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ruby in multimedia: a state of affairs

December 9, 2006

ruby is the shiny new jewel for attacking all and any programming task. But it a has a dirty secret. No, i'm not talking performance here. I don't usally care for performance, it hardly doesn't matter with fast machines and low volume traffic. I'm talking about multimedia and thereby i basically mean gfx. A while ago i already checked for OpenGL bindings and in the past i played with rmovie, scruffy, gruffy and RMagick. RMagick is kind of mature and it got the job done. Still, I don't get to like RMagick though, that might be to the fact i did(and learned) coding on SGI machines for way to long(sigh), more than 10 years. There i got used to/hooked on the basic idea of integrated multimedia environments. SGI was way ahead at their times and it was a pleasure to join them on their ride, while it lasted(most of the time, but that is another story, for the history books maybe -> serious fun with sirus(tm) boards).

Nowerdays i make a living out of everything centered around internet related lifestyle oriented marketing driven projects, huh. Despite this prosaic description that is ok, actually it is great. I have a lot of really great cool people around me, working with them is a pleasure. But still, sometimes i got reminded to some old projects of mine and actually have the task of undusting some stuff for beeing revitalized in a museal context and than i go and check for updates of the above mentions mumedia bindings. And that is no fun. Way to slow progress there. I would love dropping all old-school technology(c++, Java) and just use ruby for taming the the beast (beast in this case are all modern gfx cards). Processing is java and can't win my heart. My current hope now is G3DRuby.  And here is the deal: I will try my very best to help establishing solid multimedia bindings for ruby. For Q3 2007 i have an exhibition scheduled, until then i will look for places in opensource multimedia ruby land which might need a helping hand. Requests welcomed.

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