FXRuby or wxRuby? - comp.lang.ruby

Message from discussion FXRuby or wxRuby?

da...@vallner.net

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More options Aug 10 2005, 11:09 am

Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby

From: da...@vallner.net

Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:09:09 +0900

Local: Wed, Aug 10 2005 11:09 am

Subject: Re: FXRuby or wxRuby?

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Citát Lothar Scholz <mailingli...@scriptolutions.com>:

> Hello david,

> dvn> The "ugly" says is all. FOX looks very foreign to me on Windows, doesn't
> seem to
> dvn> even try to look like the XP widgets do. I stopped playing with
> FreeRIDE
> dvn> because of the file dialog used, which doesn't remember the last
> location
> dvn> 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.

In this specific example, the dialog still looks very out of place on XP. And
the default location opened for a file dialog -is- the work of the GUI toolkit,
which should respect the default platform policy for that. Which would
obviously not be an issue if the dialog was the one provided by the OS widget
set.

I also have a hunch Windows automatically stores the last location used by an
instance of a native File Dialog somewheres in the registry, at least while the
program is running. I'll have to toy around with SWT or wxPython to verify
that.

> 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.

> 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.

I'm a technical person and I'm ticked off to no end by applications having an
out-of-place L&F. Right now I'm having problems giving my desktop a white on
black look to save what's left of my eyesight -precisely- because each and
every app has its own mechanism of skinning, and applies system defaults rather
randomly. Gray88 text on a white background everywhere, because authors of
skins, IDE editor settings, and stylesheets -always- presume I use a white or
light background, but don't bother to change the text colour settings along. I
have an urge to stab someone in the eye with a rusty fork each time that
happens.

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.

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

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