From: Bill Turner Date: 2002-01-12T07:41:10+09:00 Subject: Newbie Q's... I have just installed Ruby 1.6.6 under Linux. I have d/l'd the FAQ and the hmtl version of the "Programming Ruby" book. I have not had time to do more than skim those so far. From what I saw in the book Ruby sounds like a very interesting language. I particularly like the "multiple platform" capabilities I've seen described, and that is actually what my primary question concerns. I have seen Ruby called a "scripting language" and compared, very favorably, to Python and Perl both. I have experience with neither of those, nor with smalltalk, nor Java. Ruby will be my first venture into the "Land of OOP" and I am looking forward very much to doing that. My biggest question right now is very simple really. If I design and code a project using Ruby - under Linux - then how would I go about getting that application to run under Windows? Is there some kind of a "run time" deal like Visual Basic has? After all, from my perspective, I can hardly expect every person that wanted to install my application to have Ruby already installed and just sitting there waiting for me. :) What libraries, etc. would I need to include with my app to be sure the user had it available on their system? I saw in the book that Ruby can be used to "code GUI apps" but that was as far as I got. Only so many hours in the day after all. :) What's needed to do that? Are these questions already answered in the book (or the FAQ)? If they are then I would appreciate a pointer to the correct spot please. If not then if someone could direct to where I could get them answered that would be great. I'm hoping this is the right place. Even for "stone Newbies" like me. :) One final question. I saw that the Ruby install had included some "*.el" files to help with writing Ruby code using Emacs. I was very pleased to see this as Emacs is my editor of choice. I modified my .emacs file to load those up and I guess my next question is how to go about actually using them. Is it something that is "automatic" - like it is with C? I started just writing a little test thing but when I loaded Emacs it told me I was in "text mode" and I was thinking that if I loaded a file with the .rb it should have put me into "ruby-mode" instead of "text-mode" so I just kind of left it be for the moment until I could find more time to look into it. What is it exactly that "ruby-mode" will do for me? I did see somewhere a description of how to do some formatting of the "ruby source" (to show results or something like that I think it was) but that was all, so far at least. Thanks... Bill -- -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GIT d-- s: a? C+++ UL++++ P+ L+++ E W+++ N++ o- K- w--- O M- V-- PS+++ PE Y++ PGP+++ t+ 5++ X+ R tv b+++ DI+++ D G e++ h r y- ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ Got 30 seconds? Feed somebody. Tried Linux? No? Why not? GnuPG Public key available...PGP Public Key available... Bill Turner