I don't care so much about "one less thing to set up" for development as
I do about not burdening the end user. (And anyway, I'm not using
Windows.) How is FXRuby on this score?

* Any other suggestions?

Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
* Any other suggestions?

Consider FXRuby, too.

It has a nice table widget, and (IIRC) FXRuby
comes with the ruby windows installer, so there's one less thing to set
up.

(If not, you can just gem install it.)

At this point, it looks like I'll probably use Monkeybars and JRuby for
this project. But...what about wxRuby and Shoes? I understand Shoes
was very popular for a while at least, and I like wxRuby's lack of
reliance on JVMs, yet I notice no one recommended these. Are there
problems that I'm not aware of, or is that simply coincidental?

(Yes, I realize I may just have to play around with these all and find
out. I'm just trying to get off the ground as quickly as possible.)

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen at (no spam) marnen.org

Users will still have to have Java installed to use a JRuby app.

--
James Britt

www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
www.neurogami.com - Smart application development

Never mind. I just realized that these will not be feasible for the
current project because they will require a Ruby interpreter, and I
don't want to even expect that my end-users will have *that*! (I'm
targeting, among others, educational and corporate users who don't have
admin rights and wouldn't know what to do with them if they had.)
Monkeybars it is, then.

Hi folks!

I'm an experienced Rails developer, but for once this is not a Rails
question. Rather, I have a desktop app I'd like to create -- we're
talking something like a spreadsheet-type app, though not quite. Since
I've been using Ruby more than any other language for the last 2 years,
and since I love working in Ruby, I'd like to try to write the app in
Ruby to the extent possible.

Since this is meant as an end-user productivity application for
nontechnical users, and since I'd like the barriers to use of this app
to be as low as possible, I have a couple of requirements:
* Must run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, preferably with a minimum of
hassle in the build process
* Must install with a minimum of extra dependencies -- ideally I'd like
people to be able to download an executable, unzip it, and run it
immediately, without needing administrator permissions
* Should feel as much like a native app as possible -- I don't want
users to have to deal with an alien UI

I suppose I could go the RIA route, but I tend to think a native app
would be better...

So...does anyone have any suggestions for a good way to do this in Ruby?
My thought process so far has been about like this -- feel free to
correct me on anything I got wrong.

* RubyCocoa: would be my first choice if I didn't care about
cross-platform compatibility, but I don't think I can expect to run a
RubyCocoa app on anything but Mac OS and maybe GnuStep
* Ruby/Tk, Ruby/Qt: I'm under the impression that these tend to need big
library installations, especially on Windows. Is that correct?
* wxRuby: Don't know a heck of a lot about it
* Shoes? Is that still around now that Why has vanished? Is it worth
using?
* JRuby/RJB: at the moment, seems like the best choice (as much as I get
annoyed by working with Java). Is that an accurate assessment? If so,
what tends to get used for GUI libraryies? Swing/Monkeybars/Profligacy?
* Any other suggestions?

I hope I'm not being too idiotic here. I don't know nearly as much as I
should about the current state of desktop GUI app development in Ruby,
and I'd like to fix that! Thanks.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen at (no spam) marnen.org
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hi,

I recently came across limelight -
http://limelight.8thlight.com/main/sparkle.

Haven't had a chance to play with it yet but it sounds like it might be
worth consideration.