[ruby-talk:23431] Re: Sqeuak-like GUI? / was GUI

At 08:27 AM 10/26/2001 +0900, you wrote:
>It just seems like a lot of unnecessary overhead. SDL works under X, and is
>definitely smaller than an entire X server (I would imagine).

Yes, indeed it is.  Except for, perhaps MiX.  But still, you're required to 
install something, which seems like overhead, though it may make the 
process easier.

What I'm envisioning is a Ruby GUI framework that, aside from native 
optimizations and conveniences, is written almost entirely in Ruby, with 
the possibility of certain parts being compiled to C via a Ruby->C 
translation.  This includes widgets, event managers, etc (if it ever gets 
to that point).

SDL looks like a nice, easy beginning, which would give us some level of 
platform independence.  However, with all that it provides, I'd rather use 
its features to augment the framework rather than to _be_ the framework.

So, I'd still like to implement a BitBlt in Ruby which allows blitting from 
a Form object, say, like Squeak, to whatever native "Form"s there 
are.  RUDL's Surface#blit doesn't allow that.

I don't personally think efficiency should be the most major issue, as that 
can be overcome, if simply by implementing the Ruby objects in C for the 
time being (I still love how writing in C can _feel_ like writing in Ruby).

All that said, I played with SDL last night.  I'm trying to abstract the 
native stuff as much as possible, but I may ignore that for now, since I 
view it as something of a proof of concept.

Jimmy