After a relatively small number of changes required to the code, FXRuby is now working on the trunk version of Ruby 1.9.0. These fixes will be available in the next release of FXRuby. I’ve only played around with some of the example programs so far, and certainly haven’t tried to do any benchmarking, but I can tell you that it feels a lot faster. Ruby’s poor performance has often made it a hard sell in certain environments and for certain kinds of applications; based on what I’ve seen so far, the new VM implementation for Ruby 1.9 is really going to change things!

Some of the handful of readers of this blog already know about this, but I can now officially announce that I’m writing a book about FXRuby for the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I’m excited about this project because it will be the first book ever dedicated to the subject of FOX and FXRuby application development. I’m especially excited to be writing for the Pragmatic Programmers, who over the past few years have set a new standard of excellence for software development books.

The working title for the book is FXRuby: Create Lean and Mean GUIs with Ruby, and it will be published next April. The purpose of this book is to give you a head start on developing GUI applications with Ruby and FXRuby through a combination of tutorial exercises and focused technical information. It isn’t a comprehensive book on FXRuby programming, and it’s not a reference manual. What this book will do is get you over the initial conceptual hurdles and equip you with the practical information that you need to build your own applications.

The book is intended for software developers who are already comfortable with Ruby programming and who want to learn how to develop GUI applications with Ruby. No prior experience with GUI development is needed, but it’s intended to be useful both to newcomers as well as those who have worked with other GUI toolkits in the past. As the book gets closer to completion, we will be looking for help from technical reviewers. Watch this space for updates!