On May 23, 2009, at 12:46 AM, Adrian Arlechin wrote:

> I have some Java experience and jus try to understand Ruby
> I have two problems:
> First: how can I deploy a ruby app. Is there something like jar? or  
> the
> application is started allwais going to the command line? The source
> files can't be hidden and/or protected?
> And the second:
> From Java I now that is better to code yourself the GUI and not to  
> use a
> GUI maker, but in Ruby must I learn Tk?, this beeing presented in the
> "Programming Ruby - The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide"
> I have seen an IDE called wxFormBuilder wich make the GUI developement
> very easy, but how do I connect the code to a ruby program? I looked
> around the web and in some Ruby books and I didn't find a explenation.
> A simple example will be great: a file made with wxFormBuilder wich
> takes two numbers in two text fields, and two buttons one for
> multiplication and one for division, with output to another text  
> field.
> I think such explenation will help a lot of people in their first  
> steps
> in Ruby

Adrian,
I highly recommend you take a look at Monkeybars - A JRuby library  
that cleanly handles Swing. You can use a variety of ways to build the  
UI/layout, all of which Monkeybars is agnostic to. This way you can do  
some GUI development with Ruby while also capitalizing on your Java/ 
Swing experience.
http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/
Right now we're moving to Kenai, so everything may not be linked up yet.
http://kenai.com/projects/monkeybars/
Our mailing list is very active and probably the best place to go for  
help:
http://kenai.com/projects/monkeybars/lists/users/archive


Logan Barnett
logustus / gmail.com
http://www.logustus.com