From: Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs@...>
Date: 2000-11-16T05:04:26+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:6385] Re: Thoughts on a Ruby browser

On Thu, 16 Nov 2000, Conrad Schneiker/Austin/Contr/IBM wrote:

[Layout mercilessly munged for brevity :-)]
> OK. 
> 
> These things raise some interesting questions about trade-offs, which in 
> turn concern priorities for this project. Dave originally suggested 
> something along these lines as a way of winning Ruby converts. On the 

Yes.
	[...]
> Would most people prefer maximizing the number of new Ruby users 
> (esp[...] compounded interest effects of larger initial growth rates)
> even if this meant only initially supporting (say) Unix/Linux and Windows?

Yes, provided that this doesn't lock out future expansion, of course.
> 
> I've seen assurances (sorry, I don't have a reference handy) that the 
> quality of Windows GTK ports was going to improve substantially early next 
	[...]

I've not got into GTK yet.  Things I'd want to know about it before
relying on it -- these will be newbie questions also:

    How big is it?

    Can I run apps that use it on my normal desktop (be that CDE, 
    Openwindows, or MS Windows(3.1|95|98|2k|NT) or do I have to use a GTK
    (gnome?) desktop?

    What do I need to install it?  C compiler, C++ compiler, ???

These could affect the take-up.   

> 
> # > 10. I'd like the capability to click on a standard identifier and get
> # > documentation on it -- different levels of documentation, beginning
	[...] 
> # do.  It could make learning the language much faster, and would be 
	[...] 
> That is a very good point and should be a primary objective. 

Agreed
> 
> # A GUI builder is a really nice feature in an IDE, but is sufficiently
> # complex that it probably isn't a good choice for inclusion in the first
> # iteration.  A later iteration should allow the GUI to be built, but 
	[...]
> 
> Well, if you were using GTK, then you could use Glade (the GTK GUI-based 
	[...]
> capabilities of Ruby/GTK probably already significantly exceeds that of 
> Ruby/Tk.) This makes it possible to use the output of Glade to generate 
> Ruby/GTK programs. 

But Programming Ruby has the Tk stuff in it.

Bizarre question, based on ignorance: to what extent can glade be made
to support both GUIs?  Most widgets are pretty much the same from platform
to platform....
> 
> Also, when it comes to incorporating a GUI builder into the IDE, you could 
> use a trick that almost all of the Tcl/Tk GUI builders use, which is to 
> specify the GUI in terms of an icon-decorated tree structure of widgets 
> (that looks somewhat similar to a directory tree in a MS Windows file 
> browser) rather than to use the actual physical display layout. So you can 
> still do drag-and-drop construction and modification, but you work on 
> structural schematic diagrams of the GUI, rather than the target run-time 
> display image of the GUI.

Yes.  I have tried to get the Star Office folks to see the benefit of this
"structure view" approach, but to no avail: "But it's not WYSIWYG!".  
PragProg: "It's Just A View", again :-)

> 
> Conrad Schneiker
> (This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)
> 
> 
	Hugh
	hgs@dmu.ac.uk