From: Nick <devel@...>
Date: 2004-11-29T14:31:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby GUIs and installation effort



>> 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 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.

Did you try RubyCocoa (http://www.fobj.com/rubycocoa/w.en/) ? If OS X is 
your desired platform, then really this is the toolkit you should be using.

>> The bottom line is that even if you take the time to write a great GUI app.
>> using Ruby, your audience of potential users will likely be quite small. 
>> Installing Ruby is easy enough, but setting up a GUI toolkit is prohibitively
>> complex for a non-developer.  Compare this to Java.  Install the Java Runtime
>> Environment or use Java Web Start and Swing is available.


This is assuming you want to install the ruby development environment on 
the users machine so they can use your software. There are better ways 
to do it. If you link the interpreter to your own "startup" binary, you 
can wrap it in a bundle on Mac OS X, or have the start menu call it from 
  Windows. I've bundled apps on OS X and put the required libraries in 
the Resources directory, and they start just like Mac OS X apps (and 
install just as easily too). For Mac OS X, I'd say RubyCocoa is the best 
GUI toolkit (It's available in Framework form for easy installation). 
For Windows, you need to choose the toolkit that best matches your 
needs. For Linux, the Ruby GTK bindings I think make the most sense. For 
multi-platform apps, I think wxRuby works great on GTK, Windows, and OS X.

In the end, it's not up to the user to have the libraries necessary to 
run your app. You need to use the libraries that make the most sense for 
your audience, and you need to install them in the best location. This 
requires getting a little dirty with the installers, the ruby 
interpreter, and the system at hand. But if the user can't install your 
app, then they probably won't run it.

Nick

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.  I'm think about the
> case where we want to create a Ruby-based GUI application for non-developers to
> use.
> 
> 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 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.
> 
> The bottom line is that even if you take the time to write a great GUI app.
> using Ruby, your audience of potential users will likely be quite small. 
> Installing Ruby is easy enough, but setting up a GUI toolkit is prohibitively
> complex for a non-developer.  Compare this to Java.  Install the Java Runtime
> Environment or use Java Web Start and Swing is available.
> 
> One answer is to create web apps instead.  That's not appropriate for every
> application though.
> 
> Do others think this is an issue?
> 
> --
> R. Mark Volkmann
> Partner, Object Computing, Inc.
> 
> 
> 
>