From: Mohit Sindhwani <mo_mail@...>
Date: 2007-12-19T01:45:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Confirm My Ruby/GUI investigation?

Wesley Rishel wrote:
> I have been reviewing the copious old threads (and the various cited web
> sites) on this topic from the point of view of my needs. I think I have
> some conclusions and am hoping that some of you with actual experience
> can tell me if I'm on the right track.
>
> My needs:
> a) I write small programs in Ruby for personal convenience, and the fun
> of being a do-it-yourselfer. I have programmed professtionally, but that
> was many moons ago.
>
> b) I am not interested in a long learning curve. I would like a WSYWIG
> dialogue editor, but not at the expense of a package that would weeks to
> become productive. Weeks of programming time takes months for a
> hobbyist.
>
> c) cheap is required; free is better. I would probably pop for $100 but
> nothing like Qt.
>
> d) my target OS is Windows
>
> e) huge footprint not acceptable; I do most of my hobby programming on a
> company-owned laptop, not set up as a development machine.
>
> f) I don't have a C++ compiler and am hoping not to have compile
> anything to install.
>
> g) I can get by with bread and butter UIs rather than baked Alaska. I do
> want to be able to draw a graph once in awhile.
>
>   

If direct support (specifically from _this_ forum) is less of an issue, 
you could consider WideStudio. 
* It has a Visual Basic/ Borland Delphi style Project manager window 
that lets you draw your dialogs. 
* You can get a binary for Windows - no need for
* It does the wiring between events and invoking certain portions of code
* Not sure about the graphs.. but I guess it has something like a canvas
* The footprint is a bit of a concern.  The directory with everything 
installed takes about 400MB (you could selectively remove things you 
don't need - like its own install of Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.)  However, 
I have it running a very simple project for Ruby and it actually says it 
needs only about 10MB.
* It's free (and if it matters, open source)

Negatives:
* There's no real built-in code editor
* You'll need to read the online guide:  
http://www.widestudio.org/EE/prog-ruby/prog.html to see what is possible.

Note that the projects you create will need to link with WideStudio's 
DLLs for accessing the OS native widgets, etc.

http://www.widestudio.org/

Cheers
Mohit.