On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 7:02 PM, Tom Cloyd <tomcloyd / comcast.net> wrote: > James Britt 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 + Monkeybars + NetBeans GUI editor = Massive Win >> >> http://www.monkeybars.org >> >> Super-easy GUI app development, plus you can use rawr for snap-simple >> packaging for multiple platforms. >> >> >> There is nothing better. >> > This all sounds very interesting, and I want to investigate it, but I dread > having to deal with the java monster. I've been there before. Forty-five+ > versions, all with 26 letter names, and documentation that requires a > masters in CS to decypher. I simply cannot know everything, and I'm pretty > committed in a couple of other fields. Still, I have programming to get > done, and drag and drop GUI that doesn't require yet another book to read > would be a blessing. > > So, onward, again. I try to install Netbeans 6 for Linux. Says it want a JDK > (the dread starts now). I'm on Kubuntu, so I go to Adept, find sun-jave6-jdk > - nothing else looks more likely - and install it. Now Netbeans says it > can't find it and I need to point the way. Huh? Don't have a clue. > > Looking at the helpful (?) installed files list under the tab of the same > name in I see a long file list. Nothing seems clearly the answer to Netbeans > problems, so I throw a number of possibilities at it. Nothing works. Sigh. > > Could someone who knows more please give me a clue here? I'm be most > grateful. I understand your dread - I have the same dread, and the same problems getting Java + XYZ to work. I actually currently have a Netbeans install that I have tried to use the built-in plugin installer to install Ruby support - after incomprehensible errors it knows nothing of Ruby. Busy re-downloading. I tried monkeybars and the tutorials for a few hours and failed completely. Perhaps it is very good, but it is surely also very complicated. After failing there I have been having quite a nice time with Glade/Gtk. I am working on a tutorial but in the meantime, below is a message I sent a friend as an intro. Look at my previous post to this list for "glader" which should convert your .glade file to a program directly so get you started fast. Also, be aware that the Glade form builder uses a bit of a different form building philosophy if you come from a VB/C#/VS environment. If you get stuck with it, mail me and I'll help out. You just need to understand a few of the ideas and you can build good-looking forms really quickly and easily in Glade. --snip-- Glade as a GUI builder works quite well on both Windows and Linux and had a fair selection of ok looking Widgets. Installing it on Linux is also quite easy - apt-get libglade2-ruby1.8 and glade-3 to pull in most of what you need. Certain widgets have their own packages, so you may need one of these, depending on which your Ruby program uses: libgtk-mozembed-ruby - ruby binding of GtkMozEmbed, gecko renderer libgtk-mozembed-ruby1.8 - ruby binding of GtkMozEmbed, gecko renderer libgtkglext1-ruby - GTK+ GL extension bindings for the Ruby language libgtkglext1-ruby1.8 - GTK+ GL extension bindings for the Ruby language libgtkhtml2-ruby - GtkHTML bindings for the Ruby language libgtkhtml2-ruby1.8 - GtkHTML bindings for the Ruby language libgtksourceview1-ruby - GtkSourceView bindings for the Ruby language libgtksourceview1-ruby1.8 - GtkSourceView bindings for the Ruby language ie. apt-cache search libgtk|grep ruby After that you build forms using glade-3 and run a little script (ruby-glade-create-template) to convert your XML glade files to Ruby programs. Well, almost. The script creates a bit of an example for you and doesn't actually SHOW the form as you may expect. To show the form, you need to access the GladeXML object that is created in the form's initializer and call something like @glade["window1"].show, where "window1" is the id of the form you want to show. I am going to improve the script so that it makes things much more seamless, for now it's just a basic example-form-with-events creator. (see glader in prev post) In Windows you need to download a few things: Ruby-gnome: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ruby-gnome2/ruby-gnome2-0.16.0-1-i386-mswin32.exe?modtime=1171279190&big_mirror=0 Glade and Gtk: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gladewin32/glade-3.4.3-win32-1.tar.bz2 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gladewin32/gtk-2.12.9-win32-2.exe There's a bit of a guide (minus glade) here: http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?Install+Guide+for+Windows Good luck! Les