[ANN] Rapid GUI Development with QtRuby

ruby-talk
1

I hope y'all don't mind a short announcement, but it seemed relevant.

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library, which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and OS X in Ruby. It covers installation, basic and advanced programming, event models, and Korundum. See http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctrubyqt/index.html for more details and an extract.

This is the first in our new line of _Fridays_: short, PDF-only books on a single topic. (There's more information on Fridays at http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/fridays.html)

I'm always looking for more material to support the Ruby community: if you feel you have either a full book or a Friday in you, drop me a line.

Thanks

Dave Thomas

2

Dave Thomas wrote:

I hope y'all don't mind a short announcement, but it seemed relevant.

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,
which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It
discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and
OS X in Ruby. It covers installation, basic and advanced programming,
event models, and Korundum. See Pragmatic Bookshelf: By Developers, For Developers
ctrubyqt/index.html for more details and an extract.

This is the first in our new line of _Fridays_: short, PDF-only books
on a single topic. (There's more information on Fridays at http://
pragmaticprogrammer.com/fridays.html)

I'm always looking for more material to support the Ruby community:
if you feel you have either a full book or a Friday in you, drop me a
line.

Thanks

Dave Thomas

Checking out the excerpt this looks like good stuff. It's nice the see
the detailed level of coverage QtRuby is getting here. So far I have
done Ruby GUI projects using Qt and Tk and found the toughest part of
things finding in depth documentation on all the object methods and
properties available. There are a few tutorials around the Internet but
a comprehensive textbook-like rundown geared for Ruby was what I was
looking for. This PDF book looks like a nice addition to my collection.

3

Dave Thomas wrote:

I hope y'all don't mind a short announcement, but it seemed relevant.

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library, which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and OS X in Ruby. It covers installation, basic and advanced programming, event models, and Korundum. See Pragmatic Bookshelf: By Developers, For Developers ctrubyqt/index.html for more details and an extract.

The info page is short on details. How many pages is this PDF?

Thanks,

James

···

--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

4

This is interesting.

Is QtRuby used natively on Mac OS X, or through an X-Windows server?

James Edward Gray II

···

On Sep 26, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library, which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and OS X in Ruby.

5

Dave Thomas wrote:

I hope y'all don't mind a short announcement, but it seemed relevant.

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,
which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It
discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and
OS X in Ruby. It covers installation, basic and advanced programming,
event models, and Korundum. See Pragmatic Bookshelf: By Developers, For Developers
ctrubyqt/index.html for more details and an extract.

This is the first in our new line of _Fridays_: short, PDF-only books
on a single topic. (There's more information on Fridays at http://
pragmaticprogrammer.com/fridays.html)

I'm always looking for more material to support the Ruby community:
if you feel you have either a full book or a Friday in you, drop me a
lin

Wow! I'm so excited by this! Dave Thomas announcing QtRuby stuff..

-- Richard

6

Sorry but I'm ignorant about Qt3 and the Ruby bindings. Is there a
Windows port? You didn't mention it and in my personal situation
without a Windows target I won't be able to spend much time on it.

Thanks,

Adrian Madrid

7

I'm having trouble with configuring qtruby. Anyone know how to fix :

checking for Qt... configure: error: Qt (>= Qt 3.1 (20021021)) (headers and libraries) not found. Please check your installation!

here's what i tried to do:

./configure '--with-qt-dir=/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.0.1/' '--enable-mac'

ps i takes 100 years to compile Qt

···

On Sep 26, 2005, at 9:46 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

I hope y'all don't mind a short announcement, but it seemed relevant.

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library, which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux and OS X in Ruby. It covers installation, basic and advanced programming, event models, and Korundum. See http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctrubyqt/index.html for more details and an extract.

This is the first in our new line of _Fridays_: short, PDF-only books on a single topic. (There's more information on Fridays at http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/fridays.html\)

I'm always looking for more material to support the Ruby community: if you feel you have either a full book or a Friday in you, drop me a line.

Thanks

Dave Thomas

8

90

···

On Sep 26, 2005, at 12:02 PM, James Britt wrote:

The info page is short on details. How many pages is this PDF?

9

Hello James,

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,
which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It
discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux
and OS X in Ruby.

This is interesting.

Is QtRuby used natively on Mac OS X, or through an X-Windows server?

Qt is half native on MacOSX, it uses Quartz to draw controls it and
carbon/cocoa for the toplevel window. Unfortunately MacOSX was a QT
addon, so it is not good integrated into the programming model.

Does anybody know if 4.0 now support Drawers, Sheets, the round help button,
HIToolbarView and pulsing default buttons ? Is it possible to embedd
Cocoa/Carbon widgets like the webbrowser inside QT ?

It's a pitty that we don't have any GUI toolkit that was from the
beginning designed to work on the three main platforms.

···

On Sep 26, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

--
Best regards, emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
Lothar Scholz http://www.ruby-ide.com
CTO Scriptolutions Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's

10

James Britt wrote:

The info page is short on details. How many pages is this PDF?

Thanks,

James

--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

OT I'll admit, but I just checked out the rubystuff site for the first
time. Those shirts are awesome. I will put a couple of them on my
birthday wish list. The speed metal Ruby with the umlauts is hilarious.
And the "Use Ruby, Be Happy" ones sum things up very nicely. Great
imagination.

11

I might be going blind--did you find an excerpt, or are you referring to the
code? If an excerpt, could you point me to it?

Randy Kramer

···

On Monday 26 September 2005 01:01 pm, gregarican wrote:

Dave Thomas wrote:
> Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,

Checking out the excerpt this looks like good stuff. It's nice the see

12

aemadrid@gmail.com wrote:

Sorry but I'm ignorant about Qt3 and the Ruby bindings. Is there a
Windows port? You didn't mention it and in my personal situation
without a Windows target I won't be able to spend much time on it.

A Qt4 version of QtRuby will be released soon, and there is a GPL'd version
of Qt4 for Windows, but not Qt3. I hope that someone can port the Qt4
version of QtRuby to Windows as soon as possible after it is released. I
don't think it should be that difficult. I don't have any sort of Windows
development platform myself, and so it is up to someone else..

It would be possible to port the Qt3 version of QtRuby to Windows, but you
would need a commercial license from Trolltech and permission to write
commercial ruby apps from the QtRuby copyright holder(s).

-- Richard

13

The qt bindings for KDE do not work with Qt4. Try the latest 3.3.whatever
version.

···

On Friday 30 September 2005 00:20, travis laduke wrote:

I'm having trouble with configuring qtruby. Anyone know how to fix :

checking for Qt... configure: error: Qt (>= Qt 3.1 (20021021))
(headers and libraries) not found. Please check your installation!

here's what i tried to do:

./configure '--with-qt-dir=/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.0.1/' '--enable-
mac'

ps i takes 100 years to compile Qt

14

Randy Kramer wrote:

I might be going blind--did you find an excerpt, or are you referring to the
code? If an excerpt, could you point me to it?

Check out http://media.pragprog.com/titles/ctrubyqt/TakeThePlunge.pdf\.

15

gregarican wrote:

OT I'll admit, but I just checked out the rubystuff site for the first
time. Those shirts are awesome. I will put a couple of them on my
birthday wish list. The speed metal Ruby with the umlauts is hilarious.
And the "Use Ruby, Be Happy" ones sum things up very nicely. Great
imagination.

There are others out there. Mine (which for some reason doesn't show
up in CP searches) is at:

No heavy-netal umlaut, though. That is such a classic idea I couldn't
dream of stealing it.

Cheers,
Hal

16

Randy Kramer wrote:

···

On Monday 26 September 2005 01:01 pm, gregarican wrote:

Dave Thomas wrote:

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,

Checking out the excerpt this looks like good stuff. It's nice the see

I might be going blind--did you find an excerpt, or are you referring to the code? If an excerpt, could you point me to it?

The "Read an extract" link:

   http://media.pragprog.com/titles/ctrubyqt/TakeThePlunge.pdf

Off of the Friday's page,

  http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctrubyqt/

Later,
--
Bil
http://fun3d.larc.nasa.gov

17

Dave Thomas wrote:

The info page is short on details. How many pages is this PDF?

90

Good deal. Thanks!

James

···

On Sep 26, 2005, at 12:02 PM, James Britt wrote:

--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

18

gregarican wrote:

James Britt wrote:

The info page is short on details. How many pages is this PDF?

Thanks,

James

--

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

OT I'll admit, but I just checked out the rubystuff site for the first
time. Those shirts are awesome. I will put a couple of them on my
birthday wish list. The speed metal Ruby with the umlauts is hilarious.
And the "Use Ruby, Be Happy" ones sum things up very nicely. Great
imagination.

Thank you!

And thank you to all those who have purchased from rubystuff, helping to support ruby-doc.org. I hope to see a bunch of Ruby umlaut shirts at the upcoming RubyConf!

James

19

Lothar Scholz wrote:

Hello James,

Caleb Tennis has just finished a short book on the QtRuby library,
which integrates the cross-platform Qt3 library into Ruby. It
discusses how to create cross-platform GUI applications for Linux
and OS X in Ruby.

> This is interesting.

> Is QtRuby used natively on Mac OS X, or through an X-Windows server?

Qt is half native on MacOSX, it uses Quartz to draw controls it and
carbon/cocoa for the toplevel window. Unfortunately MacOSX was a QT
addon, so it is not good integrated into the programming model.

Does anybody know if 4.0 now support Drawers, Sheets, the round help
button, HIToolbarView and pulsing default buttons ? Is it possible to
embedd Cocoa/Carbon widgets like the webbrowser inside QT ?

From the platform specific notes and the 'Qt/Mac is Mac OS X Native' in the
Qt4 docs:

"Qt/Mac has support for sheets, drawers. Represented by Qt::Sheet and
Qt::Drawer in the window flags respectiviely. Brushed metal windows are
also possible using Qt::WA_MacMetalStyle window attribute."

....

Normally when referring to a native Mac application, one really means an
application that talks directly to the underlying window system, rather
than one that uses some intermediary (for example Apple's X11 server, or a
web browser). Qt/Mac applications run as first class citizens, just like
Cocoa, and Carbon applications. In fact, we use Carbon and HIView
internally to communicate with OS X.

....

Aqua look

As with Cocoa/Carbon, Qt/Mac provides widgets that look like those described
in the Human Interface Descriptions. Qt/Mac's widgets use Appearance
Manager on Mac OS X 10.2 and the new HIThemes on Mac OS X 10.3 and higher
to implement the look, in other words we use Apple's own API's for doing
the rendering."

I haven't found anything about pulsing buttons or the round help button.

It's a pitty that we don't have any GUI toolkit that was from the
beginning designed to work on the three main platforms.

I don't think you can emded Cocoa widgets in Qt apps, but that seems to be
outside the scope of a cross platform framework to me anyway. I don't know
of any toolkit that does a better job at running on the three platforms.

-- Richard

···

> On Sep 26, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Dave Thomas wrote:

20

Thanks (to you and gregarican)!

Randy Kramer

···

On Monday 26 September 2005 02:31 pm, Bil Kleb wrote:

The "Read an extract" link:

   http://media.pragprog.com/titles/ctrubyqt/TakeThePlunge.pdf

Off of the Friday's page,

  http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ctrubyqt/