From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2008-11-07T02:13:58+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby has a Face that it wears on its feet

Kyle Hunter wrote:
> Jayson Williams wrote:
>> How about a melding of the two?
> 
> Giving shoes an official place in the Ruby language hierarchy would open 
> up a new world for desktop application programming for Ruby.


As others have pointed out, so do JRuby+Swing, Ruby QT, wxRuby, 
Ruby-GNOME2, FxRuby, Ruby Cocoa etc. They all have strengths and 
shortcomings.

I admire Shoes but it's not the best choice for much desktop application 
programming. It's not going to "open up a new world". I sometimes wonder 
how much experience the voluble adherents of Shoes have in actually 
developing and delivering end-user GUI applications that do something 
boring and useful.

As others have commented elsewhere, naming Shoes a 'toy' is not a slur; 
play is important in life. It's an influential experiment. But many, 
probably most GUI apps need widgets and features that don't appear to be 
available in Shoes [1]. Have a look at the applications you regularly 
use and see how many don't use any of the following GUI elements:

* hierarchy / tree controls
* different kinds of lists and tables, including virtual ones
* printing facilities
* file dialogs
* progress and slider widgets
* resizeable panes
* styled text editing
* window and pop-up menus
* support for disabled accessibility
* integrated help
* etc

Shoes API is nice, but that's partly a result of it concentrating on a 
limited problem domain. The heavyweight toolkits with their clumsy APIs 
inherited from C-languages are both trying to do more, and do something 
different - desktop application programming.

On bundling with ruby core, I'm with those that think no GUI should be 
part of the standard library - and definitely not Tk. It would impel 
those who want to do GUI programming with Ruby to do a little research 
and make an informed choice. Some of the time that would be Shoes, other 
times not. I think it would rarely be Tk. It would also encourage 
toolkit developers to focus on ease of installation and providing 
resources for learning.

A year or two ago we'd got sick on this list of a recurring "which GUI" 
thread. Since then, new options have emerged (MacRuby, JRuby+Swing, 
Shoes) and existing libraries have develoepd. Rather than restarting 
that thread - which tends to descend into "I use XXX and I think it's 
nice" - I wonder if it would be interesting to do a "state of Ruby GUI" 
online survey?

alex


[1] http://help.shoooes.net/Element.html