From: Sharon Phillips <phillipsds@...>
Date: 2007-07-06T20:29:35+09:00
Subject: Can you recommend a language to...

Hi,

Second question for the evening, but very closely related to the first.

I've written some monitoring software at work, and would like to  
extend it quite a bit, including a gui with a few graphs.
Ruby is causing me grief when it comes to distributing it (see 'Oh  
the Pain!...'), and assuming there's no way to overcome this, can  
anyone recommend a language that:
* has a canvas with anti-aliasing, alpha-blending and double  
buffering  (or binding to a toolkit with one)
* is simple to distribute
* is cross platform (*nix and Windows)
* is not Java (I actually like Java, I'm just trying to get away from  
it)
* graphing libraries a bonus. Don't mind writing my own.

I've considered a web app, but two things stand in my way:
* Somewhere to host it (not much here you guys can help with)
* Graphs becoming images and constant page refreshes chewing up  
bandwidth on the LAN.
I need to be able to update the graphs and any other displays  
regularly (every minute or so) without sending another whole page.  
Currently all I've seen of web graphs are generated on the server and  
sent out as images. I'd like the ability to make them interactive  
down the track, if possible.

Any help, advice or war stories much appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave