From: Sean Russell <ser@...>
Date: 2002-01-24T06:55:02+09:00
Subject: RE: RANT: Ruby GUI API

Christian Boos wrote:

>> From: Sean Russell [mailto:ser@germane-software.com]
....
>> 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.
> 
> Sorry, that's not realistic. I don't know anything about FXRuby and
> FLTK, but at least about Qt and Tk, and they have _nothing_ in common.

I think you misunderstand me.  What I'd like to see is whether or not, with 
their help, we can define an API that could concievably be tied to their 
favorite library.  GUIs do have a lot in common, and all of them share a 
common metaphor.

> Unless we talk about something different. If we think it is worthwhile
> to abandon to idea of having the flexibility found in any of those
> toolkits, and concentrate on some "minimal common denominator", then,
> OK, it would be possible.

AWT tried this.  I don't think this is a worthwhile pursuit, mostly because 
of AWTs failure.  Then again, AWT sucked because of more than just the 
limitation of the functionality; the API left a lot to be desired, so I'm 
not saying that the idea is totally worthless.  In fact, I think that 
starting with the common elements would be a good idea.  Again, the SWT 
model comes to mind: provide all of the flexablity, and if a given back-end 
doesn't support it, support it at a higher, less efficient level.


-- 
--- SER