From: Albert Schlef <albertschlef / gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Tk on Windows and Mac OS X 10.6
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:14:28 +0900
Message-ID: <a34cd9fcc380dd4e3514bf66803d3837 / ruby-forum.com>
> It seems like a change in recent RubyInstallers, because I remember 
> easily installing Ruby+Tk on Windows in the past.
> 
> I'll try to investigate this.
> 
> Hidetoshi NAGAI, are you there? Do you know anything about this?

I don't know about recent RubyInstallers.

# A kind of troubles on OneClickRuby with ActiveTcl depends on 
# the 'Path' environment variable which doesn't include bin (dll) 
# folder of ActiveTcl.

I heard tcltklib doesn't work on MacRuby.
But I have no Mac box, and I don't know what kinds of trouble exist 
on compiling or running on MacRuby.
So, at present, I cannot develop Ruby/Tk (tcltklib) on MacRuby.

For MacRuby (and JRuby), tk-ffi may be a kind of solutions.
I've thought about using FFI in the past.
And then, I didn't have good idea to treat properly (without C
functions) exceptions on callbacks without break Tcl's event queue.

BTW, 
I know that there are many problems to install or distribute Ruby/Tk.
I have a plan to create tcltklib.so includeing a Tcl/Tk environment.
When using such kind of tcltklib.so, Ruby/Tk never load the Tcl/Tk 
libraries on the local environment (it means, no need installed Tcl/Tk).
Although it may be a kind of advantage for some people, it loses the
function about easy update of Tcl/Tk libraries (includes using Tcl/Tk
extensions which are installed to local Tcl/Tk environment without
re-create tcltklib.so) working with Ruby/Tk.
Of course, we can make each version of tcltklib.so.

It is based on the idea of Tclkit (Starkit).
If I can, I may try also to write a VFS-like library accessing
directly Tcl's Mk4VFS from Ruby.
The library is used to create a monolitic executable file of Ruby/Tk
application on Windows and Linux (and so on?).
I know that it is a kind of "reinvention of the wheel".
However, I think, it's worth treating Ruby and Tcl/Tk files on one VFS.
-- 
Hidetoshi NAGAI (nagai / ai.kyutech.ac.jp)