From: thespian <entity@...>
Date: 2002-01-22T05:39:15+09:00
Subject: RE: RANT: Ruby GUI API

>
> I started this rant in another thread, where it was way OT, so I'm moving
> it here.
>
> As I said in another thread, to-native compilation and a Standard
> Ruby GUI
> API that isn't Tk are the major limiting aspects of Ruby as used as major
> application development environment.  This isn't to say that you
> can't use
> Ruby for these applications, but that there *are* issues that hinder
> development in Ruby.  I'm only going to address the GUI issue here.
>
> Caveat: I'm not against the proliferation of GUI toolkits; I'm
> all for it.
> The best tool for the job, and all that.  But computing history has shown
> that projects that have a standards vaccuum, especially in the GUI
> department, suffer.
>
> Here's the State of the Union as regards the GUI, as I see it:
>
> 1) If you write a GUI app in Ruby, you face a distribution
> problem.  Which
> toolkit do you choose?  This is a problem, and one that doesn't
> need to be.
> 2) At the moment, Ruby users practically have to install a GUI
> toolkit for
> each GUI application they want to use.
> 3) If an app is difficult to install, application developers will lose a
> certain percentage of potential users.
> 4) This is the same issue as with the Standard XML Parser --
> there has been
> much discussion about including a standard XML parser with Ruby.  This is
> equally important to do with a GUI Toolkit if Ruby is to be become a
> powerful GUI application platform.
> 5) This may be affected by the Abstracted GUI API, as has been
> discussed.
> If the API is standard and the backend toolkits are pluggable,
> the problem
> is solved.  This holy grail of GUI APIs may be beyond what we want to
> accomplish here.
> 6) Tk is inadequate, for reasons I won't go into here.

i am from a windows system and a new ruby user. ever since i've been on sort
of a grail quest to find a gui (since it will determine if i switch over to
the language in entirety)

i don't know how people from other systems see it, but i find the tk/fxruby
libraries unsatisfactory. my opinion is that it simply cannot compare to the
quality of native windows components. but the issue is that a system solely
based on windows gui (like visualuruby
(http://www.osk.3web.ne.jp/~nyasu/vruby/vrproject-e.html ,not fully featured
and i don't like syntax) does not really harness the full support of all
platform users.

has anybody thought about creating something akin to wxPython
(http://www.wxpython.org/) that links with wxwindows (http://wxwindows.org/)
and so caters for each native system ?

--Pieter