From: James Britt Date: 2009-10-30T02:23:22+09:00 Subject: Re: Desktop GUI apps in Ruby gregarican wrote: > > When I think of GUI programming and using an IDE for such I think of > drag and drop widgets, automated event bindings, etc. But after > banging my head against my desk I had to resort to my tried and true > Visual Studio install using Visual C#. The language itself isn't > nearly as clean and elegant, but the tight GUI development environment > is a hands-down favorite. Just wish that Ruby could have the same > luxury. Ruby in Steel is something that's close, and I've looked at > that in the past. But then again the GUI toolkit components aren't > there, and that's the driving force behind why I would use Visual > Studio in the first place :-/ Expected disclaimer: I helped with Monkeybars and Rawr, and now maintain forks (Jimpanzee and Roir), plus wrote Neurogami::SwingSet for wrapping Swing items in a nicer Ruby API. One of the selling points for using JRuby + Swing is the use of NetBeans and its built-in GUI editor. It's drag-and-drop, but no automated event integration. I doubt that's a big loss; the integration in Monkeybars between the view and the model+controller is decoupled to make testing easier, something you'd lose with event integration in the IDE. You can write complete JRuby Swing apps in NetBeans, running the code straight from the IDE. I still prefer doing my code editing in Vim (and the NetBeans vi plugin isn't quite all I'd want it to be), and running tasks from the command line, but NetBeans is a solid JRuby IDE, and the GUI editor is sweet. And it's free. :) -- James Britt www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff www.neurogami.com - Smart application development