Re: [rgui-dev] ParaGUI or ClanLib binding

[Leon Torres]

On 20 Aug 2002, Tom Sawyer wrote:

> have you been able to get any ruby samples to come up yet? can't wait!
> :-)

Yes! :) The basic widgets work, and so do callbacks. At the moment, I'm
working on the more trickier parts. Me and Danny (RUDL guy) are working
on getting ParaGUI to share its data, most notably the SDL_Surface. The
idea is to make the Ruby SDL API pluggable, so one can use any odd Ruby
SDL binding with Paragui. The whole point is to let gutopia/paragui to
handle the widgety stuff and to let RUDL/other handle the non-widgety
stuff. Alternatively, we might wish to integrate something like RUDL into
gutopia as a specialized controller. Hmm.. this will have to be fleshed
out real soon. Any ideas?

I'm also trying to get this binding to work on Windows, a platform I have
zero experience writing code for. Danny uses Windows, and I don't think
we'll have many fans until it is supported. :p

Untill these tasks are finished and the contributions merged with the
main paragui project, all I can offer is a patch to paragui 1.0.2
for people to play with. The patch, along with instructions to build
paragui/ruby on any system with GNU stuff can be found here:

  http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~leon/ruby/gutopia/paragui.html

> lets see how the Meta-API starts to pan out before deciding on how to
> proceed with the Gaming SDK side.

Well, the reason I suggested it should be separate is because some other
projects might also have dreams of evolving into a game SDK. I know RUDL
would like to turn itself into something like Pygame. There might be
others. It would be nice to somehow coordinate all this latent interest
to create a Ruby gaming SDK. My hunch says that this effort should be its
own project. On the other hand, nothing can happen until gutopia/gl
happens. And, if RUDL gets integrated into gutopia, then it makes sense to
establish the SDK alongside gutopia. Either way, I hope we can catalyze
the simmering brew of interest so that something happens. :)

Oh, btw, Paragui has its own XML layout and theme schema a la glade. I'm
not sure how that will integrate with any gutopial XML plans. I haven't
examined the schema too deeply, but it isn't glade. Mabye use XSLT?
There's a sample in paragui's test/ directory and also data/default.theme.

> thanks again,
> tom

No problemo, let's make this happen!
- Leon