From: Andrew McGuinness <a.mcguinness@...>
Date: 2006-02-11T22:03:24+09:00
Subject: Graphics in irb

I'm starting to teach my 7-year-old programming in Ruby, but unlike 
Scheme or Python or Logo, there doesn't seem to be a graphical 
interactive environment, such as DrScheme or Livewires.

It should be easy to create one, and I've made a start using Tk and irb.
I've come across what looks like an ommission in irb:

The IRB::Irb constructor takes optional "input_method" and 
"output_method" parameters.  I've created an InputMethod subclass that 
reads commands from a GUI window, which works, but the output method is 
ignored - it's passed to the IRB::Context object, but never used.

It looks like something like the following is missing:

module IRB
   class Context
     def output( str )
       @output_method.print( str )
     end
   end

   class Irb
     def printf( *args )
       @context.output( sprintf( *args ) )
     end
   end
end

By doing that, I can then direct irb's output to my GUI object.

How should this get fixed in irb?

-- 
Andrew McGuinness