[ruby-talk:6404] Re: Thoughts on a Ruby browser

Charles Hixson writes:

# Glade is a reasonable choice, but my experience has been that unless you 
are
# targeting C, you may have configuration problems.  This even includes 
C++.
# Also, the times that I've tried to install it on a Win95 system I 
haven't been
# successful.  I presume that this will improve, but it needs to be 
watched!
# 
# One real benefit of choosing Glade is that it is already designed to 
emit code
# destined for inclusion in another language.  One drawback is the 
difficulty of
# placing items with a fixed size in a fixed position.  Or in a relative
# position based on where I put it.  Dividing the screen into rows and 
columns
# before the design is final is ... I've often ended up starting from 
scratch.
# But it's available now, and, at least on Linux, it works now.  That's a 
really
# big plus.
# 
# OTOH, it might be nice to build it based around XML as I understand KDE2 
is
# doing.  That source code is also available, though it might be quite a 
bit
# less portable.

Isn't XML still the intermediate/persistent data format for Glade? IIRC, 
many months ago, I had to fetch some Ruby/XML stuff in order to go from 
Glade to Ruby/GTK.

# Or the Mozilla Composer might address the problem. (If we were going to 
be
# using Mozilla anyway, why not use it to address GUI building?)  A 
Mozilla
# based solution would have the advantage that a huge amount of 
development was
# on-going, that it's already cross-platform, and that it already handles
# printing (solving another thorny issue).

Good points, although Tcl/Tk 8.4 (somewhere around the alpha-to-beta 
transition stage) is supposed to provide printing support. Not to mention 
that it makes on line documentation much more readable and uniform with 
much less effort in many cases, and good interactive documentation is 
certainly an important factor here.

# So my evaluation of the trade-offs (based on only a view from a 
distance) says
# that the first thing to look at would be a Mozilla based solution. 

Do others generally agree? 

# This might
# cause a huge application, but most of it would be in things that were 
already
# present on many (most?) users machines, and perhaps the code could be 
shared.

And we could start by sharing the Komodo code 
(http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/Download_Komodo.html).

Is anyone up to doing the Ruby XPCOM bindings for mozilla?

If not, we may want to use Ruby/Tk for the time being until we attract a 
larger base of developers. This has the big advantage that a Ruby/Tk IDE 
could probably be included as part of the (roughly speaking) "standard" 
Ruby distributions without major bloat concerns, since Ruby/Tk is already 
present.

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)