# GUI for commandline programs

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-for-commandline-programs/194370>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [September 3, 2010, 10:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-for-commandline-programs/194370 "2010-09-03T10:10:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Handy\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Handy\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Handy_G)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2010, 10:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-for-commandline-programs/194370/1 "2010-09-03T10:10:31Z")

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I’m looking for a simple, easy to learn, low weight GUI for use in Ruby  
programs that mainly use the command line but where a bit of GUI might  
be  
in order.

To give a clearer idea, let me show some examples:

1. Going to a youtube user that has multiple playlists, parsing the  
playlist then opening a GUI with a list of the playlists so you can  
chose  
which to download.

2. At a point in the program, you need to specify a folder to store your  
data in, so you want to pop open a folder save dialog box, then continue  
with your basic commandline program.

3. A loop in a program input a file, parses the input and creates a  
(directed acyclic) graph from it. There is a bug someplace between the  
parser and the graph generator. You put a form at the beginning showing  
input data some intermediate variables, and drawing the graph as it  
evolves to visualize what is going wrong.

I hope from these three examples that the things I am looking for in a  
GUI toolkit clear. The GUI elements are incidental to the main program,  
the main program is a commandline program and for some reason or other a  
part of the program is made simpler with a bit of GUI. This however is  
only the case if the GUI is itself simple. Spending a lot of time  
setting up an application loop and a GUI justs mucks things up in this  
case. Also, in each case the GUI portion is started and stopped several  
times in one run of a program.

Suggestions?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Handy\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Handy\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Handy_G)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2010, 5:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gui-for-commandline-programs/194370/2 "2010-09-03T17:17:21Z")

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On Fri, 2010-09-03 at 17:10 +0900, Handy G. wrote:

> I’m looking for a simple, easy to learn, low weight GUI for use in Ruby

> Suggestions?

see zenity