S On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 2:28 PM Andy Nutter-Upham via ruby-talk < ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org> wrote:
Thank you so much for your followup. I had seen the supported-keywords section. The difficulty I am having with that documentation is that it does not provide clear instructions on what elements can be nested within others. It is particularly confusing to distinguish between components and attributes. As a result, I have encountered challenges with simple tasks such as adjusting the font size on a label. I have tried different combinations of nesting label, string, text, and font, but it is not clear which one is correct based on the 'supported keywords' listing; and not all the things I want to try are represented in the examples.
And, as I mentioned, dropping into the C headers and having to translate that into what was implemented has, for me, only added confusion rather than clarification. Though I do appreciate your explanation of the translation.
I'm sure if I spent enough time on it, I'd get it. But for someone coming to this project with little-to-no native UI knowledge, the initial learning process has proved challenging for me. And it isn't the complicated stuff like the MVC binding, that makes good conceptual sense to me. And as someone who is investigating it for fun, not for work or profit, the ease/difficulty of the initial learning experience does affect my willingness to put more effort into learning it. To respond to your original response, as the person who does not understand, and is not even sure if this library is something I want to use, I'm pretty much the last candidate to add this documentation.
Anyhow, I this library is a great idea. Having a low boilerplate UI library in the main ruby (as opposed to jruby) is a worthwhile niche to fill! I hope I am able to get through my learning challenges here eventually. And I appreciate your work on this. Cheers!
On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 12:13 AM Andy Maleh via ruby-talk < ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org> wrote:
Andy Nutter-Upham, I just realized I didn't answer this exact question by you in full details (I read the original message on the phone while being quite busy with something a couple of weeks ago, and I somehow missed some of intricacies of your question):
"If I missed the documentation and someone knows where it is, I'd love to read it. I think though that since this is a wrapper library there is instead reference to the underlying documentation (whose method names are a bit different, and whose arguments are a bit different) and I find that translation very challenging; especially since glimmer-dsl-libui is not yet complete, so your run into ineffective keywords if you rely on the underlying glimmer docs."
Glimmer DSL for LibUI actually does have full documentation for the Ruby API: https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-libui#supported-keywords
Someone asked me to add the documentation early on when the project was new, and I added it to that person's satisfaction. I hope it's helpful to you too.
By the way, I also do mention under the "Original API" section that you could use the LibUI Go documentation as a reference: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/andlabs/ui
But, the most complete reference is the actual C headers: https://github.com/andlabs/libui/blob/master/ui.h
And, the C headers are exposed as low-level FFI functions in Ruby as per the Original API (but it's not recommended that you use these method directly of course): https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-libui#original-api
To give you an example of how the mapping from the C API to Ruby happens, suppose we have this C function:
uiWindowSetTitle('My Application')
The word before the "Set" or "Get" operation is the control object (e.g. window), and the word after it is the attribute (e.g. title).
So, the equivalent of that in the Glimmer GUI DSL:
window { title 'My Application' }
Basically, we are declaring a window control with one nested attribute of title having the value 'My Application'
The C API is procedural and imperative whereas the Glimmer GUI DSL is object-oriented and declarative, better mapping to the way we think of concepts visually while looking at a screen given that you could nest controls (widgets) within each other.
If you need further help, do not hesitate to ask further questions at the Glimmer Gitter chat: https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#AndyObtiva_glimmer:gitter.im
You shouldn't really get bogged down unless you are missing foundational grounding in software engineering concepts relating to desktop development in general, like MVC (Model View Controller). I've done GUI development professionally in older technologies like Java Swing in the past, and by comparison, Glimmer lets me leapfrog past productivity by 4x at least, sometimes 10x or even more (and it's that much faster in productivity than web development too, so it's great for building quick local apps or tools that don't need the web as it's much simpler, demanding a tiny fraction of web code only). But, it does assume you know MVC (Model View Controller) very well, and it benefits from also knowing MVP (Model View Presenter). Once you get the main ideas behind Glimmer, everything clicks, and things like exact APIs or detailed documentation wouldn't matter much anymore because the way you think with MVC/MVP is you start with the View layer from a GUI mockup to support a specific user workflow, and you either use native controls (like text and button, by looking them up in examples or the docs mentioned above) or you invent your own custom controls (both options are available in Glimmer DSL for LibUI). Of course, the native controls are only as complete as what is implemented by the underlying LibUI library. I know the authors of it are working on adding many new features, like a Tree control, Table sorting listeners, and some other missing features. They will all be added to Glimmer DSL for LibUI in due time when they get released in C LibUI. But, that shouldn't stop someone from learning the library and using whatever is available in it for now, or at least mastering the current features until more features are added in the future (especially given that you could always temporarily polyfill missing features by building your own custom controls if really needed).
Cheers,
Andy Maleh
On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 9:27 PM grigoris charam <xargrigoris@gmail.com> wrote:
Stop reply all
On Feb 15, 2023, at 03:05, Andy Maleh via ruby-talk < ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org> wrote:
The Glimmer Gitter Chat:
https://app.gitter.im/#/room/#AndyObtiva_glimmer:gitter.im
If you create any Glimmer related projects, libraries, or tools, you could alert of us of them in the Gitter Chat.
And, you can open issues or pull requests on any of the Glimmer projects if needed: <glimmer.png> AndyObtiva/glimmer: DSL Framework consisting of a DSL Engine and a Data-Binding Library used in Glimmer DSL for SWT (JRuby Desktop Development GUI Framework), Glimmer DSL for Opal (Pure Ruby Web GUI), Glimmer DSL for LibUI (Prerequisite-Free Ruby Desktop Development GUI Library), Glimmer DSL for Tk (Ruby Tk Desktop Development GUI Library), Glimmer DSL for GTK (Ruby-GNOME Desktop Development GUI Library), Glimmer DSL for XML (& HTML), and Glimmer DSL for CSS <https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer> github.com <https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer> <https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer>
Andy Maleh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh <https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh> Blog: https://andymaleh.blogspot.com GitHub: https://github.com/AndyObtiva Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/AndyObtiva
On Feb 14, 2023, at 7:51 PM, Fellipe Fingoli via ruby-talk < ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org> wrote:
really good content! I want to help to develop this ecosystem. Does anybody know where I can reach the community?
Em ter., 7 de fev. de 2023 às 18:29, Andy Maleh via ruby-talk < ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org> escreveu:
My RubyConf 2022 talk video on "Building Native GUI Apps in Ruby" using the Fukuoka Award Winning Glimmer DSL for LibUI has just been released!
Andy Maleh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh <https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh> Blog: http://andymaleh.blogspot.com GitHub: http://www.github.com/AndyObtiva Twitter: @AndyObtiva <https://twitter.com/AndyObtiva>
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-- Fellipe Fingoli ______________________________________________ ruby-talk mailing list -- ruby-talk@ml.ruby-lang.org To unsubscribe send an email to ruby-talk-leave@ml.ruby-lang.org ruby-talk info -- https://ml.ruby-lang.org/mailman3/postorius/lists/ruby-talk.ml.ruby-lang.org...
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-- Andy Maleh
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh <https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymaleh> Blog: http://andymaleh.blogspot.com GitHub: http://www.github.com/AndyObtiva Twitter: @AndyObtiva <https://twitter.com/AndyObtiva>
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