[Insight-users] Ruby wrapper for ITK?

[Gaëtan Lehmann]

Le Wed, 01 Nov 2006 04:45:12 +0100, Ali - <saveez at hotmail.com> a écrit:

> Gaetan,
>
> Thanks for your answer. I understand that there are other wrapped  
> languages for ITK, however, ruby is another story -- despite being  
> painfully slow, its popularity is amazingly increasing (see this  
> http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index). It seems ruby is going to  
> overtake python by the end of this year and, in long term, it could be  
> as popular as java.

That's surely a language I'd like to see in ITK's supported languages,  
even if my preference still goes to python :-)

>
> The problem with binding a new language in ITK and VTK is that they are  
> not designed for independent language binding, ie, adding a wrapper as  
> an add-on. It is a shame having this condition while the developments is  
> based on the highly-configurable cmake system. Perhaps ITK and VTK  
> should have been designed in a way that people could contribute their  
> wrapping add-ons simply as a new independent directory rather than  
> editing countless cmake files in many directories. In this way, you have  
> to ship the wrapper either as a patch or as together with the full  
> source codes, none of them are attractive.

I have began to do that some months ago, but have stupidly lost all my  
changes while cleaning my hard drive.
Anyway, ITK is a lot more difficult to wrap than VTK for example. We have  
made it *easily* extensible for new classes. Perhaps it will be easily  
extensible for new languages in the future, but the need is clearly less  
important.
That being said, the number of cmake files to edit to add a new languages  
should be quite small: not much than 4, and I hope to reduce it soon, when  
moving to a full swig instead of cableswig.

>
> Unfortunately, it seems that the official developers do not mind this

That's something I wanted to do, but the time needed to do that seem more  
important than the interest for that feature, especially when considering  
re-doing some work (stupidely) lost.
Now, if several developers want to wrap ITK for several new languages,  
that's something which can be reconsidered.

> problem as the recent versions still drag the old mixed wrapping  
> structure.

Can you detail what you call the "old mixed structure" ?

Gaetan

>
> I will let you know when some spare time is available to kill it on yet  
> another wrapper.
>
>>
>> Hi Ali,
>>
>> There is no ruby wrapper for ITK, and there is no plan to do that,  
>> unless  someone motivated and with a good knowledge of ruby want to  
>> work on that.  ITK is already wrapped for python, tcl and java. The  
>> work already done  should be easy to reuse to wrap ITK for another  
>> language.
>>
>> Please contact me if you are interested on working on ruby wrapper,  
>> and  we'll discuss how it can be done.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Gaetan
>>
>>
>>
>> Le Mon, 30 Oct 2006 03:59:33 +0100, Ali - <saveez at hotmail.com> a écrit:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Is there a Ruby wrapper available for ITK? Are ITK developers going  
>>> to  consider it as part of the official release -- if yes, when?
>>>
>>> SWIG supports Ruby, would the existing SWIG wrapper be able to wrap  
>>> ITK  or does it need re-implementation?
>>>
>>> There is a Ruby wrapper available for VTK, would it be of any use for   
>>> wrapping ITK?
>>>
>>> _________________________________________________________________
>>> Windows Liveâ„¢ Messenger has arrived. Click here to download it for  
>>> free!  http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/?locale=en-gb
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Insight-users mailing list
>>> Insight-users at itk.org
>>> http://www.itk.org/mailman/listinfo/insight-users
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gaëtan Lehmann
>> Biologie du Développement et de la Reproduction
>> INRA de Jouy-en-Josas (France)
>> tel: +33 1 34 65 29 66    fax: 01 34 65 29 09
>> http://voxel.jouy.inra.fr
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Be the first to hear what's new at MSN - sign up to our free  
> newsletters! http://www.msn.co.uk/newsletters
>



-- 
Gaëtan Lehmann
Biologie du Développement et de la Reproduction
INRA de Jouy-en-Josas (France)
tel: +33 1 34 65 29 66    fax: 01 34 65 29 09
http://voxel.jouy.inra.fr