The manual does discuss some of the odd behavior for how, when and why Shoes sets self. Hello->Rules. Changing those rules would require a lot of work, breaks compatibility with Shoes 2, 3, and (probably) 4. It might be easier to resurrect the WxRuby & WxSugar projects.

Thank you for the reference. Your assessment is correct.

The manual section Hello->Rules doesn't make much sense to me. The approach taken by Shoes is flat in the hope to keep certain objects alive and breaks what would otherwise be normal Ruby behaviour. This unfortunately makes it necessary to create variables to access objects in their own block. It seems to be both a design feature and a design flaw.

Requires further investigation.

Shoes only looks like Ruby! Repeat. Shoes only looks like Ruby! I imagine many of the newer Ruby meta-programming facilities will fail spectacularly in Shoes. Shoes is not Ruby. Shoes is not Ruby. Shoe is not ...

That part of the manual should warn experienced Rubyists more forcefully that Shoes is different. But even experienced people don't read the manual until something fails.

That part of the manual should warn experienced Rubyists more forcefully that Shoes is different. But even experienced people don't read the manual until something fails.

I read it before but the implications were unclear at that time. Reading it again now that you provided a context proved challenging. I had to read it few times to fully understand what was going on. Sometimes the manual is prettier than useful. It would be really good with additional clarifications and better outline of what can do what, e.g. Shoes.app has access only to a subset of styles.