On Sat, Feb 24, 2001 at 01:18:44AM +0900, Jon Aseltine wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been thinking about something for some time now, and I wanted to
> get some feedback from the list. Would it be feasible/possible/wise to
> craft a desktop environment using Ruby as its backbone? I am quite
> unhappy with the state of both GNOME and KDE, and I find the idea of a
> Ruby desktop exciting. Some parts need to be fast (some window manager
> stuff, e.g.), but other things, including most application logic, could
> be in pure Ruby, I think.

Great idea. 
IIRC, Andy/Dave worked on a window manager written in Ruby. Am I right?

But KDE and Gnome both come with a GUI toolkit, KDE/QT and GTK.
Which one to choose?
QT cannot be used under Windows, due to the license.
Tk is to slow and ugly.
GTK, Fltk, FOX?

And what's about the component model ?
KDE uses its own, as far as I know, and Gnome uses Corba.
dRuby would be nice.


> Is anyone else interested in this? Given Ruby's many advantages, I think
> something useful could be crafted quickly (a year? is that quick?). I
> also think it would push Ruby to the limit in some ways, and perhaps
> make the language better.

> Any thoughts? Or am I crazy?

Do you consider a framework for applications or "only" an application which
shows a desktop with icons which runs programs.



--
Michael Neumann