FXRuby or wxRuby?

ruby-talk
21

---<good stuff snipped>---

Curt,

Thanks!

Randy Kramer

···

On Monday 08 August 2005 12:02 pm, Curt Hibbs wrote:

22

Hi Gerardo!

* Gerardo Santana Gómez Garrido <gerardo.santana@gmail.com> [050808 21:42]:

[details about QtRuby]

Great! :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Steph.

23

Neil Hodgson wrote:

Lothar Scholz:

> because of the file dialog used, which doesn't remember the last location
> visited, for example.

No toolkit does this as it is the task of the GUI application itself,
otherwise different open dialogs would show the same directory. So you
must blame FreeRIDE here.

   Windows (2000/XP) remembers the directory on behalf of the application when using the standard file open and save dialogs. This is stored in the registry keyed on the application name in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\LastVisitedMRU

But FreeRIDE uses FXRuby/Fox, and Fox does not use the Windows standard dialog. Therefore FreeRIDE would have to do this itself.

Curt

24

Hello david,

FOX 2.0 will have theming. There is a patched FOX version out there
(search the mailing list) which already uses the windows theming API and
looks as native as you want it. Unfortunately you can't link this
together with FXRuby.

I still have personal issues about reinventing the wheel. With synthethised
widget toolkits, you still usually go off and re-do the logic of applying the
theme on each OS. Or maybe not, I'm not going to pretend I've ever seen GUI
toolkit code here.

Still, the discussion was which of two toolkits to use, and I think it is very
unlikely a synthetised widget toolkit can by definition "get things right"
sooner or more completely than a native one, and there's always a quirk lurking
behind the corner.

Correct. The question is: do you want a multiplattform toolkit ? If
not then the answer is almost always the native toolkit (i guess it's
vruby in this case). Otherwise it depends on your target audience and
your required features. With wxwidgets you easily get into platform
specific problems that you can for example avoid with a synthetised
one.

If you need exact match of look and feel, for example for MacOSX
programs for the average user, you don't have any chance to use
anything other then carbon/cocoa.

Right. But if the target audience are also technical people the different
FOX look is not so important. In times of skins, web applications and
dozens different GUI themes, the consistence look is not so important
anymore.

Skinning and theming is more of an issue for the OS, or window manager if you
wish, and having your application apply its own settings is not really an
advantage.

Correct, this only applies to Windows. On MacOSX you simply don't have
themes only Aqua (in a blue or grey flavour). On Linux there are so
many and so many different desktops and window manager that it makes
no sense to talk about this, at least if you don't market the
application as Gnome or KDE application. Only on Windows you have a
standarized theming API with multiple different looking themes.

Strange I never hear the argument about L&F consistency not being important from
any end users.

I never heard it from any of the Arachno Ruby users.

Instead they request application level consistency, which means i want your
application to behave like IntelliJ, Eclipse, Emacs, VI etc.

A friend of mine is responsible for a CD burning program, and you know
what he here from end users: Why don't you make it L&F like Nero.

···

--
Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com
CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's

25

Strange I never hear the argument about L&F consistency not being important
from any end users.

I always loved this article on OSNews:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10633

Best Quote: " I'm staring at my Windows taskbar right now and out of 7
launched applications, there are 6 not looking totally (or not at all)
native. And Winamp isn't even started (neither is iTunes).":

  Sander

26

Curt Hibbs wrote:

Neil Hodgson wrote:

Lothar Scholz:

> because of the file dialog used, which doesn't remember the last
location
> visited, for example.

No toolkit does this as it is the task of the GUI application itself,
otherwise different open dialogs would show the same directory. So you
must blame FreeRIDE here.

   Windows (2000/XP) remembers the directory on behalf of the
application when using the standard file open and save dialogs. This
is stored in the registry keyed on the application name in
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\LastVisitedMRU

But FreeRIDE uses FXRuby/Fox, and Fox does not use the Windows standard
dialog. Therefore FreeRIDE would have to do this itself.

Curt

Sorta going off on a tangent here, as usual, but after working with
Fox's registry for a while I went off and wrote a more ruby-oriented
library for saving "preferences". Naturally, it uses yaml, and the
preferences persist between program invocations and not just method
invocations. Naturally, it's called "preferences". It's at:

http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/preferences/

I wrote it to use with FXRuby, but there's nothing particularly
fox-bound about it, except for the version of the four-split.rb example
that remembers splitter and window positions. It works just fine to
remember directories in FXFileDialogs and their ilk.

···

--
      vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

27

I can have multiplatform and native look and feel with Qt. Here is a
screenshot of Qt Designer on MacOS X:

The same application looks native on Windows too:

···

On 8/10/05, Lothar Scholz <mailinglists@scriptolutions.com> wrote:

Hello david,

>> FOX 2.0 will have theming. There is a patched FOX version out there
>> (search the mailing list) which already uses the windows theming API and
>> looks as native as you want it. Unfortunately you can't link this
>> together with FXRuby.

> I still have personal issues about reinventing the wheel. With synthethised
> widget toolkits, you still usually go off and re-do the logic of applying the
> theme on each OS. Or maybe not, I'm not going to pretend I've ever seen GUI
> toolkit code here.

> Still, the discussion was which of two toolkits to use, and I think it is very
> unlikely a synthetised widget toolkit can by definition "get things right"
> sooner or more completely than a native one, and there's always a quirk lurking
> behind the corner.

Correct. The question is: do you want a multiplattform toolkit ? If
not then the answer is almost always the native toolkit (i guess it's
vruby in this case). Otherwise it depends on your target audience and
your required features. With wxwidgets you easily get into platform
specific problems that you can for example avoid with a synthetised
one.

If you need exact match of look and feel, for example for MacOSX
programs for the average user, you don't have any chance to use
anything other then carbon/cocoa.

--
Gerardo Santana Gómez Garrido

"Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho
ajeno es la paz" -Don Benito Juárez

28

Hello Gerardo,

I can have multiplatform and native look and feel with Qt. Here is a
screenshot of Qt Designer on MacOS X:

http://www.trolltech.com/images/screenshots/qt_designer_mac.png

It's only a part of the look. There is much more then this in apples
application styleguide. Even with 4.0 you can't generate non trivial
native looking MacOSX applications. Drawers, Window local modal loops
(aka sheets) are still not supported.

And you always need different icons, different drag and drop,
different menu structure etc.

We discussed this a lot of times here on the mailinglist.

···

--
Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com
CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's

29

Hi,

I can have multiplatform and native look and feel with Qt.

Not really. This uses some widgets you find in other Mac OS X
applications, but there are some faults - e.g. you usually don't see
those increase/decrease counter thingies and the order of the buttons is
wrong. On Mac OS that should be "Cancel" first and "OK" on the right.

Here is a screenshot of Qt Designer on MacOS X:

http://www.trolltech.com/images/screenshots/qt_designer_mac.png

The same application looks native on Windows too:

http://www.trolltech.com/images/screenshots/qt_designer_windows.png

To me (as a Mac user) the application in the first screenshot does look
like a windows tool with Mac widgets. That's also true for the
'Designer' application itself, which doesn't use the standard Cocoa
toolbars but something else (like the one found in Adobe Reader, at
least the icons are o.k.). Althouhg it has been improved from previous
versions of QT.

Regards,

Dominik.

···

Gerardo Santana Gómez Garrido <gerardo.santana@gmail.com> wrote: