Help a newbie pick a gui tool kit

[Richard Dale]

Richard,

I've been interested in using QtRuby for some time now. I believe Alex
once mentioned that lack of availability of a non-commercial Windows
license for Windows was an issue, but I recently discovered that the
book C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131240722) does contain a
non-commercial Windows distribution of Qt3.

It still probably isn't compatible with the GPL, and can't be built with
gcc. I think it's worth waiting for Qt 4, which is out in a month or two.
Otherwise, with Qt 3 you need a copy of Visual C++ in addition to a
commercial Qt and QtRuby licenses.

In any case, how much money and demand are we talking about to make Qt a
viable GUI toolkit for cross-platform ruby development? I'd bet that
once QtRuby became available for Windows it would catch on quickly.

Maybe enough for Alex to give up his day job, and for me to avoid needing to
get one. The commercial version of PyQt sells for about 500 UKP I believe,
and we would base our pricing on that. We could also sell consultancy and
training. I think the GPL'd Windows Qt 4 will be needed to kickstart the
market, and get a critical mass of programmers.

 

[Nicholas Marriott]

Nicholas Marriott wrote:

I didn't get your original post so I'm replying here from someone quoting
it.

Possibly that might be because the ruby bindings for Qt 3.x are called
'QtRuby'. There was an older unrelated project for Qt 1.x, called
'Ruby/Qt'. Try searching for 'kde + ruby' or 'qt + ruby' instead.

Aha! Found it. Thanks.

As QtRuby/Korundum are part of the KDE project I would assume FreeBSD ports
exist.

Not that I can find. However, Google seems to imply it exists so perhaps it
just hasn't appeared yet.

I'm fairly suspicious of the link between KDE and QtRuby, I doubt it is
likely but I really really don't want to turn round one day and find I'm
having to tell people to install parts of KDE in order to get my stuff to
work.

I don't know what you mean be 'lighter' - there is a version of Qt for
embedded devices which works fine on PDAs and Smartphones.

I'm not really concerned with PDAs and Smartphones.

Qt is considerably larger than Wx and QtRuby appears to be larger than
wxRuby. On a more anecdotal level, I've consistently found Qt apps to have
problems with memory consumption and speed - this may be, however, because
on the whole the Qt apps I've used are KDE apps.

The next version of Qt, Qt 4.x will be GPL'd on the Windows platform, and
there will be a corresponding GPL'd windows version of QtRuby. It is
already licensed under the GPL on all other platforms, including Mac OS X.

If there is demand, Alex Kellett and myself will be happy to release a
commercial paid for version of QtRuby for Qt 4.x.

Windows support at a later date is not an awful lot of use for me. Windows
was part of the reason we changed toolkit in the first place (a large
proportion - probably 80-90% - of potential users are on Windows). wxRuby is
not perfect on Windows either, of course .

Anyway, I'm sticking with wxRuby at the moment despite it's problems. Now
that I know where it is, when QtRuby becomes more visible and portable - or
I get seriously pissed off with wxRuby's flaws - I will consider it again.

-- Nicholas.

 

[Cs. Henk]

It still probably isn't compatible with the GPL, and can't be built with
gcc. I think it's worth waiting for Qt 4, which is out in a month or two.

I don't get it. Why couldn't you compile it -- or anything else under
the Sun -- with gcc? GPL doesn't have such restrictions. What do you
think linux commercial apps are compiled with?

Csaba

 

[Richard Dale]

I don't get it. Why couldn't you compile it -- or anything else under
the Sun -- with gcc? GPL doesn't have such restrictions. What do you
think linux commercial apps are compiled with?

Sorry I was talking about the Windows version, not the Linux one. The
current QtRuby for Qt 3 compiles just fine with gcc on Linux.

But at the moment you can't compile Qt 3 with gcc under Windows as far as I
know. I don't know what the problem is exactly, but apparently Trolltech
have done some work to improve Qt 4 compatibility with gcc on Windows.

-- Richard

 

[Richard Dale]

Not that I can find. However, Google seems to imply it exists so perhaps
it just hasn't appeared yet.

I'm fairly suspicious of the link between KDE and QtRuby, I doubt it is
likely but I really really don't want to turn round one day and find I'm
having to tell people to install parts of KDE in order to get my stuff to
work.

QtRuby has been carefully written so that it doesn't have any KDE
dependencies, and that won't change. It should build in any environment
with automake/autoconf, if there isn't an existing FreeBSD port.

I'm not really concerned with PDAs and Smartphones.

Qt is considerably larger than Wx and QtRuby appears to be larger than
wxRuby. On a more anecdotal level, I've consistently found Qt apps to have
problems with memory consumption and speed - this may be, however, because
on the whole the Qt apps I've used are KDE apps.

The Qt 4 toolkit is being split up into separate libraries, and so if memory
is tight you will be able to just use the widgets part for instance. I
would say that both Qt 3 and KDE are getting faster, and Qt 3.3.4/KDE 3.4
seems pretty snappy to me. I would be interested in some measurements to
compare wxRuby with QtRuby - you're probably right about Qt needing more
memory, but I don't know how much.

The Korundum KDE version of the bindings is pretty large as the api it wraps
is so huge (1000+ classes), but I don't think that QtRuby is too bad.

 

[Csaba Henk]

Sorry I was talking about the Windows version, not the Linux one. The

Me too

current QtRuby for Qt 3 compiles just fine with gcc on Linux.

I know.

But at the moment you can't compile Qt 3 with gcc under Windows as far as I
know. I don't know what the problem is exactly, but apparently Trolltech
have done some work to improve Qt 4 compatibility with gcc on Windows.

Oh so you mean it's *technically* impossible? I misunderstood your words
and I thought you imply it violates GPL to compile it on Windows which I
found quite a bizarre interpretation of the GPL

All is fine now, then. Except for that you can't get damned Qt compiled
on Windows with gcc

Csaba

 

[Tim Ferrell]

Saying all that, in my opinion wxWindows is reasonable pretty - unlike Fox
which is unusably ugly -, lighter and more free than Qt (not to mention the
fact that google fails to turn up a website for ruby-qt and it doesn't
appear in FreeBSD ports, making it useless for me) and better documented
than Ruby/GTK.

What do you find to be ugly about FOX? Just wondering ... admittedly it is not
as pretty as a Qt or .NET app can be, but is there anything in particular that
offends your sensibilities?

I am trying to decide on a toolkit too, as I have a few .NET apps to port (I'm
finally back on Linux - yay!) but FOX looks appealing if only for the strength
of the Ruby bindings...

Thanks,
Tim

 

[Logan Capaldo]

Just to throw my hat into the ring, I find the ruby-gnome2 bindings to
be rubyish. And you can use just the Gtk2 bindings if you so desire.
I've written a couple of utilities for my own use w/ those bindings.
Plus the ruby-gnome2 bindings have pretty good documentation IMO.

 

[Nicholas Marriott]

What do you find to be ugly about FOX? Just wondering ... admittedly it is not
as pretty as a Qt or .NET app can be, but is there anything in particular that
offends your sensibilities?

The default font is ugly, the dour grey colour is ugly and non-standard, the
way the menus work is unusual, irritating and ugly. Most of the controls are
blocky, poorly spaced and very heavy-looking and, needless to say, ugly .

Much of this stuff is probably fixable and undoubtedly a matter of opinion,
but I don't like it and I don't really have the patience to mess about when
there are already more aesthetically pleasing toolkits out there.

-- Nicholas.

 

[Jamey Cribbs]

The default font is ugly, the dour grey colour is ugly and non-standard, the
way the menus work is unusual, irritating and ugly. Most of the controls are
blocky, poorly spaced and very heavy-looking and, needless to say, ugly .

Much of this stuff is probably fixable and undoubtedly a matter of opinion,
but I don't like it and I don't really have the patience to mess about when
there are already more aesthetically pleasing toolkits out there.

It's your loss, then, and I don't mean that in a mean-spirited way.
Fox/FXRuby may not be the best looking gui toolkit for Ruby (although I
happen to like the way it looks), but it has a lot going for it. Just
off the top of my head:

1. Stability
2. Well maintained, regularly enhanced
3. Very friendly developers (Jeroen and Lyle are great!)
4. Great selection of controls. The only thing missing is printing,
which can easily be rectified
using Austin Ziegler's PDF library.
5. Small size. Using UPX and RubyScript2Exe, you can easily make a
single exe of your app
that is under 2MB. Great for easy distribution.

Jamey Cribbs

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[Nicholas Marriott]

Nicholas Marriott wrote:
[snip]

It's your loss, then, and I don't mean that in a mean-spirited way.

Fox/FXRuby may not be the best looking gui toolkit for Ruby (although I
happen to like the way it looks), but it has a lot going for it. Just
off the top of my head:

1. Stability
2. Well maintained, regularly enhanced
3. Very friendly developers (Jeroen and Lyle are great!)
4. Great selection of controls. The only thing missing is printing,
which can easily be rectified
using Austin Ziegler's PDF library.
5. Small size. Using UPX and RubyScript2Exe, you can easily make a
single exe of your app
that is under 2MB. Great for easy distribution.

These things are all great - even important - for the programmer. However,
for the user the look and interface is the most important thing and the GUI
exists for the user, not the programmer. I, at least, find the Fox interface
ugly and uncomfortable to use, which in my book makes it pretty useless.

I appreciate that Fox and FXRuby do have many good points (it is ahead of Wx
in most regards) but until the look of the interface on X is improved, I
won't even consider using it. I just can't agree that something that looks
like

http://www.fox-toolkit.org/screenshots/arithmedrill-screenshot.png

is acceptable for a modern GUI app.

-- Nicholas.

 

[Randy Kramer]

4. Great selection of controls. The only thing missing is printing,
which can easily be rectified
using Austin Ziegler's PDF library.

Does fxRuby have an HTML control / widget (something to render HTML)?

Randy Kramer

 

[Jamey Cribbs]

Does fxRuby have an HTML control / widget (something to render HTML)?

Nope. I guess I should have said "The only thing missing for me...".

Jamey

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[Lyle Johnson]

These things are all great - even important - for the programmer. However,
for the user the look and interface is the most important thing and the GUI
exists for the user, not the programmer. I, at least, find the Fox interface
ugly and uncomfortable to use, which in my book makes it pretty useless.

I appreciate that Fox and FXRuby do have many good points (it is ahead of Wx
in most regards) but until the look of the interface on X is improved, I
won't even consider using it. I just can't agree that something that looks
like

http://www.fox-toolkit.org/screenshots/arithmedrill-screenshot.png

is acceptable for a modern GUI app.

It is unfortunate that this is one of the few screenshots on that page
that appears to have been taken on an X desktop of some kind, since it
looks like that particular application's author didn't put a lot of
effort into the UI design (which, to be fair, was probably not his
primary concern). There are, however, screenshots for several other
FOX applications on that same screen (including one by Mr. Cribbs)
that look (IMO) a lot more polished. Though it's true that some of
those screenshots were made on Windows boxes, FOX's look and feel is
(for better or worse) consistent across platforms, and so those
applications should look almost exactly the same running under X.

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Randy,


RK> Does fxRuby have an HTML control / widget (something to render HTML)?

No, FOX has this (as an extension for Win32/LInux) but this is not
available in fxRuby.

The most important missing control is a rich text editor control.
You can use Scintilla for some purposes.

 

[Lyle Johnson]

No, FOX has [an HTML widget] (as an extension for Win32/LInux) but this is not
available in fxRuby.

I didn't know there was an HTML widget for FOX, even as an extension
(and Google's not turning up anything for me). Could you please
provide a link? If it actually works, this is something I'd be glad to
try to add support for in FXRuby.

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Lyle,

LJ> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 02:56:08 +0900, Lothar Scholz

No, FOX has [an HTML widget] (as an extension for Win32/LInux) but this is not
available in fxRuby.

LJ> I didn't know there was an HTML widget for FOX, even as an extension
LJ> (and Google's not turning up anything for me). Could you please
LJ> provide a link? If it actually works, this is something I'd be glad to
LJ> try to add support for in FXRuby.

It's part of the SWT port to FOX
http://swtfox.sourceforge.net/

It uses Internet Explorer/Gecko on Win32 and Gecko on Linux.

 

[Tom Willis]

I had mentioned earlier wxRuby. Well, It doesn't seem as stable as
wxPython, so I've been messing with gtk2 for the last couple of days
and it is the bomb(hipsters would say cool)

Very rubyish, to me anyway.

Hello Lyle,

LJ> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 02:56:08 +0900, Lothar Scholz

No, FOX has [an HTML widget] (as an extension for Win32/LInux) but this is not
available in fxRuby.

LJ> I didn't know there was an HTML widget for FOX, even as an extension
LJ> (and Google's not turning up anything for me). Could you please
LJ> provide a link? If it actually works, this is something I'd be glad to
LJ> try to add support for in FXRuby.

It's part of the SWT port to FOX
http://swtfox.sourceforge.net/

It uses Internet Explorer/Gecko on Win32 and Gecko on Linux.