On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:45:03 +0900, Robert Klemme <bob.news / gmx.net> wrote:
>  ...
> You're probably right.  Gem is far more convenient than downloding a zip
> and placing it somewhere and it does use compressed files during
> transportation AFAIK.  IMHO the major advantage would not be compression
> but bundling of several files into a single physical entity.  But, yes, I
> guess gems do that better.

I like the idea of bundling resources a s a single entity in a way
that discourages (though does not prevent) user hacking.

Might this be useful for updating parts of an application , where you
don't want each part distributed as a distinct library (a la gems),
but more along the lines of a local Ruby .so or .dll?  You could then
version segments of an application.

Would it be useful for localization?  Compress multiple language files
into a zip, and have the code extract only what it needs?

James