The functionality of a spreadsheet had been around
for years embedded in
various business applications that were tedious and
unexciting to their
users.
And then came VisiCalc and Excel, which were not at
all tedious and unexciting!
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.
Benjamin Peterson
x
The functionality of a spreadsheet had been around
for years embedded in
various business applications that were tedious and
unexciting to their
users.
And then came VisiCalc and Excel, which were not at
all tedious and unexciting!
Actually, there is a class of users out there that find the spreadsheet
metaphor so exciting and empowering that they think they can do anything with
it. (I am not one of them. I just stand in awe of their ability to saw with
a hammer.)
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.
Of course.
On Thursday 25 July 2002 08:41 am, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
Benjamin Peterson
x
Had a look at ncurses recently? 
Massimiliano
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 10:41:19PM +0900, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.
Pity we don’t have tix for tk for ruby. [yeah, with tix,
some customization and a few custom tk/tix compound
widgets (that’s after all what a toolkit a la tk is for:
create the widgets you need, lazy bums :), you could do
another excel - the spreadsheet ITSELF is a native tix widget
btw]
-Martin
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 10:52:10PM +0900, Albert Wagner wrote:
On Thursday 25 July 2002 08:41 am, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
[…][…]
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.Of course.
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.Had a look at ncurses recently?
I see the smiley. But, actually, ncurses is not a bad model to use for GUI
design. Any GUI should really give at least as much flexibility in design as
ncurses.
On Thursday 25 July 2002 09:02 am, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 10:41:19PM +0900, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
Massimiliano
no, never used it. nice design? would it worth binding too in order to
have console capability?
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:02, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
Had a look at ncurses recently?
–
~transami
[…]
[…]
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.Of course.
Pity we don’t have tix for tk for ruby. [yeah, with tix,
some customization and a few custom tk/tix compound
widgets (that’s after all what a toolkit a la tk is for:
create the widgets you need, lazy bums :), you could do
another excel - the spreadsheet ITSELF is a native tix widget
btw]
Yeah, I know. The lack of good bindings for tix drove me to build a table
editor with TkText in Ruby. TkText is a constant source of amazement to me.
I note that GTK+2 ripped off TkText concepts to build their new text editor
widget.
On Thursday 25 July 2002 09:00 am, Martin Weber wrote:
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 10:52:10PM +0900, Albert Wagner wrote:
On Thursday 25 July 2002 08:41 am, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
-Martin
you mean on windows? i’ve got it on linux works fine using ruby’s tkext
library.
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:00, Martin Weber wrote:
Pity we don’t have tix for tk for ruby. [yeah, with tix,
some customization and a few custom tk/tix compound
widgets (that’s after all what a toolkit a la tk is for:
create the widgets you need, lazy bums :), you could do
another excel - the spreadsheet ITSELF is a native tix widget
btw]
–
~transami
I’ll admit my bias toward ncurses and text interfaces, and it’s funny
this should come up while speaking of spreadsheets.
While I wouldn’t try to convince anybody to agree, and even understand
that the idea can sound funny to many (whence the smiley), I’ve
stubbornly refused to use a spreadsheet until I’ve found a good one
that runs in console (teapot), and then designed my own spreadsheet to
run from the command line as well (ecalc).
To me, when you don’t need graphics (e.g. a vectorial drawing or an
image processing application), the whole matter shifts to feedback
only. I don’t care about the looks of a Gtk button versus a ncurses
`button’, but I do very much care that it will take me a tenth of the
time to hit a key to select it on a terminal than to move the mouse
and click in a GUI, and that it will take the program a tenth of the
time to get back to me with the updated view.
It’s the computer’s task to be fast. When you’re faster than it and
have to wait for something as simple as showing a piece of data, my
opinion is that something wrong is going on.
Nobody take this as criticism please. It’s just dinosaur talk, I’m a
dinosaur and know it well.
Massimiliano
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 11:18:10PM +0900, Albert Wagner wrote:
Seriously, though, if there were a Ruby GUI tool that
you could use to create another Excel – that would
be exciting.
Had a look at ncurses recently?
I see the smiley. But, actually, ncurses is not a bad model to use for GUI
design. Any GUI should really give at least as much flexibility in design as
ncurses.
Tom Sawyer:
Had a look at ncurses recently?
no, never used it. nice design? would it worth binding too in order to
have console capability?
there’s a development kit for curses:
http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/
it combines curses capabilities to widgets.
clemens
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:02, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
I think re-designing the bindings for Tk, including Tix, for ruby, would be
a worthwile project. If that doesn’t happen until I have some more time (in,
like, a month), guess I’ll look at that myself, and see if I can give back
something to the community I’ve leeched so far for this great language and
its tools & utilities
-Martin
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 11:14:22PM +0900, Albert Wagner wrote:
[…]
Yeah, I know. The lack of good bindings for tix drove me to build a table
editor with TkText in Ruby. TkText is a constant source of amazement to me.
I note that GTK+2 ripped off TkText concepts to build their new text editor
widget.
No, I mean Tix, which is a set of enhanced widgets and some
programming tools for tcl/tk, introducing easy compound widgets
e.g., and some totally “new” ones (new to Tk, that is - written
on the C level). Check http://tix.sourceforge.net
-Martin
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 11:30:34PM +0900, Tom Sawyer wrote:
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:00, Martin Weber wrote:
Pity we don’t have tix for tk for ruby. [yeah, with tix,
some customization and a few custom tk/tix compound
widgets (that’s after all what a toolkit a la tk is for:
create the widgets you need, lazy bums :), you could do
another excel - the spreadsheet ITSELF is a native tix widget
btw]you mean on windows? i’ve got it on linux works fine using ruby’s tkext
library.
Isn’t there one called TUI written in Ruby?
better (fewer bugs, etc):
http://invisible-island.net/cdk/
clemens fischer ino-waiting@gmx.net wrote:
Tom Sawyer:
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:02, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
Had a look at ncurses recently?
no, never used it. nice design? would it worth binding too in order to
have console capability?
there’s a development kit for curses:
–
Thomas E. Dickey dickey@radix.net dickey@herndon4.his.com
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
I’ve been out of town, so I just saw this…
comments below!
I’ll admit my bias toward ncurses and text interfaces, and it’s funny
this should come up while speaking of spreadsheets.While I wouldn’t try to convince anybody to agree, and even understand
that the idea can sound funny to many (whence the smiley), I’ve
stubbornly refused to use a spreadsheet until I’ve found a good one
that runs in console (teapot), and then designed my own spreadsheet to
run from the command line as well (ecalc).To me, when you don’t need graphics (e.g. a vectorial drawing or an
image processing application), the whole matter shifts to feedback
only. I don’t care about the looks of a Gtk button versus a ncurses
`button’, but I do very much care that it will take me a tenth of the
time to hit a key to select it on a terminal than to move the mouse
and click in a GUI, and that it will take the program a tenth of the
time to get back to me with the updated view.It’s the computer’s task to be fast. When you’re faster than it and
have to wait for something as simple as showing a piece of data, my
opinion is that something wrong is going on.Nobody take this as criticism please. It’s just dinosaur talk, I’m a
dinosaur and know it well.
I’m a dinosaur, too, and I totally agree with you.
Ive experienced many hours of frustration in the
past wishing that I had interface choices for certain
apps.
I don’t run an X server, nor do I really want to. And I
use character-based telnet a lot. And I wish that I had
curses-like interfaces for things so that I could run
them over a telnet connection.
I’ve been experimenting with the “pluggable” UI concept.
Since I don’t understand MVC that much, I’m probably
reinventing the wheel (or rediscovering fire). But it’s
an interesting concept to me.
Anyone who wants to discuss it, speak up.
Cheers,
Hal
----- Original Message -----
From: “Massimiliano Mirra” list@NOSPAMchromatic-harp.com.web-hosting.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2002 11:36 AM
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: GUI’s and the Rouge, Part III (yes, finally) 1/2
Martin Weber wrote:
I think re-designing the bindings for Tk, including Tix, for ruby, would be
a worthwile project. If that doesn’t happen until I have some more time (in,
like, a month), guess I’ll look at that myself, and see if I can give back
something to the community I’ve leeched so far for this great language and
its tools & utilities-Martin
If you want someone to do some testing, user documentation and code
whinging then put me down.
I have Windows and Linux and should have a Mac OSX box by the end of August.
I don’t go out a lot
yea, that’s what i’m talking about. see post: 44364
at least i think were talking about the same thing.
~transami
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:34, Martin Weber wrote:
On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 11:30:34PM +0900, Tom Sawyer wrote:
On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:00, Martin Weber wrote:
Pity we don’t have tix for tk for ruby. [yeah, with tix,
some customization and a few custom tk/tix compound
widgets (that’s after all what a toolkit a la tk is for:
create the widgets you need, lazy bums :), you could do
another excel - the spreadsheet ITSELF is a native tix widget
btw]you mean on windows? i’ve got it on linux works fine using ruby’s tkext
library.No, I mean Tix, which is a set of enhanced widgets and some
programming tools for tcl/tk, introducing easy compound widgets
e.g., and some totally “new” ones (new to Tk, that is - written
on the C level). Check http://tix.sourceforge.net-Martin
–
~transami
Hi,
From: Martin Weber Ephaeton@gmx.net
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: GUI’s and the Rouge, Part III (yes, finally) 1/2
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2002 23:34:32 +0900
Message-ID: 20020725143426.GM394@phaeton.entropie.net
you mean on windows? i’ve got it on linux works fine using ruby’s tkext
library.
No, I mean Tix, which is a set of enhanced widgets and some
programming tools for tcl/tk, introducing easy compound widgets
‘tcltk-ext’ library (see RAA) generates semi-automatically
a Ruby class library file based on Tcl’s error messages.
It includes ‘Tix.rb’ as a sample for Tix extension.
Because of automatic testing, it does not support all of the Tix functions.
For example, current testing steps of ‘tcltk-ext’ library cannot find
sub-widgets which are generated under some mega-widgets.
Therefore, on the generated library, we cannot treat such sub-widgets as
Ruby/Tk’s wiget objects.
If you write new Tix.rb library, ‘tcltk-ext’ library may help you, I think.
–
Hidetoshi NAGAI (nagai@ai.kyutech.ac.jp)
The link to the code is not functional…
From: Thomas Dickey [mailto:dickey@saltmine.radix.net]
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2002 6:51 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: curses dev kit, was Re: [OT] Re: GUI’s and the RougeTom Sawyer:
Had a look at ncurses recently?
no, never used it. nice design? would it worth binding too in order
to
-----Original Message-----
clemens fischer ino-waiting@gmx.net wrote:On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 08:02, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:
have console capability?there’s a development kit for curses:
better (fewer bugs, etc):
CDK – Curses Development Kit (a library of widgets)
–
Thomas E. Dickey dickey@radix.net dickey@herndon4.his.com
http://dickey.his.com
ftp://dickey.his.com
As a point of interest, here’s something else from the Debian
database:
Package: libctk3
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 119
Maintainer: Pete Lypkie (Debian) plypkie@debian.org
Architecture: i386
Source: libctk
Version: 3.0.24
Depends: libarr0, libc6 (>= 2.2.3-1), libglib1.2 (>= 1.2.0), libgpmg1 (>= 1.14-16)
Filename: pool/main/libc/libctk/libctk3_3.0.24_i386.deb
Size: 51928
MD5sum: 24d6cf97952b63301943bac345a55189
Description: Console Tool Kit
Console Tool Kit is a toolkit for writing textbased GUIs. The syntax is
almost the same as GTK+. It provides mouse support on the console through
gpm.
This package contains the runtime files needed by programs linked to ctk.
Massimiliano
On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 07:51:25PM +0900, Thomas Dickey wrote:
there’s a development kit for curses:
http://www.vexus.ca/products/CDK/
better (fewer bugs, etc):
CDK – Curses Development Kit (a library of widgets)