[rgui-dev] GUtopIa Minutes - Aug. '02

[Tom Sawyer]

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The GUtopIa Minutes                                            Aug.'02
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The GUtopIa Minutes provide a monthly/semi-monthly highlighting of the
on-goings over here at GUtopIa, for those of you unable to participate,
but nonetheless interested in our progress.


GUopIa Developer's Mailing List 
-------------------------------
Happy to announce that the GUtopIa Developer's Mailing List has begun to
wind up. We currently have over a dozen members monitoring the list.
Some interesting topics have been discussed and have helped lay a better
"floor plan" for the project. If you have any interest in helping to
create the ultimate GUI for Ruby please join in at:
http://mail.freesoftware.fsf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutopia-dev


GUtopIa's Architecture and the MVC Design Pattern
-------------------------------------------------
It would appear that we have worked out the general design pattern of
GUtopIa's overall architecture. This began as a discussion to clearify
MVC, which then led us to distill how GUtopIa fits in with it:  Just as
GUtopIa is a meta-API, so too it forms a "meta-MVC" design pattern.
(Main Thread: Jumping Right In)


Automagical Object Bindings
---------------------------
There was some discussion on the automagical bindings system. transami
churned out a modified system which in effect monitored the state of any
object for changes. This overcame some shortcomings associated with only
being able to bind to an object's methods, but Massimiliano felt that
bindings are rightfully limited to an object's exposed methods.
Additonally this new binding system had a few other technical
shortcomings. Taking Massimiliano's advice, transami found a compromise
and created  a much improved automagical binding system which consits of
two mixin modules. One for method bindings (Eventable) and another for
variable bindings (Changable). The GUI programmer can then decide which
is appropriate for their needs. [Main Thread: Jumping Right In]


ParaGUI API Bindings
--------------------
Some very exciting news has recently come to light. Leon Torres has
begun work on a ParaGUI wrapper for Ruby! ParaGUI is one of GUtopIa's
primary target backends, but was considered to be a long term goal. Leon
has made it a real possibility much sooner than expected. And thanks to
his hard work and use of SWIG he already has some working samples. Good
work Leon! [Main Thread: ParaGUI Bindings]


Final Notes: Related Questions to the Ruby Community at Large
-------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Calco: How's wxRuby coming along? Are you finding the time to work
on it? A lot of Ruby folk want this binding regardless of GUTopIa. Is
anyone else out there interested in working on this with Bob? See
develper site: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxruby/.

Rich Kilmer: Where are you? Are you doing any work on Rouge? Well, if
you are I hope it rocks! We'd all glady see the day Ruby had the super
GUI API, GUtopIa or no.

Everyone: The GUtopIa project is going well at this stage. But we could
still use more regular input. If you have even a minor interest in this
project and as little as an hour a week to spare, your input would be of
great value. Thanks!

FOR MORE INFO ON GUTOPIA GOTO http://www.rubygui.org

***
over and out, regards,
transami