[fxruby-users] "managed" canvas?

[Lyle Johnson]

On Jul 22, 2004, at 7:31 AM, Bil wrote:

> I am aware that people have, in the past, asked for a Tk-style canvas 
> object that manages shapes (etc) within it. I'm currently doing some 
> work with 2D vector graphics as part of my final year University 
> project (so far you can draw/select/drag polygons/images and export as 
> SVG). Would it make sense to put the extra effort in and make my own 
> work more generically useful?
>
> I've been looking for an open-source project to get into for a while 
> and this seems like one that would be useful for myself and probably 
> for others. The problem is that I really am not a professional 
> programmer (...yet) - I am sure I could get something that *worked* 
> well enough, but whether it would be well designed (in terms of API or 
> architecture) is another question. I feel in a lot of ways that I 
> would be better joining an existing project (and learning at the feet 
> of those in the know) rather than starting my own (and blazing my own 
> trail!).

Well, the bottom line (for me) is that (1) a lot of people would be 
interested in having this, and (2) no one's working on it. So yes, I 
think people would be interested in it, whatever shape it's in.

One reality of most software projects is that the first cut ultimately 
gets thrown away. So I wouldn't lose much sleep if your software 
architecture and API aren't what you'd like for them to be; just 
consider this one a prototype for the improved "version 2." And as you 
are probably already aware, an advantage of the open source approach is 
that you'll have (potentially) a lot of eyes looking at the code and 
offering suggestions on how to improve it.