From: Steve Klabnik <steve@...>
Date: 2011-03-12T03:17:40+09:00
Subject: Re: What do you use with Ruby for GUI programming and why?

--001636ed69091076c1049e38fa47
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

> Or is that a stupid thing to say?

Shoes is just Ruby, with a lot of library on top. That said, the way it's
currently distributed is almost as a separate language, so your intuition is
almost right. _why described it as a 'toolkit.'

As far as the limitations of Shoes:

- gems with native extensions are Right Out. Unless you want to make your
own pair of shoes.
- Shoes is currently Ruby 1.9.1, so it's missing a lot of 1.9.2 goodies.
- Packaging is still a bit borked on OSX.

That said, we're looking to address all of this. One aspect is the
green_shoes project, which you can find at http://green.shoesrb.com/ . It's
true, the docs are a bit sparse, and it doesn't really work on OSX yet. But
it's a mostly-compatible Shoes that's written in all Ruby.

Another thing: I haven't talked about this much publicly yet, but I'm in the
process of turning Red Shoes (the classic, _why shoes) into a regular old
Gem. This means you'd be able to use it with your regular Ruby, and all of
your other gems.

Anyway, Shoes as a project is still strong and kicking, and we're working to
address remaining issues. :D

--001636ed69091076c1049e38fa47--