Victor Reyes wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 4:15 PM, Charles Oliver Nutter <
> charles.nutter / sun.com> wrote:
> 
>> Israel Guerra wrote:
>>
>>> Hail everyone!
>>>
>>> This is my first post here. :)
>>>
>>> I want to develop a desktop app that runs in either linux or windows.
>>> I have many doubts about which GUI i should use. What's the best option? I
>>> heard about wxwidgets or tk, but have no idea of what i should use.
>>>
>>> I would prefer something that has a graphical app that can help me
>>> creating
>>> the visual part.
>>>
>> JRuby + Swing + NetBeans Matisse + MonkeyBars
>>
>> - Charlie
>>
>>
> Can JRuby coexist with C-Ruby?

Yes, more or less.  There are jruby equivalents of gem, rake, and I 
rename them to jgem and jrake so that I don't accidentally call the 
wrong one.


> Does anyone have any performance numbers of Ruby vs JRuby?
> Would any JRuby appl with GUI run on any *NIX server that supports Java?

Should.  If the app bundles up the needed jars (swing, or swingx, for 
example) to handle the UI then all the end user needs is a jre.

> Is there a drag and drop widgets creation GUI design under JRuby with Swing?

The Matisse GUI editor than comes with NetBeans 6, all free, is great.

> I think VxRuby or something to that effect is the only GUI environment that
> offers drag/drop widget creation. Not sure though!

You get that from Matisse as well.

> Currently I am running Ruby 1.8.7 and on some servers I am playing 1.9. What
> is the equivalent version of JRuby to the latest level of Ruby?

Um, 1.8.6, though I *think* there are some things planned for 1.9 that 
are already in JRuby (such as hash.first).

> How far behind is JRuby from Ruby (C-Ruby)?

Charlie should answer that one, but people are using it for production apps.

> If I am not mistaken, Monkeybars is only an MS/Windows appl, correct?
> 

Oh, far from it.  I develop on Kubuntu, David and Logan are on Macs, 
and our main customer is all WinXP.

It really is cross-platform.

Monkeybars is Ruby code that knows how to hook into Swing via JRuby and 
wicked use of Java reflection.


Also check out rawr, a tool that helps in packaging and deploying JRuby 
apps.

http://gitorious.org/projects/rawr


-- 
James Britt

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