Re: [rgui-dev] ParaGUI or ClanLib binding

[Tom Sawyer]

On Tue, 2002-08-20 at 22:29, Leon Torres wrote:
> 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?

> 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. :)

so let's go ahead flesh this out a bit.

at one level all the backends do the same thing, including paragui.
(i.e. you standard widgets) so any GUtopIa program can run across the
board on any of them. but none of the other backends will be a able to
handle the gaming api aspect, only paragui with rudl will be able to do
that. so basically we'll have a RUDL extension api, i.e. addtional
components just for this.

my first thought is simply to have GUtopIa throw an error if someone
tries to run a GUtopIa program that uses these extension components via
another backend. what else can we do? we could also make the RUDL
extensions an optional add-in when Paragui/Ruby is designated as the
backend. your thought?

also, keep in mind, if Ruby-Wise doesn't come to fruition in a
reasonable time frame (according to our needs) ParaGUI will become the
default backend, so these extensions might be available by default (?)

> No problemo, let's make this happen!

indeed! honestly, i wish i could make things go faster, as i need to put
a front end on my accounting application something bad. but things are
moving along pretty well. we just need to hammer out the basic api and
the code structure, and then i can hack out the Meta-API and the GTK
backend for the basic components. along with the ParaGUI backend, we'll
have a good first edition of GUtopIa. i know a lot of people are going
to be floored when they see a working alpha release in a matter of weeks
instead of months! :-)

~tom