From: David Koontz <david@...>
Date: 2008-06-10T06:29:26+09:00
Subject: Re: GUI library/framework?


On Jun 8, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:

> AzimuthDragon wrote:
>> Is that so? Sounds cool. So I would be able to package my entire  
>> program into a jar, .app or executable? I'm still not quite sure  
>> how to get it to load things from outside the executable though,  
>> because the program isn't installed into C:\Program Files. Most  
>> often it's extracted into a folder on the user's desktop, so it  
>> needs to be able to generate a filepath. I have been using  
>> Dir.getwd to generate a filepath to my main file, and then an  
>> argument passed to the filepath method adds folder names onto the  
>> end, lol. Would that still work, do you think? Here is my basic  
>> structure for the program's directory, say it's in a folder called  
>> Ecko (doh). It would look like this, if you outlined it.
>
> Yeah, that's the goal behind David Koontz's stuff in Monkeybars and  
> Rawr. I'm pretty sure you can provide your own structure, but he'd  
> probably know better. David, you out there?
>
> Alternatively, try #monkeybars on freenode during the week.
>
> - Charlie
>

Rawr will let you package everything up into a single jar that you can  
double click on to launch your app.  Inside your program you'll want  
to use the get_resource method Rawr provides to find your files inside  
your jar (it works outside as well).  The nice thing about that is if  
you decide to later split out some data portion of your app into its  
own jar (which rawr can generate for you as well) you don't have to  
change anything.  The Java resource lookup system is pretty good, so  
as long as the data jar file is loaded on your classpath (which rawr  
takes care of for you) it "just works".  We can answer more specific  
questions over on #monkeybars on Freenode.

David Koontz