From: James Britt <james.britt@...>
Date: 2008-09-06T14:48:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Ruby good at GUI develop?

Zhao Yi wrote:
> I want to choose a script to develop a GUI program. I want to know more
> about Ruby on GUI development, including its performance, function
> capability, etc. Does anyone give me a brief introduction on this?

There are assorted C-based options for GUI toolkits (Tk, Fox, wx, GTK, 
Qt, etc.).  These can be used with the C implementation of Ruby (the one 
people think of when then think of Ruby).

You also have Java-based options; Swing in particular, which you can use 
with JRuby.


You have to consider what's important: libraries, available widgets, 
documentation, vendor support, layout managers, available WYSIWYG UI 
editors, packaging and deployment, if end-users will need to install or 
compile something, is it cross-platform, can you create your own 
widgets, can you customize existing widgets, and so on.


I help develop a library called Monkeybars, which aims to make building 
cross-platform desktop apps as simple and intuitive as the better Ruby 
Web frameworks do for Web apps.  Monkeybars  uses JRuby + Swing, and I 
encourage you to  give it a whirl.  It rocks.  But I'm biased.


http://www.monkeybars.org

-- 
James Britt

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