Len Lawrence
6/13/2009 7:39:00 PM
On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:17:19 -0500, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Jens Riedel<JensRie@gmx.de> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I use Ruby 1.8 under Windows (installed with the One-Click-Installer).
>> When I try to use Tk I get a message that tk84.dll is not available. I
>> googled a bit and found that I have to install ActiveTcl 8.4 and did
>> this. Message still occurred, after I copied tk84.dll from Tcl/lib to
>> ruby/lib the next error was "tcl84.dll" not found... I copied this,
>> too, and then init.tcl was not found...
>> I think I'm on the wrong way to copy all the files from Tcl to ruby,
>> how can I get Tk running?
>
> Is Tk an absolute necessity? There are certainly better UI libraries for
> Ruby on Windows, including Shoes, GTK, and the various JRuby-based
> Swing/SWT wrappers.
>
> - Charlie
That all depends on what you mean by better.
I have heard people say that before but when I investigated libraries
like FOX and Gtk they came up wanting. I have been using Tcl/Tk in Unix/
Linux for 16 years and found it extremely versatile. Like Jens, I have
been porting all my C/Tcl/Tk programs to Ruby/RubyTk. There are things I
need to do in Tk which the other libraries simply do not address. For
instance the Tk Canvas is a very capable widget - no other library can
generate a printable Postscript file from a canvas the way Tk does -
AFAIK. There are other areas where coding is simple and transparent in
Tk but difficult, verbose or downright impossible in other systems.
Having said that Tk does not fit in comfortably with the object hierarchy
(judging by what others have said) but in my relatively simple scripts
there have been no real problems.
Shoes does look to be a very good choice for lightweight graphic systems.
This is a bit off topic and I don't want to start a flame war.
Len