From: Lyle Johnson <ljohnson@...>
Date: 2000-12-19T02:10:02+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:7589] Re: A Java Developer's Wish List for Ruby

> Having just looked at the FOX stuff, even though there seems to be a
> heap load of C++ code, the samples look quite nice. Is CFD Research
> Corp. using FOX internally?
>
> How much work do you think it would be to get some Ruby bindings?

Pete,

CFD Research Corporation is using FOX as the GUI for all of its commercial
software products and has been doing so for about a year now. At least one
other commercial software product (i.e. from a different vendor) uses FOX
and others are in the works. There is an even larger base of free software
projects using FOX. Please check the partial listing on the FOX home page
(http://www.cfdrc.com/FOX/fox.html).

Depending on the state of Ruby support in SWIG, I think I could cook up some
Ruby bindings within a few weeks' time and maybe have a first cut early next
year. As I mentioned in the previous post, I've got some background in this
area having already done the Python bindings for FOX. The tricky issues tend
to be things like handling virtual function calls from the C++ library layer
down into the Ruby layer. If you create a new widget in Ruby by subclassing
an existing FOX widget, you'd like to be able to override selected virtual
functions and trust that they'll get called at the right time. I'm confident
that we can make this work as seamlessly as it does with the Python version
but it may take some experimentation.

Lyle