From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-01-22T09:31:02+09:00
Subject: Re: RANT: Ruby GUI API

In article <4BE5E4AE-0EC8-11D6-BDF2-00050213BDDF@lightandmatter.com>,
Ben Crowell  <crowell02@lightandmatter.com> wrote:
>As a mac user, I'm curious to what extent all this could actually
>work on MacOS X. Although Tk exists on MacOS X, Perl/Tk doesn't work
>yet. Does Ruby's Tk interface work on MacOS X? Also, Fox hasn't yet
>been ported to MacOS, so presumably RubyFX won't work yet. It's
>also too bad that OpenStep is separate from GNUstep.

There may be more commonality between the two than you suppose.
From what I've read GNUstep is aiming at full compatibility with the 
OpenStep API.  There was a thread a week or two ago here about RubyCocoa 
and GNUStep.  There is also something called RIGS which is a Ruby 
interface to GnuStep.  It may soon be possible to develop Cocoa apps for 
OSX and Linux (running GNUStep) using Ruby.

>
>Why is it necessary for one API to become the official Ruby
>Way To Do a GUI? To me the issue is simply knowing that I can
>write to an API that will allow users to use my software, without
>having to tell them to download a bunch of special libraries
>they don't already have. What's wrong with including 2 or 3
>different APIs with the standard Ruby distribution?
>

Isn't that what we're doing now?  Fox and Tk are included (at least on 
Windows) now.  Maybe for the OSX distribution of Ruby RubyCocoa or Rigs 
(or some merging of the two) should be included.

Phil