# Ruby Newbie question about app making

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie-question-about-app-making/106035>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 5, 2007, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie-question-about-app-making/106035 "2007-06-05T21:02:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![llinklater](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@llinklater](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/llinklater)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 9:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie-question-about-app-making/106035/1 "2007-06-05T21:02:44Z")

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I have been enjoying the Ruby language for a little bit now and even  
tried to answer a question on this forum. 🙂 Still, I have a question  
about Ruby development.

I have been hearing that most anything programmable can be programmed in  
Ruby. Well, when I write apps, there is almost always a user interface.  
(Sometimes, there is an API for services or the like.) If I wanted to  
knock out an application that does , how would I approach the  
interface implementation? I have heard of things like WXWidgets,  
gnome2, GTK-Wimp, and the like.

What is a good recommendation for simple interfaces and why that one  
over some other?

thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![llinklater](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@llinklater](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/llinklater)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 9:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-newbie-question-about-app-making/106035/2 "2007-06-05T21:21:54Z")

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Hello,

First of all, have you heard of [http://RubyMentor.rubyforge.org](http://RubyMentor.rubyforge.org)?  
Check that, it might be of great help to you.

Second, an answer:

Most rubyists are divided between GTK, Qt, Cocoa (if you’re on the  
mac), wxWidgets and fltk. There are some other contenders - fox, tk  
are notable to be quite usable. Rails is recommended for the kind of  
apps that can run in a web browser, and I agree. \_why blended Gecko,  
Camping and Mongrel in a very beautiful way to creaty Hackety Hack and  
I think you could do that to create your own app, too.

There is endless discussion about this in the mailing list. About once  
per week there is a discussion of 50+ messages saying exactly the same  
things about it (and once in a while a discussion that says really new  
and interesting things, actually).

At the moment, I am implementing a totally new user interface system  
in Cairo. Now, if what you want is to write small apps that are  
totally conservative - i.e. familiar to anyone who has lately used a  
GUI - that is not the way to go, but if you’re a hobbyist with a lot  
of free time that loves the way vector graphics look and knows a bit  
of linear algebra (Linear Algebra is not wha you learn at school -  
it’s the side of math that deals with vectors and matrices), that’s  
really fun. I can help you bootstrap SDL+Cairo to a place where you  
can start.

My system, when complete, will not be of assistance to you since it’s  
got very little to do with WIMP user interfaces, but implementing  
simple WIMP in Cairo should only take a few days (and then the textbox  
control would maybe take another few days… or weeks… I don’t know,  
I’ve always wondered how people implement those and never thought of a  
really efficient way, heh).

Aur