Extending & Distributing Ruby

[paul h]

Hi all,

Has anyone any ideas if it is possible to embed a Flash Player ActiveX
Control on Windows or Plugin on *nix, into a Ruby program? Can Ruby
interact with, control or display a swf?

I have searched the group and found a few links but nothing is newer
than 2005, and the links appear to be dead, so was just wondering if
there have been any developments in this area that anybody knows
about.

I do a lot of UI work in Flex, and would like to continue using Flex
for this, while using Ruby for the main program code. I currently
write the UI in MXML, and the main program code is in ActionScript 3
Classes. I then port the whole thing to a Win32 EXE using a SWF2EXE
wrapper tool. I would much prefer to be able to move away from
ActionScript and write the program code in Ruby while continuing to
use Flex for the UI.

I could do the following:
1. convert a Flex built swf into a Windows exe with a SWF2EXE wrapper
2. package my Ruby code, MRI and any dependancies with RubyScript2EXE
3. call my ruby code from the Flex built exe sending params to the
commandline, and receiving output from STDOUT - enabling the two to
interact.

However, I think a better way would be to embed the swf into the ruby
code itself, so that ruby controls the whole show. It would also make
the program more portable between OS's since my SWF2EXE wrapper is
only Windows - no Mac or *nix support.

If anyone has any ides on this, I'd be very grateful.

I am about to start looking into what Ruby can do on the GUI front
tonight as well, but if anyone can point me in the right direction
there, I would be grateful. I have found:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc...UVlRGdGQzbkJlbXc&hl=en&authkey=CKHc3rwM#gid=0

Which gives me some avenues to investigate, but advice based on
experience would be appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

 

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from paul h's message of Thu Dec 02 14:45:23 +0100 2010:

Hi all,

Has anyone any ideas if it is possible to embed a Flash Player ActiveX
Control on Windows or Plugin on *nix, into a Ruby program? Can Ruby
interact with, control or display a swf?

I have searched the group and found a few links but nothing is newer
than 2005, and the links appear to be dead, so was just wondering if
there have been any developments in this area that anybody knows
about.

ActiveX is Windows only. Flash runs on linux - but at least my (debug)
player on linux has some flaws (some crashes - and I can't always click
on everything) So whatever you do test it.

There is also gnash - an open source implementation of flash - but AFAIK
its missing features.

Flash standalone applications are called "air" apps. I don't have much
expierence with them. Maybe it helps you when using a search engine.

Good luck.

Marc Weber

 

[Mike Stephens]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubyonflash/

http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=15379

http://rubyforge.org/projects/mingruby/

 

[paul h]

Excerpts from paul h's message of Thu Dec 02 14:45:23 +0100 2010:




ActiveX is Windows only. Flash runs on linux - but at least my (debug)
player on linux has some flaws (some crashes - and I can't always click
on everything) So whatever you do test it.

I don't appear to be having any problems with Flash on Linux - the
Firefox plug-in appears to be pretty stable (Ubuntu 10.4) - not
installed the debug player due to doing Flex work on a Win box.

There is also gnash - an open source implementation of flash - but AFAIK
its missing features.

Flash standalone applications are called "air" apps. I don't have much
expierence with them. Maybe it helps you when using a search engine.

Good luck.

Marc Weber

Flash on the desktop (without a SWF2EXE tool) and AIR apps (also need
to ensure the customer has the AIR runtimes from Adobe), are a little
bit restricted as far as OS interaction is concerned so I was looking
for some solution where I can use Flash/Flex for the UI, embedded into
a Ruby program - I also want to deliver to Win,*nix and Mac - my
SWF2EXE tool is Win only - which is why I was hoping for a ruby based
solution.

However, I do all my ruby work on Ubuntu, and will look into Tk for
the UI.

Thanks anyway Marc

Paul

 

[paul h]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubyonflash/

http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=15379

http://rubyforge.org/projects/mingruby/

Hi Mike,

Thanks, I'll look at the links tonight.

Paul