I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Does it affect your decision that Nokia just bought the company that makes Qt?
I've never developed anything with Qt, but it seems unlikely that you need to know any C++ to use the ruby bindings.
···
--
vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407
Alle Thursday 31 January 2008, Matthew Borgeson ha scritto:
Hello All-
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
Thank you
Matthew F Borgeson
In my opinion Qt is easy to learn (although, I admit I used it in C++ before
using it in ruby). It's true it's written for C++, but most of it is quite
clear and I believe that you can follow it even without knowing C++ (you just
have to ignore everything which doesn't concern ruby, for example destructors,
memory management, virtual functions and so on). There's also a tutorial,
included with QtRuby, which is a porting of the original C++ tutorial which I
think is well done. At
On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 05:56 +0900, Matthew Borgeson wrote:
Hello All-
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Since nobody seems to have done it yet, let me place a +1 for Tk. I'm not really into GUI programming much, but Tk has always felt very straight-forward to me. And the new tk8.5 looks really nice (if you want to judge a book by its cover). Most importantly, I think it is significantly easier to learn Tk than Gtk or Qt.
I have played around a bit with both QtRuby and Ruby/Gtk and their both okay, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of either. I must say that a slightly prefer Ruby's Gtk bindings to the Qt ones, although I prefer Qt itself to Gtk.
If *I* were to build a GUI app for some inexplicable reason I would start searching for bindings for Motif or the excellent Athena widget set..
Lorenzo
···
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
I cast my lot for Tk. I spent a great deal of time looking for a GUI
Toolkit to use with Ruby,
and I have dabbled with most all of them (shoes being the one
exception). Like yourself, I also found myself using
Ruby a lot at work, and wanted to make the interface for my
applications a bit more user friendly than a CLR interface.
After testing out one GUI or another, I always came back to Tk.
My reason for turning to Tk, was for the very things you are looking
for in a GUI Toolkit;
Tk was very easy for me to pick up. Where one GUI had me stumped, I
found that it took much less time to
figure out how to do the same thing in Tk. If your looking for ease of
learning, Tk is my choice. There are
others that have this or that, or can do this or that, but if your
looking for something quick, Tk is it.
--Jayson
···
On Jan 31, 2008 3:56 PM, Matthew Borgeson <hibridmatthias@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Hello All-
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
I have enjoyed using jRuby with Monkeybars. You can use the NetBeans IDE to do the drag and drop GUI design using Swing components and then a few lines of Ruby to hook it together (No Java required). Pretty simple and cross platform. There is a nice little starter project (RSS Reader) to get you going. See the two screen casts for a taste on the Monkeybars docs page.
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
Thank you
Matthew F Borgeson
Well, I want to first thank you all for your opinions regarding my
original post.
When I last posted, I said I was going to try both Qt and Tk and see
which one was easier to get up and runnning with.
Three months later, after I purchased the QtRuby Friday PDF from the
Pragmatic Programmers, I dove in to QtRuby. In one month's time, I was
able to get the front end started and 2 of the 6 tabs in the program
completed. The book did a nice job of walking through code line by line
and I was able to take off from there. I would have to say the hardest
part was getting used to the semantics with Qt as the widget classes
used the double colon connectors; something I was not used to.
I have been having so much fun and so productive that I may not ever
make it to try Tk; but I am on my way to where I need to go and am
really happy.
I have seen other stumbling with the same question I posted in February
and just wanted to share my experiences here with you all.
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Does it affect your decision that Nokia just bought the company that
makes Qt?
I've never developed anything with Qt, but it seems unlikely that you
need to know any C++ to use the ruby bindings.
It doesn't really affect my decision per se...
I personally develop using KDevelop on OpenSuse 10.3. The choice of
IDE(Glade, QtDesigner, Eclipse, et cetera)is irrelevant to me; likewise,
as KDE (using Qt) has been made to run on the n800, and gtk runs under
maemo on the n800 no problem, the purchase has little effect on my
decision; I really want just nice-looking, cross platform apps (thus my
decision for Qt) in the least amount of time possible...thus my choice
of the aforementioned three
I am really looking for ease of learning and time to proficiency.
imo, Gtk is very straightforward to program/learn. Don't know about Tk though.
···
On [Fri, 01.02.2008 10:03], Lorenzo E. Danielsson wrote:
Matthew Borgeson wrote:
Hello All-
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Since nobody seems to have done it yet, let me place a +1 for Tk. I'm
not really into GUI programming much, but Tk has always felt very
straight-forward to me. And the new tk8.5 looks really nice (if you want
to judge a book by its cover). Most importantly, I think it is
significantly easier to learn Tk than Gtk or Qt.
I have played around a bit with both QtRuby and Ruby/Gtk and their both
okay, I guess. I'm not a huge fan of either. I must say that a slightly
prefer Ruby's Gtk bindings to the Qt ones, although I prefer Qt itself
to Gtk.
If *I* were to build a GUI app for some inexplicable reason I would
start searching for bindings for Motif or the excellent Athena widget
set..
Lorenzo
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
I had similar experiences a few years ago. Tk seemed to work "out of
the box" best. Kind of like how Python comes with Tk as a built-in GUI
builder with the standard install. While Qt has their designer and GTK
has Glade the last time I checked a true drag and drop GUI builder was
a lacking feature in Ruby. Even using the these GUI builders you had
to manually run some utilities and manually wire things together to
some extent.
Of course this was several years ago. I heavily rely upon Ruby for a
host of admin scripting, SQL data extraction/manipulation, and the
like. All CLI, though. The Ruby language is so relatively clean and
intuitive that it's a lot easier to do things using it. But for RAD
design of GUI apps I eventually bit the bullet and went with C# using
Visual Studio 2005. I know there's a lot of Microsoft haters among the
Ruby and Linux community but if there's an quicker and easier way of
doing things I'd love to jump ship. I checked out everything from
Widestudio to all of the aforementioned GUI builders for Ruby. But
nothing compared to RAD development using VS2005. The last Ruby GUI
app I developed was back in 2005 using QtRuby and before that I
developed another one in 2003 using Ruby/Tk. Everything else since
then has been done using VS2005 and C#. The C# language is like tying
your hands behind your back compared to the elegance of Ruby but the
ease of dragging and dropping widgets and having the wiring together
done behind the scenes is worth it
I'd love to get back into what current projects and revisions of GUI
builders are out there for Ruby though!
···
On Feb 1, 2:20 pm, Jayson Williams <williams.jay...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008 3:56 PM, Matthew Borgeson <hibridmatth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Hello All-
> I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
> applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
> The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
> are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
> coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
> The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
> it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
> seen of their results:
> Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
> Qt (My preference)
> Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
> My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
> Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
> it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
> Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
> Thank you
> Matthew F Borgeson
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
I cast my lot for Tk. I spent a great deal of time looking for a GUI
Toolkit to use with Ruby,
and I have dabbled with most all of them (shoes being the one
exception). Like yourself, I also found myself using
Ruby a lot at work, and wanted to make the interface for my
applications a bit more user friendly than a CLR interface.
After testing out one GUI or another, I always came back to Tk.
My reason for turning to Tk, was for the very things you are looking
for in a GUI Toolkit;
Tk was very easy for me to pick up. Where one GUI had me stumped, I
found that it took much less time to
figure out how to do the same thing in Tk. If your looking for ease of
learning, Tk is my choice. There are
others that have this or that, or can do this or that, but if your
looking for something quick, Tk is it.
On Jan 31, 2008 9:38 PM, Reid Thompson <Reid.Thompson@ateb.com> wrote:
Using GTK, you could build the gui with Glade
On Fri, 2008-02-01 at 05:56 +0900, Matthew Borgeson wrote:
> Hello All-
>
> I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
> applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
>
> The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
> are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
> coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
>
> The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
> it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
> seen of their results:
>
> Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
> Qt (My preference)
> Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
>
> My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
> Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
> it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
>
> Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
>
> Thank you
>
> Matthew F Borgeson
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Does it affect your decision that Nokia just bought the company that
makes Qt?
I've never developed anything with Qt, but it seems unlikely that you
need to know any C++ to use the ruby bindings.
I just wanted to thand everyone with your two cents; it helped me make a
decision as follows:
While I appreciate the C# thoughts, I'll pass as well as on any Visual
Studio or Microsoft tools. Besides the MS limiting of the free flow of
information, I really don't want to spend any money on software; I don't
mind buying books but I just feel buying software is a waste of money as
far as a hobby is concerned; At least I can take books with me on the
train, inthe bathroom, et cetera...
I downloaded the Agile Friday book on QtRuby (9 bucks) as well as the
tutorial from the Tk 8.5 website(Which actually does look better than
the versions before it)and have decided that I am going to try both on a
simple little 100-line, dose- calculating program I cobbled together and
see which is quicker to learn;Whichever one gives me the fewest
conceptual headaches wins :-).
The Gtk documentation seemed a bit convoluted and filled with exceptions
when I paged through it the first time. I looked at shoes, but it seemed
a bit cutting edge for me. WxRuby seemed a bit convoluted as well. The
tutorials for Tk and Qt are organized and seem to be what I need. I
guess Ill post here once I have finished the two programs and let
everyonoe know how it goes...
To be honest, the reasons you probably will never making it to trying
out TK is most likely the reason why many TK users rarely move to
something else. After you get comfortable with the toolkit, and become
productive, it can be difficult start from scratch with a new toolkit.
I guess whats most important is that QT is working for you.
Qt is a good choice, but did you have a look at WxRuby?
Unlike Gtk or Tk, it is truly cross-platform with native look and feel,
because it uses the native tool kits of the platform, for example
Windows widgets on Win32, Aqua on OS X and GTK on Linux.
Am 1 Feb 2008 um 7:07 hat Matthew Borgeson geschrieben:
I really want just nice-looking, cross platform apps (thus
my decision for Qt) in the least amount of time possible...thus my choice
of the aforementioned three
A quicker easier way? Well, that's a good question, initially, I think of RubyCocoa, but of course it requires a little understanding of the Cocoa/NextStep/OpenStep world.... however, what I don't know and am very curious about now is whether or not there is a RubyCocoa equivalent for GNUOpenStep (or is it GNUStep?) itself!!?
If so, that world has always been a pretty nifty RAD world, and if RubyCocoa or something like it works with the open source version of the IDE & GUI builder, then there would be some great tools to knock things out quickly, and rebuild in C or Objective-C as needed for performance.
Tk is definitely the easiest to get started with.
Qt is definitely one of the best looking and most native feeling with the final product.
wx is somwhere in between.
Glade & GTK are not bad, but there's a learning curve that will require some time.
If you already have the CLI versions of the apps, and you are the one who wrote them, it should be fairly easy to wrap them with GUIs, but you might find yourself needing to change some of your code to make sense with MVC design.
···
On Feb 1, 2008, at 9:05 PM, gregarican wrote:
On Feb 1, 2:20 pm, Jayson Williams <williams.jay...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008 3:56 PM, Matthew Borgeson >> <hibridmatth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Hello All-
I have taken up Ruby over the past year and have finally written 7
applications for various functions for my job as a clinical pharmacist.
The problem I have here is that while my programs all work great, they
are all CLI interface. In order to increase their palatability among my
coworkers, however, I wish to add a GUI.
The question I have here is NOT which is the best for my needs. I have
it nailed down to three based on the platforms and screenshots I have
seen of their results:
Gtk (Would be nice on my Nokia n800 maemo)
Qt (My preference)
Tk (Seems to be the favorite of the Ruby folk)
My question is which would be the easiest to learn. While I want to use
Qt (I just feel comfortable with its maturity)I am concerned by how hard
it will be to learn, considering I have no C++ background.
Any guidance before I commit to learning one would be appreciated...
Thank you
Matthew F Borgeson
--
Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
I cast my lot for Tk. I spent a great deal of time looking for a GUI
Toolkit to use with Ruby,
and I have dabbled with most all of them (shoes being the one
exception). Like yourself, I also found myself using
Ruby a lot at work, and wanted to make the interface for my
applications a bit more user friendly than a CLR interface.
After testing out one GUI or another, I always came back to Tk.
My reason for turning to Tk, was for the very things you are looking
for in a GUI Toolkit;
Tk was very easy for me to pick up. Where one GUI had me stumped, I
found that it took much less time to
figure out how to do the same thing in Tk. If your looking for ease of
learning, Tk is my choice. There are
others that have this or that, or can do this or that, but if your
looking for something quick, Tk is it.
--Jayson- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
I had similar experiences a few years ago. Tk seemed to work "out of
the box" best. Kind of like how Python comes with Tk as a built-in GUI
builder with the standard install. While Qt has their designer and GTK
has Glade the last time I checked a true drag and drop GUI builder was
a lacking feature in Ruby. Even using the these GUI builders you had
to manually run some utilities and manually wire things together to
some extent.
Of course this was several years ago. I heavily rely upon Ruby for a
host of admin scripting, SQL data extraction/manipulation, and the
like. All CLI, though. The Ruby language is so relatively clean and
intuitive that it's a lot easier to do things using it. But for RAD
design of GUI apps I eventually bit the bullet and went with C# using
Visual Studio 2005. I know there's a lot of Microsoft haters among the
Ruby and Linux community but if there's an quicker and easier way of
doing things I'd love to jump ship. I checked out everything from
Widestudio to all of the aforementioned GUI builders for Ruby. But
nothing compared to RAD development using VS2005. The last Ruby GUI
app I developed was back in 2005 using QtRuby and before that I
developed another one in 2003 using Ruby/Tk. Everything else since
then has been done using VS2005 and C#. The C# language is like tying
your hands behind your back compared to the elegance of Ruby but the
ease of dragging and dropping widgets and having the wiring together
done behind the scenes is worth it
I'd love to get back into what current projects and revisions of GUI
builders are out there for Ruby though!
I would agree %100 with your comparison of C# and Ruby. Ruby almost
feels like it has a forgiving, intuitive soul, that understands what
you want it to do. C# on the other hand, feels more like a cold dead
thing, that will obey your command, if you ask nicely, but has no
intuition. Another option down the line for you may be Microsoft's
IronRuby. I sort of cringe at the thought of IronRuby though. Its like
turning Ruby into a Borg,
...resistance is futile... you will assimilate!...
There is another tool by ActiveState called Tk Gui Builder (formally
called SpecTCL). It will create a Tk GUI for Ruby, Perl, and a few
other platforms, and has the RAD feel to it. Unfortunately it is no
longer supported, I recently gave GUI Builder a try, and although it
works well, it made some things more difficult. In the end, I found it
easier to write the code for the GUI myself. It might be worth you
having a look a though. There is also a small Google Group called
"Ruby And The Tk Toolkit", that you might find useful.
···
> On Jan 31, 2008 3:56 PM, Matthew Borgeson <hibridmatth...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Everything else since then has been done using VS2005 and C#. The C# language is like tying
your hands behind your back compared to the elegance of Ruby but the
ease of dragging and dropping widgets and having the wiring together
done behind the scenes is worth it
I'd love to get back into what current projects and revisions of GUI
builders are out there for Ruby though!
