Greetings from an old member ( was: RE: [FR-devel] Greetings from a new member)

[Bob Calco]

Welcome aboard, Kevin. :)

Everybody:

This email marks my official return to Ruby/FreeRIDE productivity mode. I am
nearing completion of the RubyParser.dll (I hesitate to make any
predictions, but let's just say "soon"), and I expect to start diving again
earnestly into wxRuby, specifically to implement the GUI elements needed by
FreeRIDE.

Curt - could you send me what you've got working so far? I just upgraded my
wxWindows to 2.3.4, which is said to be the last one before 2.4.0, and it
fixes a lot of little bugs in prior development versions. Mostly memory
leaks and list box crashes on XP.

Having played with wxWindows for a day or two all by itself in C++, I am
moving away from the notion of SWIGing the whole wxWindows API. I suggest
instead we create our own library, statically linked to wxWindows, in which
we subclass those elements we want (adding components incrementally with
each release) in such a way as simplifies interfacing to Ruby (and there are
specific strategies built into the wxWindows object model to facilitate
this).

The advantage of having our library statically link to wxWindows is we need
not distribute the whole honking 2.7 meg wxWindows DLL in addition to any
DLL we create. Nor will our distribution depend on a specific version of
wxWindows being installed (or not installed) on the target machine.

We may find it necessary to SWIG our derived library, but we may not. I say
first we come up with a basic "version 1" object model of components we want
to implement, with FreeRIDE's needs primarily in mind. For instance, we all
like that Scintilla editor, and it just so happens that there is a
contributor project, not compiled as part of the wxWindows library proper
but included in the source download, that wraps the scintilla editor. We'll
need to make sure our library includes that and whatever else it needs from
wxWindows to compile in version 1.0. There is also, associated with that,
the original source code to scintilla, including the LexRuby.cxx code. I
want to modify that dramatically and use my RubyParser LIB to enhance
scintilla's ability to syntax highlight Ruby code - and make that part of
our version 1 gui library.

To summarize, I think just SWIGing wxWindows is insufficient to creating the
optimal version 1 Ruby GUI library, as there are other libraries, add-ons,
and otherwise components that also need to be part of the mix.

In the end I want to deliver a single shared library that has everything we
need, but only what we need, and a separate one that does the actual
interfacing to Ruby. The Ruby wrapper classes on top of this library should
of course be higher-level and aimed at making GUI plug-ins easy to write.

In general, I think the plug-in approach that FreeRIDE exemplifies is the
"right way" to build any complex application in Ruby, and the GUI components
should be build with this framework in mind. Having gone so far with the FOX
toolkit, I think we have a good idea what that API should (and should not)
look like. So let's start documenting what we want that high level Ruby API
to be, and work backwards.

That's all. From here on I expect to be able to dedicate at least 2 hours
every workday evening, and another 3-5 each weekend day, to coding for Ruby.
My first priority is finishing the parser, but my next goal is finally
helping to get wxRuby off the ground.

Curt - we should have a chat again soon. Let me know what day/time works for
you. Kevin, and everybody else that wants to work on wxRuby, send me an
email and I'll let you know what we need to do to get you set up on the
wxRuby project. :)

Sincerely,

Bob "Lazarus" Calco

%% -----Original Message-----
%% From: address@hidden
%% [mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of Kevin Smith
%% Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2002 10:08 AM
%% To: address@hidden
%% Subject: [FR-devel] Greetings from a new member
%%
%%
%% Hello all. My name is Kevin Smith, and I've worked with Ruby on and off
%% for the last three years or so. Like someone else recently, I jumped
%% straight from C++ to Ruby, and those two languages remain my favorites.
%%
%% My interest here is less with freeride itself, and more with wxruby. I
%% am still looking for that elusive "ideal" gui toolkit for Ruby. It has
%% to be free (as in speech), cross-platform, have an elegant API, be
%% attractive on-screen, and have a reasonable widget collection.
%%
%% For me, the main drawback of FLTK and FOX is that they do not use native
%% widgets, which has the unfortunate effect of making them inaccessible to
%% blind and low-vision users. I work for a non-profit that builds software
%% for blind folks, which has made me aware of this situation.
%%
%% Currently, GTK shares this problem as well. There is quite a bit of
%% accessibility work underway to try to solve it, but that work is
%% progressing very slowly. None of the other powerful toolkits seem to be
%% in a position to solve this problem without major effort.
%%
%% I helped develop Ruby/FLTK, and wrote the GTK section of Hal Fulton's
%% Ruby book. I have written a couple GTK Ruby apps, and ported one to
%% FLTK. I also worked pretty intensely with wxWindows under C++ for a few
%% months, back in 1998. And I've been using Java Swing for over a year.
%%
%% Anyway, since I couldn't find an active wxruby forum, and because I am
%% also interested in freeride itself, I thought I should join this list.
%%
%% Kevin
%%
%%
%%
%%
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%% Freeride-devel mailing list
%% address@hidden
%% http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/freeride-devel
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