From: Vincent Manis <vmanis@...>
Date: 2011-04-14T10:35:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for beginners (was: Re: Hello)

On 2011-04-13, at 08:03, Phillip Gawlowski wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Vincent Manis <vmanis@telus.netwrote
> 
>> As for Tk not appearing with current Ruby installers, oops on my part.
> 
> How often do you check for Tk? ;)
Not very often, most of my Ruby work isn't GUI-based. However, on both OSX 10.6 and Ubuntu GNU/Linux I am running versions of Ruby 1.9.1 that I built myself from source code, and both seem to have Tk active. 

>> So. How do we get an IDLE-like editor that will work at least on Windows and Mac that is
>> plausible to ship as part of the installers?
> 
> Preferrably, something written once, yet running everywhere. I'd
> suggest using JRuby, and a JRuby-based editor, that is easy to use,
> yet works well enough with Ruby (it doesn't have to be perfect: A
> newby who wants to explore programming in the first place isn't going
> to complain about having the wrong editor, as as long as there is *an*
> editor).
> 

This might be a good way to go. I'm queasy about requiring Java to be installed, though. 
Your thoughts on redcar might well alter that. 

-- vincent