[ANN] wxruby2-preview 0.0.36

[Alex Fenton]

wxRuby2 preview 0.0.36 has been released!

wxRuby brings wxWidgets, a mature cross-platform GUI toolkit to Ruby. It uses native widgets on Windows, OS X and Linux/GTK; you can write GUI code once and still give users the look, feel and behaviour they expect from desktop applications on their OS.

This is a first alpha/preview release of wxRuby2, a complete rewrite of wxRuby.

= INSTALLING WXRUBY =

Binary gems for major platforms and a source tarball are available at:
http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=35&release_id=7185

or via gems:
gem install wxruby2-preview

NOTE: this is an alpha-quality release, and is probably not yet stable enough for production use - but it's evolving quickly! Feedback, feature requests and bug reports are very welcome.

All the packages come with a wide array of sample code to demonstrate how to use the library. Documentation is available online and can be downloaded for off-line reference.

= WHAT'S NEW? =

wxRuby2 is the result of a complete - and lengthy - re-engineering of an original port. Here's a few reasons why the wait's been worth it:

* based on wxWidgets 2.6, giving vastly improved appearance on OS X and Linux
* support for many new windows, controls and widgets
* more complete API coverage within classes
* unicode (UTF-8) support for creating multilingual apps
* uses exceptions rather than segfaults to warn you about incorrect usage
* downloadable Ruby-specific documentation
* easier to extend and add support for more wxWidgets classes, by using SWIG
* simpler and more permissive licence
* binary gems for all major platforms

= WHY WXRUBY? =

There are several great GUI toolkits available for Ruby - but no other has all the features we like about wxRuby2:

* cross-platform, with a wide selection of widgets
* native widgets mean that applications look and work how users expect
* native widgets work well with accessibility tools and assistive software
* simple licence that's compatible with free and proprietary software
* mature foundation: wxWidgets has been around for over 10 years, and is actively developed
* binaries are easy to bundle and redistribute in end-user apps, no external dependencies

= TODO =

This version still has some memory management problems, which occasionally cause crashes - but we're ironing these out. Before we move to beta, we want to support all the GUI classes that were available in the last (0.6.0) release of the old series of wxruby. And there are improvements to be made to the Ruby documentation.

wxRuby is a big project, and volunteers are very welcome. There are opportunities to use all sorts of skills, from Ruby and C++ hacking to documentation and publicity.

= CREDITS =

wxRuby is a genuine team effort. Kevin Smith, Roy Sutton, Sean Long, Alex Fenton and Nick are major contributors to getting wxRuby2 this far. Thanks also to many others who submitted patches, bug reports and sample code, and to those who contributed to the original wxRuby codebase. A special thanks to Tom and other Rubyforge folk for providing unfailingly helpful hosting for the project.

= FURTHER INFORMATION =

* Project wiki:
http://wxruby.org/
* FAQs
http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?WxRubyFAQs
* Rubyforge homepage:
http://rubyforge.org/projects/wxruby
* Ruby documentation
http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/doc/
* Friendly general mailing list:
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wxruby-users

 

[Bob Hutchison]

wxRuby2 preview 0.0.36 has been released!

That's great news!

I tried installing it from the gem, it installed, but libpng isn't
found when trying to run minimal.

This is on OS X intel.

Cheers,
Bob

----
Bob Hutchison -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/
hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc. -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>
xampl for Ruby -- <http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/>

 

[Ezra Zygmuntowicz]

That's great news!

I tried installing it from the gem, it installed, but libpng isn't
found when trying to run minimal.

This is on OS X intel.

Cheers,
Bob

I got the exact same thing on intel osx.

-Ezra

 

[Roy Sutton]

That's great news!

I tried installing it from the gem, it installed, but libpng isn't
found when trying to run minimal.

This is on OS X intel.

Thanks for the report, Bob. We'll get on that. We should be statically
linking any libraries that aren't installed by default. We are probably
going to have a .37 release after we get some more feedback on .36.

Although I'm not our OS X person I did find this info here which may
help you get libpng so you can move forwards:

As mentioned previously, you can download |libpng| from its home site,
/libpng.org/. The easiest way to install the |libpng| library is to use
the |fink| package installer
<http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/09/30/fink.html>. The |fink|
package installer will install libpng in the directory //sw/lib/.

Roy

 

[Ezra Zygmuntowicz]

Thanks for the report, Bob. We'll get on that. We should be
statically linking any libraries that aren't installed by default.
We are probably going to have a .37 release after we get some more
feedback on .36.

Although I'm not our OS X person I did find this info here which
may help you get libpng so you can move forwards:

As mentioned previously, you can download |libpng| from its home
site, /libpng.org/. The easiest way to install the |libpng| library
is to use the |fink| package installer <http://www.macdevcenter.com/
pub/a/mac/2005/09/30/fink.html>. The |fink| package installer will
install libpng in the directory //sw/lib/.

Roy

Thanks Roy-

For the archives I solved this problem by downloading the libpng
source from the libpng site and compiling it with just a
configure;make;sudo make install and now things work fine.

Thanks
-Ezra

 

[Bob Hutchison]

Thanks for the report, Bob. We'll get on that. We should be
statically linking any libraries that aren't installed by default.
We are probably going to have a .37 release after we get some more
feedback on .36.

Although I'm not our OS X person I did find this info here which
may help you get libpng so you can move forwards:

As mentioned previously, you can download |libpng| from its home
site, /libpng.org/. The easiest way to install the |libpng| library
is to use the |fink| package installer <http://www.macdevcenter.com/
pub/a/mac/2005/09/30/fink.html>. The |fink| package installer will
install libpng in the directory //sw/lib/.

I did the same as Ezra (configure; make; sudo make install -- but I
changed the -O2 optimisation level to -O1 to avoid that gcc problem
with -O2)

The demos mostly mostly all run! Nice!

There are a few problems, as I muck about with this I'll report them.
I just don't quite know when I'll get a chance (though this progress
you've made makes something I've been wanting to do possible so...)

Cheers,
Bob

Roy

----
Bob Hutchison -- blogs at <http://www.recursive.ca/
hutch/>
Recursive Design Inc. -- <http://www.recursive.ca/>
Raconteur -- <http://www.raconteur.info/>
xampl for Ruby -- <http://rubyforge.org/projects/xampl/>

 

[Roy Sutton]

I did the same as Ezra (configure; make; sudo make install -- but I
changed the -O2 optimisation level to -O1 to avoid that gcc problem
with -O2)

The demos mostly mostly all run! Nice!

There are a few problems, as I muck about with this I'll report them.
I just don't quite know when I'll get a chance (though this progress
you've made makes something I've been wanting to do possible so...)

Bob, we look forward to the reports. We're very excited to see interest
in wxRuby2 and look forward to being able to stomp out the bugs and
hopefully get some help from the community in fleshing out some of the
non-technical parts of the project (we don't have a logo for the project!)

Roy

 

[Jeremy McAnally]

Before I get excited, does this add support for the StyledTextControl?

--Jeremy

 

[Roy Sutton]

Before I get excited, does this add support for the StyledTextControl?

--Jeremy

The Windows gem has Scintalla compiled in, same functionality, more or
less. In fact, I'm not at all sure the difference between the two
controls. The source has Scintilla support but we have not been able to
compile them in to the Linux and OS X gems. Version 0.0.37 will have it
built in for all platforms.

Roy