[rgui-dev] [Fwd: RE: wxRuby] - Giving GUTOPIA backend a 2nd thought

[Laurent Julliard]

Tom Sawyer wrote:
> thought i'd forward this. Bob has offered to put some effort into one of
> the backends too. so things are shaping up nicely in this regard.
>
> hmm...now if i can just find a Mac guy.


Tom,

After all these discussions around which backend should GUTOPIA go for I 
think that you should really see GUTOPIA as a high level thing offering 
innovative ways to design GUI applications using the Ruby language.

Now speaking of the low level thing, it is clear that 
developping/maintaining backends is very time consuming and time is the 
scarcest resources around especially for off-hours programmers like us. 
So it occured to me that if sbdy is offering help to speed up wxRuby 
development then it may become the most obvious backend to start with. 
The reason I'm saying this is because

a) wxWindows has the same philosophy as SWT: building a common GUI 
toolkit API on top of many native GUI Toolkit though keeping the native 
look and feel.

b) wxWindows supports Win32, Mac OS 9/X, Linux, Unix,... you name it

So at some point you have to make a decision between what you'd love to 
do (make a full equivalent of SWT under Ruby) and what you and others 
can realistically do in your spare time. And the answer to the 2nd 
question may well be to get people interested in wxRuby and you'll get 
the multiplatform aspect for free while focusing on the high level stuff 
and programming paradigm in GUTOPIA

Laurent
--
Laurent JULLIARD - Xerox R&T/SSTC/XPA - Open Source team
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