From: Eric Christopherson <echristopherson@...>
Date: 2013-03-27T05:08:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby in HTA?

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Joel Pearson <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:
> I've just discovered the existence of HTA (HTML Applications), and
> although I can now quite happily write basic HTA in JavaScript and
> VBScript, I wondered whether anyone knew how to write this kind of thing
> in Ruby.
>
> I have no experience in Rails and no server to use; I was thinking of
> something that can work as a standalone application in Windows, using a
> HTML front-end as a simple alternative to Ruby's GUI libraries.

I hadn't heard of this either. I'm guessing you'd have to use some
sort of Ruby that compiles to JavaScript; there are a few listed at
<https://github.com/cogitator/ruby-implementations/wiki/List-of-Ruby-implementations>,
although none are really close to "native" Ruby functionality.

>
> I have tried to look this up, but all the results I get are sub-searches
> within dodgy download sites.
>
> If this isn't possible or not a good trade-off of time and results, then
> I guess I'll just have to write in VBS and JavaScript.

What use case do you have for HTAs? Are you just trying to write
non-web GUI apps without having to do Tk or one of the other
established GUI frameworks? If so, I seem to recall there being
another runtime environment that lets you use web technologies as if
they were native apps, and I believe it was open source, but apart
from that I don't recall the details of it at all.