From: Paul Lutus <nospam@...>
Date: 2006-09-09T17:20:12+09:00
Subject: Re: DRAW 1280, 1024

Benjohn Barnes wrote:

> 20 years ago, the subject line would have drawn me a line across one
> of my screen's diagonals. Ruby is awesomely more powerful than BBC
> BASIC, but why no trivial graphics support?

Because there is no trivial way to make graphics facilities
platform-independent. You may notice that Ruby has native libraries for
graphic interfaces, but these are also not platform-independent. Through
those graphic interfaces, you can make drawings, but you then cannot run
the program anywhere but on the original platform (with some exceptions).

> My two requirements are that it should be really easy to draw, and it
> should be possible to do so interactively (from irb).

Well, "irb" has a special purpose, and being a user interface for a drawing
program isn't the purpose.

> I've looked unsuccessfully in the past, but if this is a solved
> problem then I'd really like to know. Otherwise, does anyone have a
> suggestion of where to start?
> 
> Personally, I'm on a Mac. If there is a solution for my world, that
> would do for me. Something global would rock though.

Global, there's the rub. I am sure there are libraries on the Mac that allow
graphic interfaces to Ruby programs, but they aren't likely to be portable.

-- 
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com