper into Fox, I start accumulating things that I
find strange or unintuitive or difficult.

For example, I would expect that when a Widget object is created,
the widget itself is created. But you actually have to call
#create on it after creating it. (Except when you don't.)

The final straw for me was when I spent many, many hours trying to
get an MDIChild to show up in the MDIClient window after I created
it (and #created it).

I tried many different things to no avail.

You may find this page interesting:
http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/ruby/FXRuby/fox-1.0.40/doc/faq.html#CLIENTSERVER

To be fair, I do find Fox rich and powerful, and it's probably just
my ignorance getting in the way. But I did reach the point where I
said: No more.

That's just my personal experience.

Hal

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Hal,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 10:20:33 AM, you wrote:

HF> To be fair, I do find Fox rich and powerful, and it's probably just
HF> my ignorance getting in the way. But I did reach the point where I
HF> said: No more.

Don't know if this helps you but maybe you want to look at my just
released Arachno Ruby IDE, it allows you to debug FOX apps (in fact
your Tycho) was one the first apps where i tested the debugger.

And if you don't like this. Maybe you want have a look at FLTK. The
included Ruby Distribution (1.8.1 based) comes with a ready to use FLTK
extension.

URL is: http://www.ruby-ide.com

By the way the IDE is written in FOX. So you can see that FOX is
indeed rich and powerful, but i also saw that it didn't fit into my way of
doing things (create, target system, shortcut keys etc.) so i spend the
first months on writing an abstraction layer.

 

[Dmitry V. Sabanin]

Hello Hal,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 10:20:33 AM, you wrote:

HF> To be fair, I do find Fox rich and powerful, and it's probably just
HF> my ignorance getting in the way. But I did reach the point where I
HF> said: No more.

Don't know if this helps you but maybe you want to look at my just
released Arachno Ruby IDE, it allows you to debug FOX apps (in fact
your Tycho) was one the first apps where i tested the debugger.

And if you don't like this. Maybe you want have a look at FLTK. The
included Ruby Distribution (1.8.1 based) comes with a ready to use FLTK
extension.

URL is: http://www.ruby-ide.com

Funny thing: http://www.ruby-ide.com/ruby_features.php

 

[Jamey Cribbs]

Out of curiosity, Hal:
Why do you think that Gtk would be easier?

Mind you, I don't know much about Ruby GUI bindings either, but
I'll have to do some work there soon, errr ... now, in fact.

So I'm very interested in your point of view here.

Thanks,
s.

To me, this thread is another reason why I think we are so fortunate to
have a choice of GUI toolkits for scripting languages.

I'm actually making a reverse of Hal's journey. I'm a (fairly)
experienced Python/PyGtk2 user in the process of switching more and more
to FXRuby.

Choice is a great thing!

Jamey Cribbs

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[Kristof Bastiaensen]

Why do you think that Gtk would be easier?

Hi,
I have no experience with FOX, but I find GTK really easy to use,
once you grasp the basics (packing widgets, connecting signals).
I think GTK is even much more natural in Ruby than it is in C.

If you use glade (a interface building) together with libglade,
you have a GUI ready in no time. You just have to connect the
right signals.

Like it is said on this thread, GTK doesn't provide a MDI
(multiple windows inside one window). Normally this is handled
by using tabs.

Also, GTK is not (really) cross-platform, so in that respect
FOX might be better.

I will help if I can, but I am still using the old gtk1.2 (Maybe
it is time to start looking for a recent distribution...).

 

[Laurent Sansonetti]

Who has experience converting Fox to GTK and might like to
offer a little assistance?

Specific areas are MDI and tree lists.

For MDI you can use a Gtk::Notebook widget and use a tab for each opened
document (gedit, epiphany... do that).

For tree lists, the widget to use is Gtk::TreeView, which can be used
with two models: Gtk::ListStore (a basic list view) and Gtk::TreeStore
(a tree view).

You can get more information on http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp. Also
there are a lot of example scripts shipped with Ruby-GNOME2 (check out
gtk/sample/*).

If you have specific questions about GTK development do not hesitate to
drop us a mail at (e-mail address removed)

Cheers,

 

[Hal Fulton]

Hello Hal,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 10:20:33 AM, you wrote:

HF> To be fair, I do find Fox rich and powerful, and it's probably just
HF> my ignorance getting in the way. But I did reach the point where I
HF> said: No more.

Don't know if this helps you but maybe you want to look at my just
released Arachno Ruby IDE, it allows you to debug FOX apps (in fact
your Tycho) was one the first apps where i tested the debugger.

And if you don't like this. Maybe you want have a look at FLTK. The
included Ruby Distribution (1.8.1 based) comes with a ready to use FLTK
extension.

URL is: http://www.ruby-ide.com

By the way the IDE is written in FOX. So you can see that FOX is
indeed rich and powerful, but i also saw that it didn't fit into my way of
doing things (create, target system, shortcut keys etc.) so i spend the
first months on writing an abstraction layer.

Thanks much, Lothar.

I will certainly look at this, but I will be very busy in the
next couple of days. Probably next week.

Debugging might not help -- my problem may be conceptual rather than
procedural, if you know what I mean.

I don't know anything about FLTK. Isn't it one of the lesser known
toolkits?

Thanks,
Hal

 

[Hal Fulton]

For MDI you can use a Gtk::Notebook widget and use a tab for each opened
document (gedit, epiphany... do that).

I was discussing this with someone last night. A notebook is
inappropriate because the underlying metaphor is a bunch of small notes
on a bulletin board.

These aren't open docs as such. They are tiny notes, perhaps up to 20
or so visible at a time.

I'm thinking of just having real windows for them, but I hate losing the
"containment" of the notes.

If you have specific questions about GTK development do not hesitate to
drop us a mail at (e-mail address removed)

Thanks much,
Hal

 

[gabriele renzi]

il Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:11:33 +0900, Hal Fulton

I was discussing this with someone last night. A notebook is
inappropriate because the underlying metaphor is a bunch of small notes
on a bulletin board.

These aren't open docs as such. They are tiny notes, perhaps up to 20
or so visible at a time.

I'm thinking of just having real windows for them, but I hate losing the
"containment" of the notes.

I wonder if you could use some kind of Canvas for this. It seem better
to me that plain windows..

 

[Hal Fulton]

il Wed, 21 Apr 2004 03:11:33 +0900, Hal Fulton
<[email protected]> ha scritto::





I wonder if you could use some kind of Canvas for this. It seem better
to me that plain windows..

I thought of something like that -- draw the little windows on a canvas,
and when you click on one to edit it, turn it into a "real" widget in
the same spot.

It's kind of cheating, though. And it sounds computationally expensive.
And moving/resizing the notes would be a problem.

Hal

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Hal,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 7:53:27 PM, you wrote:

HF> I don't know anything about FLTK. Isn't it one of the lesser known
HF> toolkits?

Less known ? Maybe.
Lesser used ? Sure.

It is very easy to use, has the best documentation of all non
commerical toolkits (i think even better then WxWindows) and is
extremely small.

So if you have "conceptual" problems it could be easier to use.
And for your task it has the same features then GTK. No MDI but a good
tree list widget.

 

[Laurent Sansonetti]

I was discussing this with someone last night. A notebook is
inappropriate because the underlying metaphor is a bunch of small notes
on a bulletin board.

These aren't open docs as such. They are tiny notes, perhaps up to 20
or so visible at a time.

I'm thinking of just having real windows for them, but I hate losing the
"containment" of the notes.

What about a controlled single document interface (CSDI)?

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/1.0/windows.html#csdi

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Hal,


Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 8:11:33 PM, you wrote:

HF> I was discussing this with someone last night. A notebook is
HF> inappropriate because the underlying metaphor is a bunch of small notes
HF> on a bulletin board.

Is this so different from a mailreader ?

I like the 3-pane-view and tink that with a lot of notes it could be
easier to use. If you spend some time with keyboard handling i guess
that it is also much better to use even if it is not so nice. But
always move windows to see that i didn't miss something that is hidden
behind a window or so seems to be much harder then a typing a few
keystrokes. And if you want a open a second window to see two notes at
the same time, you could simply open a toplevel window as an owner
that only shows the specified message.

 

[Richard Dale]

Who has experience converting Fox to GTK and might like to
offer a little assistance?

Specific areas are MDI and tree lists.

It's about Tycho (http://tycho.rubyforge.org) where I've more or
less hit a wall.

I don't want to proceed until I can fix the biggest bugs, and I think
I've reached the critical point where Fox is just too hard for me.

Have you thought of trying QtRuby or the Korundum KDE bindings? The version
released as part of KDE 3.2.2 is starting to look pretty good, I don't know
of anything much wrong with it technically. There isn't much documentation,
and so you need to be able to understand the (excellent) Qt C++ docs in
order to use it.

KDE has some classes called KMdi* which are used for some advanced KDE UI's
such as KDevelop. Or Qt has a class called QDockWindow, which is really
intended for dockable toolbars. Maybe a QDockWindow could contain a text
widget. And there is a QCanvas too, as well as tree list equivalents.

QtRuby includes a tool called 'rbuic' which allows you to sketch out UI's
with Qt Designer, and then compile the .ui file produced into ruby. I would
have thought something like Qt Designer or Glade are pretty essential for
ruby RAD, otherwise it probably won't be much quicker than a 'normal'
language.

-- Richard

 

[Gawnsoft]

Hello Hal,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 10:20:33 AM, you wrote:

HF> To be fair, I do find Fox rich and powerful, and it's probably just
HF> my ignorance getting in the way. But I did reach the point where I
HF> said: No more.

Don't know if this helps you but maybe you want to look at my just
released Arachno Ruby IDE, it allows you to debug FOX apps (in fact
your Tycho) was one the first apps where i tested the debugger.

And if you don't like this. Maybe you want have a look at FLTK. The
included Ruby Distribution (1.8.1 based) comes with a ready to use FLTK
extension.

URL is: http://www.ruby-ide.com

By the way the IDE is written in FOX. So you can see that FOX is
indeed rich and powerful, but i also saw that it didn't fit into my way of
doing things (create, target system, shortcut keys etc.) so i spend the
first months on writing an abstraction layer.

Perhaps it'd be wporth publishing the (Fox-specific?) abstraction
layer?



Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

 

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Hello Hal,


Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 8:11:33 PM, you wrote:

HF> I was discussing this with someone last night. A notebook is
HF> inappropriate because the underlying metaphor is a bunch of small notes
HF> on a bulletin board.

Is this so different from a mailreader ?

I like the 3-pane-view and tink that with a lot of notes it could be
easier to use. If you spend some time with keyboard handling i guess
that it is also much better to use even if it is not so nice. But
always move windows to see that i didn't miss something that is hidden
behind a window or so seems to be much harder then a typing a few
keystrokes. And if you want a open a second window to see two notes at
the same time, you could simply open a toplevel window as an owner
that only shows the specified message.

this is my opinion too btw. I'm actually writing a program a bit like
Hal's but with more a mailer interface, that i started before Hal
announced Tycho; I sent him a screenshot when he first announced Tycho.
But i'm very slow, doing it in my free time. It's getting somewhere though.

emmanuel