From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-03-10T17:43:08+09:00
Subject: Re: GUI With Ruby

You might consider the Dashboard Widgets or Windows Gadgets as a  
medium for a Ruby GUI as well, also incorporating Javascript. There  
are application stub libraries for OS X, and likely the same for  
Windows and Linux. All it means is embedding Ruby into another  
language which handles the GUI and Ruby handles the core logic.  
Possible, happens often with Python or Perl. But no matter which  
approach you take, there is a whole library to learn. Using a web  
browser and a web page as the front end locally could be a much  
faster approach in terms of prototyping. Ruby should be able to make  
any system calls you might make in another language. As for cross- 
platform, success depends on how native the app looks and feels. Fact  
is with a GUI, each platform is different enough that it isn't  
practical to write once and run everywhere, it ends up being like  
Java, write once and debug everywhere.