Article: Glimmer - Using Ruby to Build SWT User Interfaces

Glimmer is a JRuby DSL that enables easy and efficient authoring of user-interfaces using the robust platform-independent Eclipse SWT library. Glimmer comes with built-in data-binding support to greatly facilitate synchronizing UI with domain models. The goal of the Glimmer project is to create a JRuby framework on top of Eclipse technologies to enable easy and efficient authoring of desktop applications by taking advantage of the Ruby language. With Glimmer having just become an Eclipse project, it's a good time to find out more.

Philosophy
Glimmer's design philosophy can be summarized as follows:

• Concise and DRY

• Asks for minimum info needed to accomplish task

• Convention over configuration

• As predictable as possible for existing SWT developers

Conventions
Since Glimmer relies on Ruby, it is different in its syntax and conventions from what typical Java SWT developers would expect: 

• Method parentheses are optional

• Java-vs-Ruby example: show() => show

• Method names follow underscored syntax

• Java-vs-Ruby example: addListener => add_listener

• Classes are constructed using the new(...) method (as opposed to new keyword):

• Java-vs-Ruby example: new GridLayout() => GridLayout.new

Download
Please download Glimmer from RubyForge: https://rubyforge.org/projects/glimmer/

NOTE: Glimmer is moving to Eclipse.org. Please visit http://andymaleh.blogspot.com for up-to-date news on the move and the upcoming download location on the Eclipse website.

Installation
Extract the Glimmer zip file and follow the installation instructions in the README file.

NOTE: While Glimmer is platform-independent, its functionality has only been verified on Windows. Feedback from Mac and Linux users would be greatly appreciated....

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Courtesy:- http://eclipse.dzone.com/