Just to throw my $0.02 in, I agree with Thomas that anyone looking for a good portable GUI toolkit should look into Peter Herth's Ltk. I've recently started playing around with it myself and I find it to be very easy and intuitive to use, plus I can run it on my Mac, Windows, or Linux.
That said, I believe that one of the most important things to have in a language is a reliable and portable GUI library. I can write as many programs as I want with a language and no matter how powerful the language is, no normal user is ever going to use it without a decent GUI. To prove this point, I have a checkbook program I've been working on in Lisp (mainly as a learning experience) and, now my girlfriend would like a copy of it, and guess what--she's not going to want one that you run from the command line (and forget about my Grandmother ever using anything without an intuitive GUI). The point in this example is that it's absolutely vital to have a very standardized, portable, easy to use GUI library, and for my money, I nominate Ltk to take on this role. I think there are definitely more powerful, more full featured, and better looking GUIs out there, but Tk seems to be a standard across all languages and platforms. Chances are, if you've programmed in just about any dynamic language (Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.), then you've likely used Tk. So it seems that, not only does Ltk have the lowest barriers to entry, but it also has the best chance of already existing on a chosen platform (e.g., Tk already comes pre-installed on newer Macs, all you need is the Ltk library and you're ready to go). I think once we've gotten a good GUI library up and running that's easy enough for any newbie to use, we can concentrate on bringing in other more feature rich libraries (e.g., Qt) for the power users and larger applications. But, for now its more important to get something into the hands of newbies that they can put to use right away for any of their daily tasks without having to thumb through a 2,000 page manual to create a 'Ok' button. Christopher _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
