From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2007-10-30T04:08:23+09:00
Subject: Cheri: Builder-style JRuby/Swing GUI development

Ara mentioned wanting to hear more about Swing-based GUI stuff in JRuby, 
so here's a quick intro to some of the frameworks available right now 
for doing Swing stuff. I'd like to know what people think of these and 
what's missing. There's a bunch, so I'll do this as separate posts.

* Cheri (http://cheri.rubyforge.org/)

"Cheri is a framework for creating builder applications; that is, 
applications that build or represent hierarchical, tree-like, 
structures, using a declarative syntax. Cheri includes a number of 
builders based on the framework, as well as a builder�builder for easily 
creating new builders or extending existing builders. Cheri also comes 
with a demo application, Cheri::JRuby::Explorer (CJX), that is built 
using two of the supplied builders (Cheri::Swing and Cheri::Html)."

Cheri is very much a builder for Swing, hiding most aspects of the Swing 
component behind a declarative language. So here's a simple example:

Hello World:

@frame = swing.frame('Hello World') {|obj|
   size 200,150; box_layout obj, :Y_AXIS
   on_window_closing { puts 'bye!'; @frame.dispose }
   y_glue
   x_box { label 'Hello!' }
   y_glue
}
@frame.visible = true

A simple HTML example:

require 'cheri/swing'
require 'cheri/html'
include Cheri::Swing
include Cheri::Html

folks = {
   "Susan" =>"Wife", "Larry" =>"Son",
   "Bob" => "Friend","MaryAnne" => "Friend",
}
@frame = swing.frame('Swing and Html') { |frm|
   size 240,180; box_layout frm,:Y_AXIS
   content_pane { background :WHITE }
   default_close_operation :EXIT_ON_CLOSE
   menu_bar {
     menu('File') {  mnemonic :VK_F
       menu_item('Exit') { mnemonic :VK_X
         on_click { @frame.dispose }
   }}}
   scroll_pane {
     align :LEFT
     editor_pane {
       content_type 'text/html'
       editable false
       background color(255,255,240)
       html {head {
          style "body { font-family: sans-serif; }" }
         body {div(:align=>:center) {
         table(:width=>'90%',:border=>1) {
           tr th('Name'), th('Relationship'),
             :bgcolor=>:yellow
           folks.each do |name,rel|
             tr(:bgcolor=>'#e0ffff') {
               td {name}; td {rel} }
           end
    }}}}}}
}
@frame.visible = true

- Charlie