From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2004-11-25T12:37:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby GUIs and installation effort

On Nov 24, 2004, at 9:26 PM, R. Mark Volkmann wrote:

> I'm concerned about the state of GUI toolkits for Ruby when in comes to
> installation requirements, particularly under Mac OS X.

Amen.

> I recently went through the steps to get Tk working with Ruby under 
> Mac OS X.
> It was fairly complicated.  After all that work I found that GUIs I 
> had created under Windows didn't look very good on Mac OS X.

I agree.  TK doesn't do it for me.

> I then decided to try FOX.  That required downloading the X11 software 
> from Apple.  I installed that and then found that I didn't 
> automatically get the X11 library files that are needed in order to 
> build FOX.  Maybe I'll get this figured out eventually.

Many Mac users won't even consider installing X and I can't say I blame 
them.  Who needs two Window managers running?  And X is so un-Mac.  To 
me, if it's not native, it's not a realistic solution.

> Do others think this is an issue?

I would LOVE to have a Swing-like library (more robust, with document 
classes) in the Ruby Std Lib.  I realize that's asking the world, but I 
can't imagine we wouldn't see huge returns on the effort invested.

James Edward Gray II