From: george girton <ggirton@...>
Date: 2002-01-22T15:36:46+09:00
Subject: Re: RANT: Ruby GUI API

I was v. happy with my last experience with Tk, but don't think I want to 
use it even though they did a good job porting it to the various OS 
environments, and the install was a breeze. That's why I've got Tk on my 
Windows environment even though I don't use it much. Tcl is another story.
  I'd like very much to replace my combo of Tcl and VBScripting with Ruby, 
and I'm ->that<- close.

But for cross-platform GUI work I think I'd want to encapsulate the native 
calls I need (I presume they aren't very many) in a v. lightweight Ruby 
wrapping -- just what I need, so as to simplify my distribution. I want as 
wide a distribution as possible, and because it will be open, as 
trouble-free too. So that kind of rules out Java on the windows side. I'd 
much rather distribute a self-contained interpreter than a virtual machine.
  Of course, up-to-date java is already on the Mac OS/X so that wouldn't be 
an issue. But I wasn't that happy with the interface performance of the 
Java AWT on Mac OS/X.

So, some things I'll be looking forward to in the future. Ruby Cocoa, Ruby 
Win32, and Ruby WINOLE interface (please include it in the Windows 
distribution -- I saw that it disappeared from the ballot).

cheers!
George Girton