From: Ruby Student Date: 2010-01-12T00:15:15+09:00 Subject: Re: The Ruby GUI debacle Remember the expression: "Be careful what you wish for....." At any rate, thinking this thing over and over, I noticed that two components that runs everywhere: 1 - Java - I don't know any platform where Java does not run. There might be one, but I don't know it! (Not surprisingly, I don't know most of the things anyway) 2 - Web Browsers. Same as item 1 above. All the platforms that I use support at least one of these browsers: IE, Mozilla, Chrome, Opera, Safari I earn my Rice & Beans as a UNIX admin guy - AIX to be exact. I also use, in this order, the following: LINUX, Windows and OS X. Many years ago, I mean many years ago, I used something in Java called AWT. I used to design my Widgets by "hand". Then, other priorities came up and I dropped Java altogether over 10 years ago or more. But as a professional programmer, I did many years of assembly (BAL) programming. Now, I am experimenting with Ruby and I like it very much to the point that I have it running on over 130 very large AIX production environments. We practically replaced the AIX shells with Ruby. It took me years of convincing people that Ruby was the way to go. Now I am thinking that I can write some neat code if I can get some kind of GUI development environment which I can master easily. I don't have much time for learning and at my age time is also running out rather quickly. I tell you this not with the intention of telling you the story of my life (it will not fit on the largest wikipedia anyway), but so you can see my background and make some recommendations objectively. Some people are sarcastic about answering incomplete or vague questions, but please understand that sometime we don't really know how to post a question so everyone understands it, even when it sounds very logical to the person asking the question. I thank everyone for taking the time to suggest, comment and recommend actions. On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 9:03 AM, Ruby Student wrote: > Hi Florian, > > What I mean by the "power of Swing" is the fact that SWING is part of > Java and Java appears to be everywhere, on all platforms, including OS > X. > That been said, please do keep in mind that I am in a facts-finding > mission for a cross-platform GUI and which I find "easy". Again, > "easy" is also a subject word, as you know. > If I used the wrong wording when I spoke of SWING, then I apologize. I > will attribute this poor selection of words to my naive way of seeing > things! > > Thank you > > On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Florian Gilcher wrote: >>> >>> To me, Monkeybars looked perfect because it makes available the power >>> of swing! But, here I am, still struggling! >> >> What exactly is the "power of Swing"? The deal-breaker for me always was that there seems to be no possibility to create native-feel applications on OS X because I have yet to find a possibility to create menus in the menubar instead of the window. Swing does not know this concept and doesn't care. When it comes to UI, this can hardly be called "cross-platform", just because it "runs" on the target platform. Also, the windows somehow don't feel right, which may be because Swing only fakes a native look instead of using native iconography and widgets. The absence of complex widgets and the horribly complex API doesn't make things easier, as well. >> >> I had good experiences with QT and QTDesigner, although I don't have any experience in using it with Ruby (i did C++ development). >> >> Regards, >> Florian >> > > > > -- > Ruby Student > -- Ruby Student