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comp.lang.ruby

[ANN] FXIrb 0.14 - a Win32 GUI wrapper around IRB

Martin DeMello

2/18/2005 10:34:00 PM

- What?
FXIrb is a simple FXText wrapper around IRB, giving it useful features
like a decent GUI font and cut/paste capability. The current version
is being developed under Windows; I'll look at crossplatform operation
in a later release

- Why?
IRB in the standard Windows terminal is quite painful to use. (The
linux terminal is a lot more capable, which is why I'm concentrating
my development efforts on Windows right now). Thanks to Marco Fraillis
for the initial Windows port, and to Gilles Filippini for starting the
project.

- Where?
http://rubyforge.org/frs/?gr...

- Now what?
This is a rather alpha release; I'd mostly like people to bang on it
and see what functionality they feel is missing. My current top
priority is multiline editing, but I'm open to feature requests,
suggestions and (particularly!) contributions. If the next version
looks good, I'm going to work with Curt and Laurent and make a proper
FreeRIDE plugin out of it.

martin
21 Answers

Navindra Umanee

2/18/2005 10:43:00 PM

0

Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote:
> FXIrb is a simple FXText wrapper around IRB, giving it useful features
> like a decent GUI font and cut/paste capability. The current version
> is being developed under Windows; I'll look at crossplatform operation
> in a later release

I have to admit I'm absolutely astonished at the number of people here
who use Ruby on the Windows platform... many of them Ruby experts like
yourself.

I somehow have this image of open source languages like
Perl/Python/Ruby mostly thriving on the Unix platform. I mean sure,
there are Windows ports, but those are usually assumed to be
second-rate.

I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Windows people have to hack
software too. I would imagine they would prefer more official
development environments with fancy polished GUIs and the such, but
hey why not Ruby.

Cheers,
Navin.

Glenn Parker

2/18/2005 10:52:00 PM

0

Navindra Umanee wrote:
>
> I have to admit I'm absolutely astonished at the number of people here
> who use Ruby on the Windows platform... many of them Ruby experts like
> yourself.
>
> I somehow have this image of open source languages like
> Perl/Python/Ruby mostly thriving on the Unix platform. I mean sure,
> there are Windows ports, but those are usually assumed to be
> second-rate.
>
> I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Windows people have to hack
> software too. I would imagine they would prefer more official
> development environments with fancy polished GUIs and the such, but
> hey why not Ruby.

Percentage-wise, there probably aren't that many Ruby coders in the
Windows universe, but the Windows universe is large and vast, so you're
bound to get a few of us. Also, don't assume that only Windows
developers use Windows. I'm a long-time UNIX developer, but I typically
run Windows at home for all the usual banal reasons. Ruby on Windows is
one less reason to dual-boot.

--
Glenn Parker | glenn.parker-AT-comcast.net | <http://www.tetrafoi...

James Britt

2/19/2005 1:27:00 AM

0

Martin DeMello wrote:
> - What?
> FXIrb is a simple FXText wrapper around IRB, giving it useful features
> like a decent GUI font and cut/paste capability. The current version
> is being developed under Windows; I'll look at crossplatform operation
> in a later release
>
> - Why?
> IRB in the standard Windows terminal is quite painful to use. (The
> linux terminal is a lot more capable, which is why I'm concentrating
> my development efforts on Windows right now). Thanks to Marco Fraillis
> for the initial Windows port, and to Gilles Filippini for starting the
> project.

I confess I am not a frequent user of irb; I prefer to use vim and
execute code straight through the editor. But I tend to do a great deal
of mundane work on Win2k using the cmd shell. What features are missing
that you want to put into fxirb?

Or, put another way, what do find so painful about the cmd shell?


Thanks,


James

James Britt

2/19/2005 1:33:00 AM

0

Navindra Umanee wrote:
> Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> FXIrb is a simple FXText wrapper around IRB, giving it useful features
>> like a decent GUI font and cut/paste capability. The current version
>> is being developed under Windows; I'll look at crossplatform operation
>> in a later release
>
>
> I have to admit I'm absolutely astonished at the number of people here
> who use Ruby on the Windows platform... many of them Ruby experts like
> yourself.
>
> I somehow have this image of open source languages like
> Perl/Python/Ruby mostly thriving on the Unix platform. I mean sure,
> there are Windows ports, but those are usually assumed to be
> second-rate.
>
> I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Windows people have to hack
> software too. I would imagine they would prefer more official
> development environments with fancy polished GUIs and the such, but
> hey why not Ruby.

I really liked Visual Studio back in my VB days, and like (to the small
extent I've used it) the current .net visual studio. (SharpDevelop is
quite slick, too).

But over time I've become a big fan of the command line; I've built up a
library of tools to speed up Google searchs, library queries, TV
schedule searches, Wiki searching/editing, all from the command line.

And Gvim is my editor of choice.

By coincidence this has largely happened since I came across Ruby. Go
figure.

But I've also met a fair number of Windows hackers who also live in cmd
world. I think a certain mindset encourages the migration.


James

Curt Hibbs

2/19/2005 5:55:00 AM

0

Martin DeMello wrote:
> If the next version
> looks good, I'm going to work with Curt and Laurent and make a proper
> FreeRIDE plugin out of it.

I'm looking forward to it!

Curt

Martin DeMello

2/19/2005 9:46:00 AM

0

James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
>
> I confess I am not a frequent user of irb; I prefer to use vim and
> execute code straight through the editor. But I tend to do a great deal
> of mundane work on Win2k using the cmd shell. What features are missing
> that you want to put into fxirb?
>
> Or, put another way, what do find so painful about the cmd shell?

Clunky cut/paste is the main one, limited scrollback, occasional
weirdnesses (e.g. my cmd.exe here at home has arrow key support inside
irb, but the one at work, which us *also* win2k, just sends weird escape
sequences). To be fair, I could be subconsciously expecting it to behave
in the familiar xterm way and annoyed that it doesn't - I've never made
very heavy use of it.

martin

Martin DeMello

2/19/2005 9:56:00 AM

0

Navindra Umanee <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca> wrote:
>
> I somehow have this image of open source languages like
> Perl/Python/Ruby mostly thriving on the Unix platform. I mean sure,
> there are Windows ports, but those are usually assumed to be
> second-rate.
>
> I guess I shouldn't be so surprised. Windows people have to hack
> software too. I would imagine they would prefer more official
> development environments with fancy polished GUIs and the such, but
> hey why not Ruby.

The windows port of ruby is actually quite excellent, especially with
the one-click installer (thanks to everyone involved with that!).

I'm not too big a fan of the official development environment - we use
it at work, and some parts of it are great (the ability to easily
navigate a multithreaded stack trace, frinstance) while others are just
not to my taste. What I've ended up doing is editing using cygwin and
gvim, with ctags and glark for code navigation, and compiling and
debugging inside the visual studio IDE.

At home I dual boot, but I've been spending most of my time in Windows
lately for one very compelling reason - the fonts. Seriously, it's
easier to set up a unixish environment under windows than it is to get
decent looking small fonts under linux. And as Jamis noted, you can get
a lot accomplished from the command line these days, and ruby
definitely helps with that.

martin

lucsky

2/19/2005 10:16:00 AM

0

Navindra Umanee <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca> wrote:

> I have to admit I'm absolutely astonished at the number of people here
> who use Ruby on the Windows platform...

I have to admit I'm absolutely astonished at the number of people who
use Windows to begin with :(

--
Luc Heinrich - lucsky@mac.com

Csaba Henk

2/19/2005 10:30:00 AM

0

On 2005-02-19, Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote:
> At home I dual boot, but I've been spending most of my time in Windows
> lately for one very compelling reason - the fonts. Seriously, it's
> easier to set up a unixish environment under windows than it is to get
> decent looking small fonts under linux.

That's an interesting POV! Eh, maybe you just bumped into the wrong
distro. Eg., if you boot into Knoppix, that gives you quite a polished
look with nice fonts and transparent menus...

Csaba

Martin DeMello

2/19/2005 11:04:00 AM

0

Csaba Henk <csaba@phony_for_avoiding_spam.org> wrote:
> On 2005-02-19, Martin DeMello <martindemello@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > At home I dual boot, but I've been spending most of my time in Windows
> > lately for one very compelling reason - the fonts. Seriously, it's
> > easier to set up a unixish environment under windows than it is to get
> > decent looking small fonts under linux.
>
> That's an interesting POV! Eh, maybe you just bumped into the wrong
> distro. Eg., if you boot into Knoppix, that gives you quite a polished
> look with nice fonts and transparent menus...

I'm using RedHat FC3 at the moment, but I've been meaning to check out
Debian. Will give it a try in the near future.

martin