# Advice on macruby and graphics

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [March 29, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945 "2010-03-29T16:46:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 4:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/1 "2010-03-29T16:46:12Z")

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Hi there Everyone,

I’ve spent the last year or so away from ruby. That being said, I  
wouldn’t say I was a ruby guru at the height of my knowledge anyway!

I’m interested in building a macruby desktop app for backtesting forex  
data. There aren’t any backtesting apps for OSX, and I hate having to  
spend so much time in Win XP these days whilst I’m trading. Basically  
the screen is filled with graphical elements representing the movement  
of currencies. This window can be dragged and manipulated with other  
graphical elements being overlaid on the screen.

What would be the best library to use for the graphics with this in  
mind?

I’ve had a look at hotCocoa::graphics which lets me interact with core  
graphics and core image etc within Mac OSX. That looks like the best  
option at the moment.

Any advise? Has anyone done anything like this before?

be kind 🙂

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 12:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/2 "2010-03-30T12:23:12Z")

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cs ss wrote:

> Hi there Everyone,
> 
> I’ve spent the last year or so away from ruby. That being said, I  
> wouldn’t say I was a ruby guru at the height of my knowledge anyway!
> 
> I’m interested in building a macruby desktop app for backtesting forex  
> data. There aren’t any backtesting apps for OSX, and I hate having to  
> spend so much time in Win XP these days whilst I’m trading. Basically  
> the screen is filled with graphical elements representing the movement  
> of currencies. This window can be dragged and manipulated with other  
> graphical elements being overlaid on the screen.
> 
> What would be the best library to use for the graphics with this in  
> mind?
> 
> I’ve had a look at hotCocoa::graphics which lets me interact with core  
> graphics and core image etc within Mac OSX. That looks like the best  
> option at the moment.
> 
> Any advise? Has anyone done anything like this before?
> 
> be kind 🙂

Hi, for most flexibility I’d look at the MacRuby project  
([http://www.macruby.org/](http://www.macruby.org/)) provided you’re happy to work on Snow Leopard.

You can then access as much (or as little) of the Cocoa graphics  
environment as you want: OpenGL, Quartz, etc as well as using HotCocoa  
if you want to avoid (Interface Builder).

If you are plotting data you might also want to look at the core plot  
project at [Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.](http://code.google.com/p/core-plot/)

HTH Jonathan

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/3 "2010-03-31T00:19:23Z")

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Great - thanks for that Jonathan,

I had a look at Core Plot. Looks really interesting.

I’d planned on using macruby and hotcocoa. The less time spent in  
interface builder the better 😉

Tough area to be getting started in as the documentation is a bit thin  
on the ground. Guess I’ll be spending some time in rdocs!

I know there is an O’Reily title coming out soon on MacRuby etc Any  
other good sites, books people know about? I haven’t seen much when  
I’ve looked.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/4 "2010-03-31T19:21:51Z")

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On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:19 PM, cs ss [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I know there is an O’Reily title coming out soon on MacRuby etc Any  
> other good sites, books people know about? I haven’t seen much when  
> I’ve looked.
> 
> –  
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).

Peepcode has a video for it [https://peepcode.com/products/meet-macruby](https://peepcode.com/products/meet-macruby)

But I don’t know if it is still current, they seem to have taken the  
links  
down from their homepage, I had to guess the url.

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 12:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/5 "2010-04-01T00:38:21Z")

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Thanks again Jonathan.

Great links!

I’m looking at the examples now from John site.

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2010, 12:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/6 "2010-04-01T00:40:07Z")

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Thanks Josh.

I got the peepcode screencast the other day. I’ve contributed a lot to  
TopFunky’s retirement fund over the last few years 🙂

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**Author:** ![damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@damnpenguins](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/damnpenguins)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2010, 10:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-macruby-and-graphics/185945/7 "2010-03-31T10:35:12Z")

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I haven’t seen much about the O’Reilly book, it would be good if there  
is a beta copy.

One of the best resources I’ve seen is John Shea’s stuff. He’s busy  
writing openGL games in MacRuby and he’s also ported the Hillegass cocoa  
examples. You can find a repository of stuff at  
[http://public.me.com/johnmshea](http://public.me.com/johnmshea) - in particular look at the /MacRuby/Game  
related/mine/presentation (he used to have a ppt version but that seems  
to have disappeared).

I’ve also tried to contribute a little about pointers in MacRuby:  
[http://jonathan.waddilove.net/macruby\_pointers.html](http://jonathan.waddilove.net/macruby_pointers.html)

Jonathan