Webview samples

[rehali]

I have some samples that I built for webview, especially for testing with leaflet.js (for mapping and plotting paths, waypoints and markers). Are they of any use to you. I was thinking of just creating a few blog posts for people to see how leaflet might be used with wxRuby3. What are your thoughts?

[mcorino]

If the sample can be simply added to the samples folder without any very large assets or very special requirements I'll be very happy to add it there. For now I have a ported version of the wxWidgets webview sample on the feature development branch.

[mcorino]

BTW, blogs also sound awesome.

[mcorino]

Full WebView support has been merged to the master branch.
I'm currently planning to release a new version of wxRuby3 including this the first half of March so if you would like your sample(s) to be included you should create PRs (preferably 1 PR per sample) well before that time.

[mcorino]

Full WebView support has been merged to the master branch. I'm currently planning to release a new version of wxRuby3 including this the first half of March so if you would like your sample(s) to be included you should create PRs (preferably 1 PR per sample) well before that time.

Oops, I meant first half of April of course!

[rehali]

Sorry for the delay in responding. I've been working on a tutorial series for people wanting to learn wxRuby. I'll extract a couple of the webview samples and put them in a PR. One of them incorporates mapping using leaflet.js and the other shows charting using chart.js. (the js files are downloadable from the web separately. When the tutorial series is finished (probably next week) I can give you a link if you'd like to review it (or add a link to it).

[rehali]

I've uploaded the initial version of the WxRuby Tutorial I've been building. It's at https://www.rehali.com - I'd be happy if you could have a look at it and offer any suggestions. There are some webview samples in Module 5. I don't know if they'd be suitable as samples for you - I have a few other samples that I didn't use.

[mcorino]

This is truly very nice!
I will go over it in more detail but for now:

• why use line numbers for shell code? multi-line sections look 'ok' but single line sections look just weird
• Module 1:
  • the links for lessons 1, 2 and 4 do not work (in the side bar they do)
  • in lesson 2 I think the text
    This is why Module 3 covers threading: moving slow work off the event loop is not optional polish, it is a basic requirement for a usable app.
    is too strongly put. Modern CPUs are more than capable to perform a LOT of work in a, for human perception, short amount of time keeping a wxRuby3 GUI app responsive even without threads. Take for example your own markdown editor sample which works perfectly fine on regular event handling without threading. Another is the updated event/threaded.rb sample in wxRuby3 1.8.0 (master branch currently) which now also contains a Fiber based sample which shows an awful lot of work can be done in 100 msec timeslices running of the regular idle event handler and still be responsive.
  • in lesson 3 this text
    On macOS and Linux, this installs the gem but does not yet build the native extensions. That is the next step.
    is incorrect. wxRuby3 releases provide prebuilt binary packages for macOS 14 (arm only), macOS15 and macOS 26 (both arm and intel) as well as for a range of the most recent releases of Linux distributions. The binary packages will always be compatible with the latest major Ruby versions and in the case of Linux mostly for the system (distro) supplied Ruby version as well. In such environments executing gem install wxruby3 will result in complete wxRuby3 execution environment.
  • also in lesson 3 the text explaining to install prerequisites for wxRuby3 on Debian/Ubuntu and/or Fedora is unnecessarily confusing I feel. By default gem install wxruby3 should always favor installing a prebuilt binary package if available (no need for system supplied wxWidgets libraries and guaranteed to be the latest stable). If not available the wxRuby3 setup procedure will install an embedded wxWidgets version for you (also guaranteeing the latest stable). Please report if this does not work because it should.
  • in lesson 4 the text and copy its source to your working directory with the Copy button. is too simple. Copying a sample requires opening the editor for the sample code (Inspect sample button) and from the editor select the Save option to save the sample to a folder of choice.

As far as threading is concerned you should checkout the staging branch of the Github repository for the wxRuby3 Wiki and read the updated HowTo: Events and concurrency document and/or have a look at the update event/threaded.rb sample on the wxRuby3 master branch. I have recently added full threading support (Thread and Ractor) for wxRuby3 including a customized event loop implementation which foregoes the need for user supplied code to allow the Ruby scheduler to run Thread or Ractor code. This will be included in the upcoming 1.8.0 release.

[rehali]

Thanks for the feedback - really appreciated. I'll be making the updates based on your comments. If you think I've missed out on any important features, please let me know. It's a work 'in progress'.

[rehali]

I've addressed most of your concerns so far. After the 1.8.0 release I'll revisit the threading section. My main interest is in GIS so I'm looking to add some tutorials on using postGIS (postgreSQL + GIS support). I normally use:

gem "pg"
gem "activerecord"
gem "activerecord-postgis-adapter"
gem "rgeo"

Any thoughts? wxRuby would make an interesting playground for GIS (especially with the polars gem as well).

[mcorino]

I have no personal experience with GIS but I would love to see an example wxRuby3 app using activerecord and databases so have at it.

[rehali]

It was my original intent just to write a blog post about building a GIS type app with wxRuby3 - I kind of got sidetracked!

[mcorino]

not bad for a sidetrack ;-)

[mcorino]

I've moved this thread over to discussions as this is not really a wxRuby issue in the sense of a bug, problem or anything like that.

It would also be easier if I could comment on your source content through something like the Github interface like that instead of having to post my comments here in a rather disjointed way.

[mcorino]

For now however:

• module 1|lesson 3 : The installation instructions for Linux still describe installing the wxWidgets libraries which I feel is not what should be advised for a default test install. As I said by default the wxRuby3 gem install will favor a matching binary package install falling back to a source install requiring the setup command if no matching package is found. The setup process will build the native extension using either a compatible system installed wxWidgets version (which in most cases will be a release significantly lagging behind the latest release) or download and build an embedded wxWidgets release (which is guaranteed to be the latest release). Your instructions will leave the user with a functional wxRuby3 installation that not only (most likely) missing out on the latest improvements but which also may not enable all possible modules of wxRuby3 because of the system used wxWidgets configuration whereas the embedded version will always support all modules by default. In addition installing build essentials is not necessary also I think, as the setup procedure would (should) install these as dependencies of the various development libraries it will automatically install unless explicitly told otherwise.
• module 1|lesson 3 | Installing the gem : As this section is now it will seem to the reader that the wxruby setup command is unconditionally required following the gem install wxruby3 step. It should be noted however that the wxruby setup step is only required if no matching binary package could be found and installed which can be checked with the wxruby check command.

[mcorino]

You are probable aware of this; the shell code sections in module 1 now read a lot better without the line numbering. This is however an issue found throughout the other modules as well. Line numbers for Ruby code is fine although one-liners look strange with the unseparated line number in front (see for example 'Module 2 | Lesson 1 | Step 2' the second code section).

[mcorino]

Not really a comment but a remark; adhering rigorously to a build_ui vs bind_events may also have serious downsides in complex frame creations as in requiring either having to define a lot more unique control ids than really necessary or needing more instance variables to hold control instances than necessary.
Separating UI build from binding events might require to know either a unique ID for binding an event or an instance variable holding the control instance. In case the building code is combined with the event binding in many a local variable holding the control instance will suffice. Instead of functional separation of initialization code in many cases structural separation might be better (UI parts).

[rehali]

That's more a reflection of my background - I'm more used to MVC type apps in Rails so separation of concerns comes natural to me. That's why a separation of UI from Events seemed the way to go. If I understand what you're saying it's that a better model is binding the event as part of the build_ui so we only need a local variable. I can revise the Patterns and Architecture section to make a discussion and suggestion on this basis.

[mcorino]

I'll not pretend to 'know best' so 'better model' is a bit strong. It's simply that in a lot of cases there is no need to capture control instance references in instance variables while there is a need to bind events to them. Button(-like) controls (which includes checkboxes) for example rarely need explicit unique ids or instance variable for later reference while we definitely want to bind events for them. Other controls may require unique ids (radiobutton groups) or instance variables (controls with user changeable content like text controls). Unconditionally separating UI building and event binding will force you to either always use unique ids or instance variables (as you need ids or control references to bind events).

[mcorino]

Might it be an idea to add a reference to the wxRuby3 Wiki HowTo section somewhere in Module 2 (possibly at the end of lesson 2)? There the user would find event more simple user examples of various widgets including more detailed information on supported styles and such.

[mcorino]

Module 2 | Lesson 3 : You might add at the end of the lesson a reference to the HowTo for GridBagSizer with a note that for even more complex grid sizer placements this would provide more options.

[rehali]

I've taken on board all your suggestions and provided more links into your User Guide and Reference Docs. I completely changed the installation instructions and have included your table from the INSTALLATION.md page (with attribution), as long as you are happy with that. I can remove it if you feel it's not appropriate.

[mcorino]

Not sure what went wrong but t seems I can't find your new install instructions.
I only found a new section regarding the required Ruby version which says:
wxRuby3 requires Ruby 3.1 or later. Check your version:
This is not correct. As of wxRuby3 1.8.0 Ruby 3.0 is the minimum required version.

[rehali]

Oops! forgot to deploy.

[mcorino]

Ok, that looks good now.
Only now the Prerequisites section at the end of the tutorial overview looks a little confusing. I would remove the wxruby setup (and possibly also wxruby check) line(s) there. The only real requirement is to install the gem. If all goes wel that's all a user needs (he can check with wxruby check but that's not a requirement).

[mcorino]

Except for the remaining line numbers in shell code blocks it all looks fine to me know.
I like your samples a lot but I do not think we should add them to the standard samples as they introduce more dependencies and do not add much basic wxRuby sample code that can not also be found in the other samples. I like them mostly because they expand on the standard samples in providing more insight in real-life options for wxRuby applications in combination with other Ruby libraries.
So I think instead of adding them to the standard samples a better option will be to start listing links to your (and hopefully other) samples and tutorials in documentation/Wiki and forum posts.

[mcorino]

I'm going to prepare for the 1.8.0 release end of this week.
After that is out you can let me know when you are ready to go public with your tutorial/blog and I will add mentions and (re)post about it as well.

[rehali]

Looking forward to the new release. I've removed all the line numbers from shell code ( and a few single line scripts as well). The prerequisites section has gone too. I'm happy for you to add a mention about the tutorial - there's a chat available for the site so if anything else crops up, users can leave a note there. I'll be starting on my GIS/ActiveRecord playground at the weekend. I'll be building it with wxRuby3, so it might turn into another tutorial.

I agree about not including any of the samples in your official docs - your samples are already quite comprehensive.