Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:
Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
Ruby.
We've done a lot to leave some good RDoc in place for Monkeybars, but we do have very little in discussing how to bring it together, what do real apps look like, etc. Recently we moved to Kenai and opened up a wiki (http://kenai.com/projects/monkeybars/pages/Home\). Our users have been filling it with loads of documentation, which I think really helps fill our documentation gap we have.
We're also really active on the mailing list and IRC.
Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production apps in Monkeybars.
We don't have any Monkeybars books (yet), but we'd love to help you get up to speed as quick as we can.
···
On Feb 13, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Ruby Student wrote:
Hello all you happy GUIsher!
Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:
Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
Ruby.
[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
Hello all you happy GUIsher!
Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I believe the only Ruby-specific GUI books are for FxRuby (2008) and Qt-Ruby (2005, documents previous version Qt3):
I want something simple or at least well documented.
Several have OK Ruby-specific API documentation (eg GNOME2, Wx, Fox), but less of the kind of book-type material that guides you topic by topic to understanding the toolkit's principles.
Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Most of the toolkits offer one or more GUI builders to design layouts. Typically, you visually design the layout then write your code in a separate tool (eg an editor) and load the layout in Ruby and attach code to handle the user interaction.
However, few offer close integration between the GUI design and the code: XCode (for OS X/Cocoa development) comes closest, but is of course not cross-platform.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking.
Yes, for now, at least for cross-platform development.
I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
Given that most of the cross-platform toolkits are developed by quite small volunteer teams they progress, but not usually at a revolutionary speed.
Like most people, you want all the good stuff from a toolkit: powerful, simple, Ruby-ish, cross-platform, native, stable, with great tools and better documentation. In the same way, many hope to meet that special someone with an enchanting laugh, hot body, high IQ, beautiful eyes, fat salary, and a tireless appetite for partying. Though in real life it rarely comes in one package, one can still find something where it clicks and works ...
I'd think over what you want to do with GUI programming in Ruby: do you want to make a profitable application, or create and share an open-source tool, or scratch an itch and have some fun? And consider what you think you *most* need - eg, do you need to get your head round general principles of GUI development, like "event-driven programming" or "model-view separation", or use a RAD tool, or have the "best" cross-platform appearance and behaviour.
Perhaps, using the survey and what else you know, choose two or three toolkits that seem best fitted to your needs, then try to create the same simple application using each of those. Then decide which you enjoyed using the most (this is really important), and which had the result most pleasing to you.
If you're more than casually interested in GUI, you're doing well to invest a little time: the APIs are often large and so a GUI toolkit can be long-term relationship. I've been doing Wx since 2004 and I still get nice surprises (and a very occasional nasty one).
I have tried GTK recently .. and I was disappointed.
The wrapper for the library is pretty good AFAICT but it's still a C
widget library.
Many widgets are using an Adjustment for their data source (progress
bars, scroll bars, those range widgets, spinbuttons ..)
The Adjustment is sort of C range, and accepts only Floats as the
values. While it might be good enough for widgets with hidden values
and % progress bars it is not usable for widgets where you want to
show a value other than a simple number.
So to get date spinbutton, letter spinbutton, time range, etc. you
need to roll your own Range and your own widgets.
Actually the range widget seems to have some way of formatting the
text so you might get away with it for ranges that can be represented
as a float range and converted for display.
I guess this is unavoidable with C widgetry. Either the wrapper
implements flexible widgets that are incompatible with other languages
using the library or it uses the standard ones with limited C-friendly
functionality.
The other problem is with the GUI builder - Glade. While you can put
most (all?) simple widgets in place you can only create an outline for
a Treeview (this is how "list" and "table" is spelled in GTK). To put
together a working Treeview you have to do most of the work in your
code, the GUI builder cannot do that.
Still the GTK bindings are fine if you want something that works
reasonably in X and integrates well with the system. There is just
some mismatch between the language in which GTK is written and Ruby
unfortunately.
Thanks
Michal
···
2009/2/13 Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com>:
Hello all you happy GUIsher!
Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:
Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:
Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
Ruby.
Thank you all
Although Shoes isn't drag and drop it is very easy to create simple , and not so simple, gui apps and
it is rather well documented on-line and via its integral manual, you don't have to worry about widget creation - you just use them, look at the examples to see what i mean
Although still work in progress it is fantastically cross platform and has a good supportive mailing list
I want something simple or at least well documented.
The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately
documented. The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete
shite. The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they
wanted. This is all they would have to do:
REXML#xpath
and then provide the means for users to post comments and within a year
the whole damn language would be completely documented by the users
themselves. See the php docs for the best docs of any language I've
encountered. Unfortunately, Ruby just shoots itself in the foot as far
as the docs go. It doesn't matter how great a language is advertised to
be--if the docs suck, the language sucks.
I've Shoes to build a couple applications lately. Some of the documentation is pretty good but there's holes in it. It requires a little experimentation to get the hang of it.
As a note, I was someone that really hated working with GUI code but Shoes changed my mind on that :). _why has me sold.
-Zac
···
On Feb 13, 2009, at 3:24 PM, Ruby Student wrote:
Hello all you happy GUIsher!
Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:
Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.
I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
Ruby.
I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides.
If you learned the "Shoes" platform, by Doctor Why, you would understand how Ruby makes coding easier than drag-and-drop to draw the widgets!
Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production apps in Monkeybars.
I'm too lazy to search this up: Where's the best MonkeyBars screenshots?
Where can I find a list of dependencies for it? I seem to recall reading
that it depended on some other Ruby libraries, but haven't been able to
find a comprehensive list.
···
On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 08:14:43AM +0900, jonty wrote:
Although Shoes isn't drag and drop it is very easy to create simple ,
and not so simple, gui apps and
it is rather well documented on-line and via its integral manual, you
don't have to worry about widget creation - you just use them, look at
the examples to see what i mean
Although still work in progress it is fantastically cross platform and
has a good supportive mailing list
I want something simple or at least well documented.
The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately documented. The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete shite. The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they wanted. This is all they would have to do:
REXML#xpath
and then provide the means for users to post comments and within a year the whole damn language would be completely documented by the users themselves. See the php docs for the best docs of any language I've encountered. Unfortunately, Ruby just shoots itself in the foot as far as the docs go. It doesn't matter how great a language is advertised to be--if the docs suck, the language sucks.
Umm. Having a bad day, are we? Well I DO love good documentation, so I'm with you on that, but there's another point of view I want to suggest: Documentation simply records (hopefully in a well-organized way) what someone knows or thinks YOU'll want to to know. That same information is very accessible in a supportive community.
I'm a rank amateur in Ruby, with very limited time. I find it generally quite enough to have the available documentation plus the community knowledge in this discussion list. It's certainly more current than any written documentation could be.
Not a perfect solution, but a pretty good one!
Tom
···
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< tc@tomcloyd.com >> (email)
<< TomCloyd.com >> (website) << sleightmind.wordpress.com >> (mental health weblog)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They are pretty accepting of documentation patches. I know because I've submitted several. Have you?
With the energy used in this rant you could have documented a standard library instead. I think that might help the community more.
James Edward Gray II
···
On Feb 13, 2009, at 10:54 PM, 7stud -- wrote:
The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately
documented. The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete
shite. The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they
wanted.
I want something simple or at least well documented.
See the php docs for the best docs of any language I've encountered. Unfortunately, Ruby just shoots itself in the foot as far as the docs go. It doesn't matter how great a language is advertised to be--if the docs suck, the language sucks.
I would turn that on its head. PHP has decent docs, I'll grant, but rdoc isn't completely bad. And when something isn't documented, in Ruby, the source is readable enough that I can usually find out what's going on -- in PHP, it might not be so easy.
Docs are nice, especially for newbies, but if the language sucks, the language sucks, and no amount of documentation will save it. On the other hand, if the language rocks, docs are a nice bonus, but a lot of it should be self-documenting anyway.
Blowmage has a proof-of-concept/prank app I wrote for him at Mountainwest, but his blog appears to have died. I'll see if I can get a screen shot of it sometime.
Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production apps in Monkeybars.
I'm too lazy to search this up: Where's the best MonkeyBars screenshots?
Thanks to everyone for their comments and recommendations.I greatly
appreciate all suggestions and comments.
···
On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 11:34 AM, David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> wrote:
7stud -- wrote:
Ruby Student wrote:
I want something simple or at least well documented.
See the php docs for the best docs of any language I've encountered.
Unfortunately, Ruby just shoots itself in the foot as far as the docs go.
It doesn't matter how great a language is advertised to be--if the docs
suck, the language sucks.
I would turn that on its head. PHP has decent docs, I'll grant, but rdoc
isn't completely bad. And when something isn't documented, in Ruby, the
source is readable enough that I can usually find out what's going on -- in
PHP, it might not be so easy.
Docs are nice, especially for newbies, but if the language sucks, the
language sucks, and no amount of documentation will save it. On the other
hand, if the language rocks, docs are a nice bonus, but a lot of it should
be self-documenting anyway.
The point he is trying to make is that at the very place where the PHP
docs are published on the web users can post comments - which are
sometimes offtopic or misleading but often they are covering gaps in
the docs.
I think that if there is one thing PHP did right this would be it.
Still even with those docs, as somebody pointed out, PHP is a bad
language for me too so I avoid it as much as I can.
Thanks
Michal
···
2009/2/14 James Gray <james@grayproductions.net>:
On Feb 13, 2009, at 10:54 PM, 7stud -- wrote:
The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately
documented. The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete
shite. The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they
wanted.
They are pretty accepting of documentation patches. I know because I've
submitted several. Have you?
I'm not sure why, but at least 50% of the 7stud posts I've read on this
list seem to be the sort of thing you'd expect from someone whose next
statement will be:
. . . and I'm never using this language again!
I haven't figured out his/her motivations yet.
···
On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 05:23:59PM +0900, Tom Cloyd wrote:
7stud -- wrote:
>
>The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately
>documented. The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete
>shite. The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they
>wanted. This is all they would have to do:
>
Umm. Having a bad day, are we?
--
Chad Perrin [ content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth H. L. Mencken: "In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always
something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a
Republican."
I would turn that on its head. PHP has decent docs, I'll grant, but rdoc
isn't completely bad. And when something isn't documented, in Ruby, the
source is readable enough that I can usually find out what's going on --
in PHP, it might not be so easy.
I have to agree with that.
Docs are nice, especially for newbies, but if the language sucks, the
language sucks, and no amount of documentation will save it. On the
other hand, if the language rocks, docs are a nice bonus, but a lot of
it should be self-documenting anyway.
While I disagree with a lot of what 7stud says, I do believe that good
documentation is rather more important than you make it sound.
Sometimes, I don't want to *have* to read the source in order to use the
library -- or, in some cases, the application. That's especially true
when newbies come along, but also important at times for those who aren't
so new to the language.
Self-documenting code is great for cutting down on the necessary amount
of in-code comments. It should be viewed as a supplement to -- and not a
replacement for -- out-of-code documentation, though.
···
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 01:34:42AM +0900, David Masover wrote:
--
Chad Perrin [ content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Sean Reifschneider: "If java had real garbage-collection, it would
delete most programs before it executed them."