Shoes is a GUI toolkit based on the
Ruby
A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapp ...
programming language. It was originally developed by
Jonathan Gillette (why the lucky stiff), and others are carrying on with it after his disappearance. Shoes runs on
Microsoft Windows,
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
and
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...
(
GTK+
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...
), using the underlying technologies of
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...
and
Pango
Pango (stylized as Παν語) is a text (i.e. glyph) layout engine library which works with the HarfBuzz shaping engine for displaying multi-language text.
Full-function rendering of text and cross-platform support is achieved when Pango is use ...
.
Shoes' philosophy is one of simplicity. It's designed to make applications as easy as possible. Here's an example Shoes app:
Shoes.app :title => "Push Button" do
@note = para "Nothing pushed so far"
button "Push me" do
@note.replace "Aha! The button was pushed!"
end
end
Shoes has all the common widgets you would expect for creating a graphical application as well as graphic primitives to draw art like
lines, circles, and even physics (via
Chipmunk
Chipmunks are small, striped rodents of the family Sciuridae. Chipmunks are found in North America, with the exception of the Siberian chipmunk which is found primarily in Asia.
Taxonomy and systematics
Chipmunks may be classified either as ...
) cRruby extensions. Shoes 3 includes its own embedded MRI/cRuby Ruby and does not require the end user to install Ruby. It provides a customized Rubygems environment that does not conflict with any existing Ruby that might exist.
Developers can also package up their scripts in several ways to easily share with other users who have Shoes installed. Advanced developers in Shoes 3 have many deployment options available including very platform specific applications with unique gems and their own custom installer to create their own unique Applications.
Releases
* _why releases:
# v1, "Curious"
# v2, "Raisins"
* Post-_why releases:
# v3.1, "Policeman"
# v3.2 "Federales"
# v3.3 "Walkabout"
The current release is version 3.3. which is MRI/cruby based. Shoes 4 is a major re-write for jRuby supporting the "Policeman" capabilities (API) and keeping the educational spirit of _why_the_lucky_stiff.
Shoes 3.3 embraces the unique things that MRI Ruby can do with native extensions and gems, even if they are platform specific. Shoes 3.3.1 reimplemented the video_widget in "Raisins", even if it won't work in all edge cases. It also includes an SVG widget and some manipulation abilities for svg files.
Shoe 3.3.2 (in beta) adds a profiler, a new optional command line terminal, byebug debugging, and plot widget for drawing simple charts.
References
External links
Shoes homepageShoes 3 Git Repository - CurrentShoes 3 Git Repository - not maintainedShoes 4 Git Repository
{{Widget toolkits
Articles with example Ruby code
Free software programmed in C
Free software programmed in Ruby
Software using the MIT license
Widget toolkits