"Tom Sawyer" <transami / transami.net> wrote in message
news:200302062038.30946.transami / transami.net...
> On Thursday 06 February 2003 07:35 pm, MikkelFJ wrote:
>
> > What I'm saying is that staying with 2D API's has limited life
expectancy.
>
> Mikkel,
>
> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~leon/ruby/gutopia/paragui.html
>
> this was originally one of the primary target plaforms for GUtopIa until i

I have looked at ParaGUI and when I mentioned looking at 3D GUI's I was also
thinking of this one.
It is one of the better offers, but I was never impressed with the
screenshots provided. That doesn't mean things don't evolve at ParaGUI.

> rethought and decided to split the project into two parts. 1) high level
> interface definition language, for which any one can make a binding too,
> whether it be GTK, FLTK, FOX, ParaGUI, etc.

I'm a bit concerned with the match everything - generally yes - a
standardized way for GUI's in Ruby is great - it's just that there or so
many ways to bind events. GLGooy uses bidirectional connections like Fox and
at a higher level FreeRide Software Bus. I think FLTK and wxWindows uses a
waterfall / bubble up principle like MFC and HTML DOM - but I need to look
more at FLTK - I don't really fancy the waterfall method because it's hard
to tell which handler catches the event.

 And 2) a lower level pure Ruby
> GUI, which will build off Wise as a starting point, but using a
> cross-platform backend toolkit (i.e. GGI).
Sounds like Computer Graphics Interface - didn't it die long ago?

> note: the state of 3D GUI is still in early stages. that's the only reason
why
> i did not go strictly with ParaGUI. but ParaGUI looks to be the best one
so
> far.

I agree it's early - but you still have a great 2D API in OpenGL - and I'm
not saying 3D buttons should be in 3D space necessarily - but I wan't to be
able to manipulate graphs in 3D as a natural extension to the GUI. Earlier I
was hooked on SDL but realized OpenGL propably is the best choice.

Mikkel