From: Doug Beaver <doug@...>
Date: 2002-03-24T09:59:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for Mac OS 10.1

On Sun, Mar 24, 2002 at 05:48:24AM +0900, Jim Freeze wrote:
> Hi:
> 
> I am thinking about getting a mac laptop
> with OS 10. Does Ruby work well with the Mac?
> That is, easy to install, no missing features,
> etc. I currently use Ruby on FreeBSD and SunOS.
> 
> I assume that it does (all I do now are commandline
> programs) since OS 10 is really FreeBSD under the hood.

I haven't seen any problems with command line Ruby scripts in OS X.  I
never used ruby/tk (or any of the other ruby guis) before I switched to
OS X, but you can use RubyCocoa and RubyAEOSA to make quick gui apps in
ruby.  They were both written by Hisakuni Fujimoto, you can read more
about them here:

http://www.imasy.or.jp/~hisa/mac/rubycocoa/
http://www.imasy.or.jp/~hisa/mac/rubyaeosa/

I've used RubyAEOSA a lot more than I've used RubyCocoa, RubyAEOSA gives
you easy access to AppleEvents and AppleScript.  You can use it to send
AppleEvent messages to running apps, many of them have AppleScript
support built in (Internet Explorer, iTunes, etc, etc).  Here's a cute
script that speaks words passed to it on the command line:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'osx/aeosa'

phrase = ARGV.join ' '
SCRIPT = <<SCRIPT
  say "#{phrase}"
SCRIPT

OSX.do_osascript (SCRIPT)
__END__

I use a more complex version of this script to speak the time out loud
every 15 minutes while I'm using my ibook.  I'm thinking about adding a
feature so it tells me to get up and go exercise after I've been typing
for an hour.  :-)

Doug

-- 
Space Ghost: Moltar, I have a giant brain that is able to reduce any
             complex machine into a simple yes or no answer.
     Moltar: Okay, but that's not the cd burner...
Space Ghost: Moltar! <pause> Yes!