NEWBIE: What is the dos-box for and why is it there?

[Noble Bell]

I am very new to Ruby. In fact I just downloaded it and started looking
at it today. I am using Windows.

Here is my question:

I loaded the program "fxri" and upon starting I got a screen full of
warning messages in a ms-dos box. Then a new window was opened with the
running program.

Do all Windows Ruby programs operate like this? I mean is there a
dos-box and also a regular Window for each program?

I am lost and any help would be appreciated here.

What I want to do is write GUI desktop applications in Ruby that are
platform-independent but yet have a native look and feel of the
underlying OS. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance and God bless,
Noble

 

[coachhilton]

I am very new to Ruby. In fact I just downloaded it and started looking
at it today. I am using Windows.

Here is my question:

I loaded the program "fxri" and upon starting I got a screen full of
warning messages in a ms-dos box. Then a new window was opened with the
running program.

Do all Windows Ruby programs operate like this? I mean is there a
dos-box and also a regular Window for each program?

I am lost and any help would be appreciated here.

What I want to do is write GUI desktop applications in Ruby that are
platform-independent but yet have a native look and feel of the
underlying OS. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance and God bless,
Noble

You can search this group for detailed answers to your question. In a
nutshell, the ruby program is launched into a command shell when run
via ruby.exe. This shell is where you'll see your stdout and from
which your program can read from stdin, if desired. If you want to
run a ruby program without it being "encapsulated" in a command shell
run it with "rubyw.exe".

Ken