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comp.lang.ruby

Good GUI documentation

Ruby Student

2/13/2009 8:25:00 PM

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Hello all you happy GUIsher!

Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
supported by Ruby?
I looked at:

Fox
TK
QTK
Jruby with netbeans
shoes
wxruby
wide studio
rubyonsteel
monkeybars

I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
about the creation of the widgets.
Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
native look and feel.

I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
question is, what's next?
At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
Ruby.

Thank you all
--
Ruby Student
19 Answers

Logan Barnett

2/13/2009 9:06:00 PM

0


On Feb 13, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Ruby Student wrote:

> Hello all you happy GUIsher!
>
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?
> I looked at:
>
> Fox
> TK
> QTK
> Jruby with netbeans
> shoes
> wxruby
> wide studio
> rubyonsteel
> monkeybars
>
> I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag
> and
> drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not
> necessarily
> about the creation of the widgets.
> Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
> thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI
> software (if it
> is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations
> and
> documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform
> with
> native look and feel.
>
> I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
> question is, what's next?
> At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI
> for
> Ruby.
>
> Thank you all
> --
> Ruby Student

We've done a lot to leave some good RDoc in place for Monkeybars, but
we do have very little in discussing how to bring it together, what do
real apps look like, etc. Recently we moved to Kenai and opened up a
wiki (http://kenai.com/projects/monkeybars/...). Our users have
been filling it with loads of documentation, which I think really
helps fill our documentation gap we have.

We're also really active on the mailing list and IRC.

Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in
mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production
apps in Monkeybars.

We don't have any Monkeybars books (yet), but we'd love to help you
get up to speed as quick as we can.

Mark Roseman

2/13/2009 9:32:00 PM

0

Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?

Though not a book, there is an extensive tutorial about using Tk with
Ruby that you can find at http://www....

Mark

Joel VanderWerf

2/13/2009 9:37:00 PM

0

Ruby Student wrote:
> Hello all you happy GUIsher!
>
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?
> I looked at:
>
> Fox

There's a good FXRuby book that came out recently:

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/fxr...

It's lean, it's mean, what more could you want!

--
vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

Alex Fenton

2/13/2009 10:06:00 PM

0

Ruby Student wrote:
> [Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]
>
> Hello all you happy GUIsher!
>
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?

I believe the only Ruby-specific GUI books are for FxRuby (2008) and
Qt-Ruby (2005, documents previous version Qt3):

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/fxr...
http://www.pragprog.com/titles/ctrubyqt/rapid-gui-development-w...

> I want something simple or at least well documented.

Several have OK Ruby-specific API documentation (eg GNOME2, Wx, Fox),
but less of the kind of book-type material that guides you topic by
topic to understanding the toolkit's principles.

> Preferable drag and
> drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
> about the creation of the widgets.

Most of the toolkits offer one or more GUI builders to design layouts.
Typically, you visually design the layout then write your code in a
separate tool (eg an editor) and load the layout in Ruby and attach code
to handle the user interaction.

However, few offer close integration between the GUI design and the
code: XCode (for OS X/Cocoa development) comes closest, but is of course
not cross-platform.

> Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
> thinking.

Yes, for now, at least for cross-platform development.

> I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
> is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
> documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
> native look and feel.

> I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
> question is, what's next?


Given that most of the cross-platform toolkits are developed by quite
small volunteer teams they progress, but not usually at a revolutionary
speed.

Like most people, you want all the good stuff from a toolkit: powerful,
simple, Ruby-ish, cross-platform, native, stable, with great tools and
better documentation. In the same way, many hope to meet that special
someone with an enchanting laugh, hot body, high IQ, beautiful eyes, fat
salary, and a tireless appetite for partying. Though in real life it
rarely comes in one package, one can still find something where it
clicks and works ...

I'd think over what you want to do with GUI programming in Ruby: do you
want to make a profitable application, or create and share an
open-source tool, or scratch an itch and have some fun? And consider
what you think you *most* need - eg, do you need to get your head round
general principles of GUI development, like "event-driven programming"
or "model-view separation", or use a RAD tool, or have the "best"
cross-platform appearance and behaviour.

Perhaps, using the survey and what else you know, choose two or three
toolkits that seem best fitted to your needs, then try to create the
same simple application using each of those. Then decide which you
enjoyed using the most (this is really important), and which had the
result most pleasing to you.

If you're more than casually interested in GUI, you're doing well to
invest a little time: the APIs are often large and so a GUI toolkit can
be long-term relationship. I've been doing Wx since 2004 and I still get
nice surprises (and a very occasional nasty one).

hth
alex

Michal Suchanek

2/13/2009 10:20:00 PM

0

2009/2/13 Ruby Student <ruby.student@gmail.com>:
> Hello all you happy GUIsher!
>
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?
> I looked at:
>
> Fox
> TK
> QTK
> Jruby with netbeans
> shoes
> wxruby
> wide studio
> rubyonsteel
> monkeybars
>
> I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
> drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
> about the creation of the widgets.
> Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
> thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
> is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
> documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
> native look and feel.
>

I have tried GTK recently .. and I was disappointed.

The wrapper for the library is pretty good AFAICT but it's still a C
widget library.

Many widgets are using an Adjustment for their data source (progress
bars, scroll bars, those range widgets, spinbuttons ..)

The Adjustment is sort of C range, and accepts only Floats as the
values. While it might be good enough for widgets with hidden values
and % progress bars it is not usable for widgets where you want to
show a value other than a simple number.

So to get date spinbutton, letter spinbutton, time range, etc. you
need to roll your own Range and your own widgets.

Actually the range widget seems to have some way of formatting the
text so you might get away with it for ranges that can be represented
as a float range and converted for display.

I guess this is unavoidable with C widgetry. Either the wrapper
implements flexible widgets that are incompatible with other languages
using the library or it uses the standard ones with limited C-friendly
functionality.


The other problem is with the GUI builder - Glade. While you can put
most (all?) simple widgets in place you can only create an outline for
a Treeview (this is how "list" and "table" is spelled in GTK). To put
together a working Treeview you have to do most of the work in your
code, the GUI builder cannot do that.

Still the GTK bindings are fine if you want something that works
reasonably in X and integrates well with the system. There is just
some mismatch between the language in which GTK is written and Ruby
unfortunately.

Thanks

Michal

jonty

2/13/2009 11:15:00 PM

0



Ruby Student wrote:
> Hello all you happy GUIsher!
>
> Does anyone know of a good, well written book to learn one of the GUI
> supported by Ruby?
> I looked at:
>
> Fox
> TK
> QTK
> Jruby with netbeans
> shoes
> wxruby
> wide studio
> rubyonsteel
> monkeybars
>
> I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag and
> drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not necessarily
> about the creation of the widgets.
> Something close to what Visual Basic provides. I know this is wishful
> thinking. I would purchase the book or even purchase the GUI software (if it
> is reasonable). But all the tools I mentioned have their limitations and
> documentation is so so at best. I wish the tool to be cross-platform with
> native look and feel.
>
> I know about the recent GUI survey, which I think was very nice. The
> question is, what's next?
> At any rate, I will appreciate some info about a well documented GUI for
> Ruby.
>
> Thank you all
>

Although Shoes isn't drag and drop it is very easy to create simple ,
and not so simple, gui apps and
it is rather well documented on-line and via its integral manual, you
don't have to worry about widget creation - you just use them, look at
the examples to see what i mean

Although still work in progress it is fantastically cross platform and
has a good supportive mailing list

Have fun!

Phlip

2/13/2009 11:26:00 PM

0

>> I want something simple or at least well documented. Preferable drag
>> and
>> drop. I would like to worry just about the ruby code and not
>> necessarily
>> about the creation of the widgets.
>> Something close to what Visual Basic provides.

If you learned the "Shoes" platform, by Doctor Why, you would understand how
Ruby makes coding easier than drag-and-drop to draw the widgets!

Phlip

2/13/2009 11:30:00 PM

0

Logan Barnett wrote:

> Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in
> mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production
> apps in Monkeybars.

I'm too lazy to search this up: Where's the best MonkeyBars screenshots?

Logan Barnett

2/14/2009 12:12:00 AM

0


On Feb 13, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Phlip wrote:

> Logan Barnett wrote:
>
>> Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans
>> in mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my
>> production apps in Monkeybars.
>
> I'm too lazy to search this up: Where's the best MonkeyBars
> screenshots?
>


David Koontz creates a Monkeybars app using Netbeans from scratch.
http://rubyconf2008.confreaks.com/monkeybars-easy-cross-platform...

My blog has a few screenies in the posts:
http://www.logustus.com/2009/02/brushed-...
http://www.logustus.com/2009/02/icons-using...
http://www.logustus.com/2009/01/weekend-project-pasting-code-sni...

My company, Happy Camper Studios, makes its payroll with Monkeybars
apps.
This app is the 'alpha' app for Monkeybars. It inspired us to create it:
http://www.happycamperstudios.com/showcase/sat-interface/...

JotBot is a time tracking product that pops up and asks you what you
did on a regular interval:
http://www.happycamperstudios.com/showcase/jotbot/...

Twit and Twitter (I'm changing the name to Twittest) won first place
in the Java Script Bowl competition two years back.
http://www.happycamperstudios.com/showcase/twit-and-twitter/...

Blowmage has a proof-of-concept/prank app I wrote for him at
Mountainwest, but his blog appears to have died. I'll see if I can get
a screen shot of it sometime.

Netbeans itself:
http://www.netbeans.org/features/java/...
http://www.netbeans.org/images/v6/5/screenshots/java-gui-b...

I hope that helps!

James Britt

2/14/2009 4:43:00 AM

0

>
> On Feb 13, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Phlip wrote:
>
>> Logan Barnett wrote:
>>
>>> Also, Monkeybars was designed with a GUI builder such as Netbeans in
>>> mind. I don't write any code for making the layout for my production
>>> apps in Monkeybars.
>>
>> I'm too lazy to search this up: Where's the best MonkeyBars screenshots?
>>
>

Useful resources here:

http://kenai.com/projects/monkeybars/pages...

My article at IBM developerWorks (listed at the above link) is slightly
out of date (it refers to monkeybars 0.6.4, while the current version is
1.0.1), but I've passed along updated code so the example app should run
fine.


--
James Britt

www.happycamperstudios.com - Wicked Cool Coding
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff