[dot] QtRuby and Korundum Bring eXtreme RAD to KDE

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1095644599/

From: Richard Dale <Richard_Dale at tipitina.demon.co.uk>
Dept: matz-is-god
Date: Monday20/Sep/2004, @03:43

QtRuby and Korundum Bring eXtreme RAD to KDE
============================================

   For those of you not in the know, Ruby
[http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020101.html] is a relatively new general
purpose scripting language that is surprisingly expressive, allowing
developers to prototype and develop powerful applications in a short
time.  Now with QtRuby and Korundrum
[http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ruby/], that power and
expressivity has increased: You can sketch out pretty interfaces with Qt
Designer [http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/designer/] and
automatically create Ruby code with the rbuic tool. Or do amazing things
with DCOP without needing preprocessors, makefiles etc -- just type in
your Ruby script and be in control of your desktop.  In fact, you can
find a fairly complete description of all the features supported by
QtRuby and Korundrum over at the Ruby bindings section
[http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ruby/] of the KDE
Developer's Corner.
 [http://developer.kde.org/]
     I've also translated a couple of tutorials into Ruby. There is a
Ruby version of  Qt Tutorial #1
[http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ruby/tutorial/tutorial.html],
and the corresponding Ruby code is in  qtruby/rubylib/tutorial/. That's
the one where you build a game to fire a cannon at a target; it explains
the basics of Qt widgets such as using layout managers, and how signals
and slots work.
     For KDE, there is a Ruby translation of a KDE 3.0 tutorial
[http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ruby/kde3tutorial/index.html]
originally written for C++ by Antonio Larrosa Jiménez.  The sources are
in korundum/rubylib/tutorials/. In nine steps it takes you from simple
Hello Worlds in Qt and KDE, right up to building a customized browser
using the KDE::HTMLPart component which communicates with a bookmarks
app over DCOP.
     The QtRuby and Korundum bindings have been backported to Qt 3.1.x
and KDE 3.1.x, and so now it should be possible to build them on any KDE
installation from the last year or two, right up to the current KDE 3.3.
You can obtain recent CVS snapshots on the Rubyforge  QtRuby/Korundum
site [http://rubyforge.org/projects/korundum/].