One of the most interesting facets of a desktop GUI system is how easy
it makes it to go off the beaten track, particularly how well you can
add "first class" components to the system. (Using 'first class' here
to mean 'on an equal footing with the widgets supplied by the
toolkit'). Also, as a ruby programmer, I'd naturally rather not drop
down into C (or Java) to do this. I'm trying to collect examples of
the following four tasks (which I will then assemble and put up on the
web as another datapoint in the eternal GUI debate :)):

1. A component consisting of a series of existing components hooked
together to act as a single widget
2. A component built 'from scratch' atop a canvas, that is, handling
its own drawing and event management
3. A component combining a canvas and existing widgets
4. A container that takes a collection of widgets and lays them out
according to some userdefined algorithm

Examples (more welcomed):

1. An icon widget, that combines  a picture and a textfield
underneath, with config options to turn either off or size the image,
make the text editable, etc
2. A speedometer-type dial with a configurable range and tick interval
3. A box that holds a component and paints a customised border around it
4. A pure-ruby implementation of a wrapbox
(http://zem.novylen.net/ruby/wrapboxdemo.png)

martin