If you simply want to write simple GUI desktop applications, Ruby with Shoes is a quick way to do it.

Example session in my computer:

The code for that Timer GUI application is taken from the Shoes samples, which is concise enough for me to put it here:

Shoes.app :height => 150, :width => 250 do
  background rgb(240, 250, 208)
  stack :margin => 10 do
    button "Start" do
      @time = Time.now
      @label.replace "Stop watch started at #@time"
    end
    button "Stop" do
      @label.replace "Stopped, ", strong("#{Time.now - @time}"), " seconds elapsed."
    end
    @label = para "Press ", strong("start"), " to begin timing."
  end
end

To install Shoes on Ubuntu, it needs some dependencies which fortunately are very easy to install:

sudo aptitude install libungif4g libvlc0

More detailed download and installation instructions are available on whytheluckystiff’s site.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under Beginner, Cool, GUI, Ruby, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.