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comp.lang.ruby

FXRuby or Shoes?

Doug Livesey

1/17/2008 10:58:00 AM

Sorry I've posted this in the generic Ruby thread, but I wanted as
unbiased a set of responses as possible.
Now that the PP FXRuby book is out, I really have a yen to begin
developing desktop apps again.
I've looked, but struggled to find, any comparisons between FXRuby
(which now has a book) and Shoes (which I just have a hunch I'll
appreciate).
Whilst I do appreciate that the best way to get a good comparison is to
learn 'em both & do it myself, I was hoping that others may have
experience in the frameworks & be able to illustrate some of the pros,
cons, & differences in philosophy between the two.
Sort of to help me choose which to learn first, if you will!
Cheers for any & all responses.
Doug.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....
14 Answers

Thomas Wieczorek

1/17/2008 11:14:00 AM

0

I have just started using FXRuby(with the PragProg PDF) and I am quite
happy with it. There are some quirks, but I have to ask the FXRuby
mailing list to make sure that I am not doing anything wrong.
It allows you to use all Ruby techniques to create rich graphical user
interfaces. As fas as I can see there are widgets for every GUI widget
I have used so far in VB.Net oder Borland C++.
Creating a GUI is fast and it is fun to do it.
You might buy the book or take a quick tour with the user guide on the
page(http://fxruby.org/doc...) which helps you with your first
steps in FXRuby.
I haven't used Shoes so far, so I can't really

Thomas Wieczorek

1/17/2008 11:15:00 AM

0

On Jan 17, 2008 12:14 PM, Thomas Wieczorek <wieczo.yo@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> I haven't used Shoes so far, so I can't really
>

... tell you something about it.

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney

1/17/2008 2:25:00 PM

0

On Jan 17, 2008 4:58 AM, Doug Livesey <biot023@gmail.com> wrote:
> Now that the PP FXRuby book is out, I really have a yen to begin
> developing desktop apps again.
> I've looked, but struggled to find, any comparisons between FXRuby
> (which now has a book) and Shoes (which I just have a hunch I'll
> appreciate).

Shoes and FXRuby are really different.

FXRuby is a standard GUI toolkit, comparable to wxruby or gtk with
classes for different GUI aspects. These toolkits all provide the
ability to build relatively normal-looking applications. While Shoes
has some prebuilt classes like buttons and text-boxes, you lose out on
things like a tree-list, complex text editing, built-in undo
functionality, and good old gray file/edit/help menus. That said,
Shoes lets you really be a designer, a shoes app is going to look like
a web app, not like a desktop app.
Oh, and Shoes code is going to look a lot prettier.

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

1/17/2008 2:49:00 PM

0

Doug Livesey wrote:
> Sorry I've posted this in the generic Ruby thread, but I wanted as
> unbiased a set of responses as possible.
> Now that the PP FXRuby book is out, I really have a yen to begin
> developing desktop apps again.
> I've looked, but struggled to find, any comparisons between FXRuby
> (which now has a book) and Shoes (which I just have a hunch I'll
> appreciate).
> Whilst I do appreciate that the best way to get a good comparison is to
> learn 'em both & do it myself, I was hoping that others may have
> experience in the frameworks & be able to illustrate some of the pros,
> cons, & differences in philosophy between the two.
> Sort of to help me choose which to learn first, if you will!
> Cheers for any & all responses.
> Doug.

I'm in a similar muddle. I just downloaded Shoes a week or so ago and
started trying to figure out how to use it, and along came the FXRuby
book. I think the real decider for me would be portability -- will a
Shoes app run on Windows or a Mac, or am I stuck with Linux?

That said, there are now *two* GUI toolkits with books behind them for
Ruby, Qt and Fox. There still isn't a book for Tk, Gtk2 or WxWindows --
you need to figure those out from books for other languages, or from the
pieces in "The Ruby Way" and "The Ruby Cookbook".

I don't know about the rest of you "hardy hacker types who like to
figure stuff out for themselves", but in my own case, I have plenty of
other things to figure out for myself, so *I* want a book for things
that are already figured out! Use the source, Luke? Sometimes ... only
sometimes.

Jeff Barczewski

1/17/2008 3:04:00 PM

0

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

On Jan 17, 2008 8:49 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

> I think the real decider for me would be portability -- will a
> Shoes app run on Windows or a Mac, or am I stuck with Linux?



From the Shoes website "Shoes is a very informal graphics and windowing
toolkit. It's for making regular old apps that run on Windows, Mac OS X and
Linux."

So it looks like there is intended portability.


--
Jeff Barczewski, MasterView core team
Inspired Horizons Ruby on Rails Training and Consultancy
http://inspiredhor...

Phlip

1/17/2008 3:09:00 PM

0

Jeff Barczewski wrote:

> From the Shoes website "Shoes is a very informal graphics and windowing
> toolkit. It's for making regular old apps that run on Windows, Mac OS X and
> Linux."
>
> So it looks like there is intended portability.

I thought A> FXRuby was deeply portable and very mature, and B> Shoes is
designed for portability (down to C instead of C++ for the substrate), and very
immature. Of course we know Shoes is going places (despite the infernal
difficulties inherent in Googling for terms like "shoes canvas" or "why shoes"),
but for early success, go with FXRuby, right?

BTW you should never "design for" portability. If your client actually needs it,
they can get you a bunch of platforms for you to test your real portability.

--
Phlip

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney

1/17/2008 3:13:00 PM

0

On Jan 17, 2008 8:49 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
I think the real decider for me would be portability -- will a
> Shoes app run on Windows or a Mac, or am I stuck with Linux?

As far as I know, a shoes app should work fine on any platform shoes
runs, which includes those you listed.

> That said, there are now *two* GUI toolkits with books behind them for
> Ruby, Qt and Fox. There still isn't a book for Tk, Gtk2 or WxWindows --
> you need to figure those out from books for other languages, or from the
> pieces in "The Ruby Way" and "The Ruby Cookbook".
>
> I don't know about the rest of you "hardy hacker types who like to
> figure stuff out for themselves", but in my own case, I have plenty of
> other things to figure out for myself, so *I* want a book for things
> that are already figured out! Use the source, Luke? Sometimes ... only
> sometimes.

Gtk and Wx have much better 'official' documentation than fxruby. I
don't know about nice ease-you-in tutorials like a book has, but the
API documentation is fairly good. Wx still has some glitches, but a
lot of those are getting fixed for the 1.9.3 release (any day now). As
far as I know, GTK work flawlessly and is fully documented. You'll
have to go back to the C docs if you want to work with some extra
OS-integration modules provided by ruby-gnome2, but the actual GUI
toolkit is GTK, and that's great and well-documented.

http://wxruby.rubyforg...
http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?...

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney

Lyle Johnson

1/17/2008 4:04:00 PM

0


On Jan 17, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:

> Shoes and FXRuby are really different.

I would echo everything Daniel said, and I'm the FXRuby guy.

I've only played around with Shoes a little bit, but I like it a lot.
Shoes code is definitely prettier than FXRuby code. Having said that,
they really do address two different sets of needs, at least for
now---it will be interesting to see where _why takes Shoes over the
next year.

Side note, for Doug Livesy (who started the thread): There *is* a
Shoes book, "Nobody Knows Shoes". Look for it on Lulu.com (right)?

Doug Livesey

1/17/2008 5:06:00 PM

0

Lyle Johnson wrote:
> On Jan 17, 2008, at 8:24 AM, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:
>
>> Shoes and FXRuby are really different.
>
> I would echo everything Daniel said, and I'm the FXRuby guy.
>
> I've only played around with Shoes a little bit, but I like it a lot.
> Shoes code is definitely prettier than FXRuby code. Having said that,
> they really do address two different sets of needs, at least for
> now---it will be interesting to see where _why takes Shoes over the
> next year.
>
> Side note, for Doug Livesy (who started the thread): There *is* a
> Shoes book, "Nobody Knows Shoes". Look for it on Lulu.com (right)?

I spotted that, but heard that it was a little, um... Out there?
I'm not so curious about Nicholas Cage or the Queen (I'm English &
rabidly anti-monarchist), and the poignant guide's style didn't really
gel w/ me -- but I guess I should read it for myself rather than just
take on what I've heard.
I should mention that I've found _why's articles on wearing ruby
slippers, etc. to be essential reading, and think the guy's a total
coding hero, just in case anyone thinks I'm having a do.
Cheers,
Doug.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Thomas Wieczorek

1/17/2008 6:18:00 PM

0

On Jan 17, 2008 6:06 PM, Doug Livesey <biot023@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I should mention that I've found _why's articles on wearing ruby
> slippers, etc. to be essential reading, and think the guy's a total
> coding hero, just in case anyone thinks I'm having a do.
>

Yeah, _why is a hero for me. I found a blog about Ruby, the next thing
was his poignant guide and I fell in love with Ruby. I owe him one