[rgui-dev] Camelot

[Tom Sawyer]

and so it unfolds...

Fellow GUtopIans,

while i have not heard each of your final thoughts on the matter, i'm am
now quite certain what we must do.

the key concept here is TIME. we all want this thing ASAP. but i won't
allow that to keep us from making GUtopIa the best that it can be. we
will do what we have to do. period.

having said that, you would be mistaken to think that using something
like wxWindows is going to be the great time saver. why? because it
doesn't exist. but even so, more importantly it makes us dependent on
another layer of code. indeed, the way out of this has become
increasingly clear to me: reduce the code requirements as much as
possible. and that can only mean one thing.

this is what we shall do:

we will use Ruby/DL to bind straight to the required .dll/.so libraries
to build our respective GUtopIa Interfaces. nothing in between, no extra
layers. perhaps a little akward having to embue our Ruby with some
C-esque script, but it will be clean, direct, fast, and, best of all, we
can start on it NOW.

hence, we will delegate like so:

  Windows   : Bob and Curt
  Linux GTk : Tom
  MacOS X   : ? (have to find someone. anyone?)
  ParaGUI   : Leon
  Wise      : Kero (have to work out multi-platform issue, we'll talk)

Laurent, do you want to help me with GTK or do GTK2? or what?

and Massimiliano, i know you're busy with rpkg. so we'll keep it light,
can you help me with a few odds and ends? talk you about it later.

of course, we can change these delegations around if need be. just let
me know.

if we can find any others to help us then we should try to double team
each one of the above subprojects as needed.

so there's the low-down. are we cool? unless someone makes a substantial
objection and shows that this piper just won't fly, then this is our
unwaivering pursuit.

BUT before we can do any of this! we have to get back to API TIME. so
right NOW it is time to rapidly architect GUtopIa's Meta-API. to do this
i want you all to go here:

  http://www.rubygui.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GUtopIa_Common_Meta-API

read over this, look at the initial components i've laid out (and
especially look at Menu) then comment/suggest. after you've read over
that go here:

  http://www.rubygui.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GUtopIa_Meta-Components

and just throw everything you can think of at it. just bombard it with
your mind. go nuts. we'll take what we end up with and clean it up and
we'll then have our Meta-API. then we can start the above backend game
plan.

as always feel free to object/discuss/encourage/swoon ;-), etc.

but i must tell you, this feels right, like pulling sword from stone, it
calls to the GOLDEN.

are you ready?

~transami