From: gregarican <greg.kujawa@...>
Date: 2007-07-26T21:15:00+09:00
Subject: Re: how to play .avi and view jpg?

On Jul 26, 7:40 am, arun <arun.me...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to write some client software that can play .avi videos,
> either in a window or full screen, as well as display photos. What is
> the best way to do this in Ruby? A library that works across platforms
> would be perfect, failing which, either Windows or Linux would do.
>
> Thanks,
> Arun

The simplest thing you could do if you are targeting Windows platforms
is look into the command line options for Windows Media Player and the
Microsoft Pain apps. I have done some scripting that opens up Windows
Media Player to play a selected media file and automatically close
when done. I don't have code handy right now, but googling Microsoft's
Knowledgebase should show you the proper command line options (http://
support.microsoft.com/KB/241422). Plus if you just pass the proper
graphic file to Microsoft Paint as a command line argument that should
achive something similar. Basically invoking Ruby's system() method
will facilitate this. Of course you could try all of the win32ole
stuff, but this would seemingly complicate matters beyond what's
needed. Just my $0.02 US...