From: Marnen Laibow-Koser <marnen@...>
Date: 2009-10-29T20:58:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Desktop GUI apps in Ruby

Alex Fenton wrote:
[...]
> You'll have realised that there are a number of GUI packages which
> potentially meet your requirements, though none is perfect; be skeptical
> of anyone that says the particular one they're cheering is, without
> reservation, 'the best' or 'the only'.

Oh, of course.  I just wanted to get a sense of what was being used and 
how people felt about it.

> 
> As an alternative to single posts which tell you which GUI package that
> author happens to like, you may find this 2008 survey of around 400 ruby
> programmers specifically on GUI programming in Ruby of interest:
> 
> http://www.pressure.to/ruby_gui_survey/

Yes, I found that.  It's fascinating and useful.

> 
> I wouldn't say that being most used or most preferred is an indicator of
> which is best; lack of knowledge and inertia play a part. But you might
> assume that the most-used cross-platform GUI packages (Ruby-GNOME2,
> Shoes, wxRuby) are used for a reason, and start by evaluating some of 
> them.


I did check them out.  None seems right for this project, but I will 
absolutely keep Shoes and wx in mind for future work.

> 
> Bera in mind that Swing/Monkeybars may be disadvantaged in the poll by
> being tied to a less-used interpreter. But Swing/Monkeybars gets a good
> deal of regular promotion to compensate.

In this case, I think being tied to JRuby may actually be an advantage. 
It's the only way I can see to have a cross-platform, easily 
distributable Ruby application.  And it seems like both wxRuby and Shoes 
depend too much on native extensions to work with JRuby, and depend too 
much on MRI to distribute to general users.  If I'm wrong on either of 
those, please correct me.

> 
> cheers
> alex

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen@marnen.org
-- 
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