From: Curt Hibbs <curt@...>
Date: 2002-02-18T18:49:33+09:00
Subject: RE: The GUI Returns

Kero van Gelder wrote:
> >> 2) GUI Abstraction Layer  ('a la Locana / Anygui )
> >
> >This is to me the most promising route to go. And again I'm fully
> >aligned with Curt's reply (no he did not pay me anything :-). I have
> >looked at the Eclipse project and spent some time investigating the SWT
> >library.
>
> [snip explanation I heard partially on FOSDEM, too]
>
> Be my guest :)
> What is a native look and feel for X? Athena? Motif? Gtk?
>
> It sounds like you must strike a balance between extreme 1) (portability)
> and extreme 2) (speed), where SWT seems to have such a good balance.
> I hope I can give Ruby-Wise a similar balance.

I definitely look forward to seeing how Ruby-Wise turns out (I have an iPAQ,
as well :).

Let me point out something that is often overlooked, that I think is
probably more important than platform look'n'feel -- platform integration.

What I mean by this, is that on each platform, GUI components within AND
between applications are expected (by user's of that platform) to behave and
cooperate in specific ways. The most obvious example is the clipboard.

Imagine that you a user running TheBestOS. You cut some text from your email
program, switch to MyFabulousApplication, and use the platform standard
keystroke to paste that text into one of my TextWigets -- but nothings gets
pasted (or, worse what ever you cut/copied last within MyFabulousApplication
gets pasted). This would be extremely frustrating. You might even prefer to
use SomeLessFabulousApplication just because it works better with your other
applications.

There are many such platform integration issues, some obvious and some
subtle. There was an excellent posting to the Ruby ML a month or two ago
that detailed many of these issues (with example frustrations on various
platforms). I just spent a half hour trying to find it with google without
any luck. If anyone else remembers this and can find it, please post a link.

This is another important reason why I like Eclipse's SWT. When you use
native widgets, you also get integration with these native system features
that the user of the platform will expect.

Anyway, I would recommend keeping platform integration in mind as you
progress with Ruby-Wise.

Good Luck!

Curt