From: Sean Russell <ser@...>
Date: 2002-01-23T01:32:11+09:00
Subject: Re: RANT: Ruby GUI API

Phil Tomson wrote:

> 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.

Fox isn't included on Linux, and FXRuby isn't included with the standard 
Ruby distribution.

I specifically want something (other than Tk) with which I can write GUI 
apps and *know* that they'll run on all Ruby installations out there.  If 
it turns out to be FXRuby, then fine.


I'm more and more thinking that it would be Useful to have the Qt binding 
author, the FXRuby author, the FLTK author, and whoever else is working on 
a GUI toolkit for Ruby to talk about converging to a common API.  If those 
authors can all agree on common components of an API, and then write their 
bindings to that API, then the backend becomes swappable, and people can 
use whatever they choose.

The problem, of course, is that this is great in theory, but difficult in 
practice.  What happens when the Qt author wants an API element for his 
HTMLWidget, which the FLTK toolkit doesn't support?

Still, it is an interesting idea.

-- 
--- SER