Rich User-interface

ruby-talk
1

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

2

The only stable solution right now is FXRuby. http://www.fxruby.org/

Having said that, FXRuby wraps the FOX GUI library, which does -not- give you native Windows widgets. In particular, you will be disappointed with the Menu interface.

Having said all that, you can use wxRuby. http://rubyforge.org/projects/wxruby/

The wxRuby provides a wrapper around the wxWindows library, which wraps an OS's native widgets. Version two is still pre-beta, though. However, it's getting very close to Beta.

Roy

Erland wrote:

···

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

3

Get yourself "The Ruby Way" book by Hal Fulton. He covers UI options rather well.

You might want to re-evaluate your decision of the language for windows UI. The best user experience in smalltalk like language (or ruby like language, if you want) will be on Dolphin Smalltalk, if you want to run on Win32.

···

On Sep 21, 2005, at 10:21 PM, Erland wrote:

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

4

Erland wrote:

I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.

It might sound odd, but I would go with GTK2 -- there is a theme that will make it look and feel natively plus the Ruby bindings rule. I think you can also generate the user interface from a visual designer via Glade.

The downside is that you will have to include the GTK2 run time with your application.

Oh, and GTK2 will require an X Server on Mac OS X to run.

wxRuby doesn't seem to be nice to use (I had to do a few nasty hacks to get it to do what I want), but also is native.

I've also heard that Tk can be made native, but haven't had success with that yet -- the bindings for Tk are maintained by matz himself AFAIK and should be nice to use. No designer, though, I think.

Recently there has also been talks about Qt (they went non-commercial on Windows just recently), but I have no idea in what state the Ruby bindings for it are in...

There's other options as well, but if I remember correctly they all aren't very native. (And having to go through custom save dialogs, drop downs and all that isn't very nice -- especially when they tend to look ugly.)

Make sure to post if you find any other options or information -- this is a topic that has caused me pain before and I would like to have better solutions...

5

Two other options:

-- Apollo - Delphi Ruby interface
-- 404 Page Not Found. - GMOインターネット

vRuby looks pretty cool for native Windows stuff.

···

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com

Erland wrote:

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

6

Erland wrote:

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

widestudio is another alternative

7

Sergei Gnezdov wrote:

Get yourself "The Ruby Way" book by Hal Fulton. He covers UI options rather well.

You might want to re-evaluate your decision of the language for windows UI. The best user experience in smalltalk like language (or ruby like language, if you want) will be on Dolphin Smalltalk, if you want to run on Win32.

+1

I used Dolphin for in-house development of Windows GUI apps for many years and it is *outstanding*. It is relatively inexpensive and their support is top notch.

···

On Sep 21, 2005, at 10:21 PM, Erland wrote:

Hi All,
I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
-Erland

--
Daryl

"We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged."
     -- Colonel Henry Knox, 1776

8

You can also use the Ruby/.Net bridge to integrate Ruby with .NET.

···

On 9/22/05, John W. Long <ng@johnwlong.com> wrote:

Two other options:

-- Apollo - Delphi Ruby interface
-- 404 Page Not Found. - GMOインターネット

vRuby looks pretty cool for native Windows stuff.

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com

Erland wrote:
> Hi All,
> I am very new to Ruby. I have a question as im working on a Desktop
> application targetting Windows platform. How can i make
> richUser-interface with Ruby( Windows XP like look'n'feel) ?
> Any comments and help will be highly appreciated.
> -Erland
>
>
>
>

--
Brian Takita
http://freeopinion.org