From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2004-10-08T23:11:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Anyone else successfully install Alph (Ruby Flash GUI framework)?

On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 11:57:59PM +0900, Abraham Vionas_mailinglist wrote:
> Hey, is anyone else using (or attempting to use) Alph?
> 
> It's a Ruby GUI framework based on Flash/Actionscript. 
> 
> http://alph.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?HomePage
> 
> 
> If anyone else has gotten this to run can you help me figure out how to
> install it successfully. It doesn't have an "install" script, and I can't
> seem to get Ruby to "see" it (i.e. a "require" doesn't find it).

If you read the README, you'll see:

  ./README          # this file
  ./readme.html     # main documentation
  ./readme.css      # style sheet for readme.html
  ./alph_icons.pdf  # list of included graphic icons in Alph
  ./examples/..     # actual Alph ruby examples + binary flash stuff
  ./lib/..          # alph Ruby code
  ./actionscript/.. # ActionScript classes (package org/rubyforge/alph)
                      if you really want to see the guts of operation.
  ./java/..         # Obsidian cross-platform projector

You should also have an additional swt directory; see the documentation
for more details.

If you want to install Alph, you'll need to:

  1. Make sure you can run the examples (I'm still on this step; the swt
     library doesn't seem to like my hybrid redhat 7.2/7.3/9.0/fedora
     core 2/rawide machine).
  2. Copy the lib directory to the right place (for me, this is
     /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8); require 'alph' should now work.
  3. Copy the java directory to its desired location.  Add it to your
     classpath.
  4. Copy the swt directory to its desired location.  When you create
     your application, instantiate it with the path to the swt
     directory:
      app = Alph::Application.new('/usr/local/alph/swt')

This assumes that you want to use Alph for standalone guis.  If you want
to use it for web applications, a little more needs to be done, but I'm
not completely sure what yet, as I'm stilly trying to get it to work
(the flash movie seems to be returning nil for any request that is made
of it; I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but I don't know what yet).

Paul