RE: RE: [Wxruby-dev] Cable ties

[Bob Calco]

Curt et al.

My interest in Cable goes beyond wxRuby. My interest in wxRuby, however,
does not abate if SWIG, and not Cable, is used to make wxRuby operational
"sooner rather than later."

I will continue to push forward with Cable-R, but also support using SWIG to
create wxRuby for now. Anything I can do to support and otherwise assist, I
will do my best to do.

This last year has been very difficult - and I am no longer so naive to
think next year will be any different. That having been said I do intend to
renew my commitment to Ruby development, and will strive to make time
whenever possible for the many projects I have - so far unsuccessfully -
dedicated myself.

Thanks, Curt, for your thoughts; as usual they are cogent and wise.

- Bob

%% -----Original Message-----
%% From: Curt Hibbs [mailto:address@hidden
%% Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 1:05 AM
%% To: address@hidden; address@hidden;
%% address@hidden
%% Cc: Curt Hibbs; address@hidden
%% Subject: RE: RE: [Wxruby-dev] Cable ties
%%
%%
%% Bob Calco wrote:
%% >
%% > I vote for Cable - I have a design plan for creating the Ruby
%% > emitter, which I will attempt to make public this week so we can
%% > collaborate on it.
%% >
%% > Sorry for my long silence; my wife has been in the hospital on
%% > bedrest (32 weeks pregnant) for the last four weeks, and will be
%% > in another 4-8 weeks, and I've been doing a lot of Mr. Mom lately.
%% >
%% > - Bob Calco
%%
%% Bob, on a pure development design basis I would side with you
%% and push for
%% the Cable route. But the pragmatic side of me wants to be sure
%% we actually
%% get results. Neither your nor I have had the recent time or bandwidth to
%% push forward. It doesn't really sound like that is going to be
%% changing for
%% you any time soon and, given a choice, I would rather be working on my
%% growing FreeRIDE wishlist (which includes the i18n support the
%% wxRuby would
%% give us).
%%
%% And here we have Peter who has actually taken the time to do an
%% assessment,
%% who was the energy, interest, and (at least some) time to spend
%% on it -- not
%% to mention the fact that we actually have a working version of
%% wxRuby using
%% SWIG. Because of this I really have to support Peter in his
%% desire to push
%% forward with SWIG.
%%
%% I see a couple possibilities for you...
%%
%% 1) You could continue to work on a Cable path for wxRuby (while
%% Peter works
%% on the SWIG path). If it turns out that you are able to make significant
%% progress and the results look compelling, then I think it is a slam-dunk
%% that we would switch to the Cable path.
%%
%% 2) You could decide, instead, to shelve the Cable path (at least
%% temporarily) and assist with the SWIG effort. One thing that I
%% know would be
%% of tremendous value is a test harness that would allow us to
%% create a suite
%% of platform-independent unit tests for wxRuby. This would really
%% help us in
%% porting and testing on multiple platforms. I know that GUI unit
%% testing is
%% particularly difficult, but I also know you have some special
%% expertise in
%% test harnesses.
%%
%% As for me, I could act as the first real-world customer by
%% implementing the
%% plugin that uses wxRuby as FreeRIDE's GUI renderer.
%%
%% I can see good reasons for you to choose either path, and I will respect
%% your choice. But until there is a compelling reason to the
%% contrary, I will
%% support Peter in pushing forward with the SWIG path.
%%
%% Curt
%%
%%
%% PS to Richard Lin (and others),
%%
%% Do you still have the interest, desire, and time to spend on
%% wxRuby? If so,
%% this would be the time to join in.
%%
%%
%%