Anders is right. Some of this stuff is hard to find, out of date, or incomplete. I don't mean to be a whiner, but we should try somehow to consolidate these files, make the instructions very clear, make them easily accessible and well-known, etc. Dave was on this same soapbox, if I remember right. There was talk of an installer... what became of that? I think someone actually asked for testers a few weeks ago, isn't that right? Another issue I'd like to bring up is that of differing binaries of the same version of Ruby. I gather that the version needing cygwin is the "definitive" version? There is also one compiled with DJGPP and one compiled with MS Visual C++. In the first place, I am not convinced that their behavior is 100% the same. In the second place, they cannot share DLLs. (Isn't that true?) This hurts portability in some sense, doesn't it? Actually, I think there may be even a fourth kind of binary -- I think the Apollo app (which is a pretty app, in my opinion) uses a "hacked" version of the Ruby source. And I am even less sure of this, but isn't there some kind of COM- related or OLE-related thing that has also hacked the Ruby source? I like Ruby a lot. But believe me, I don't want to have five copies of version 1.8, or even two, installed. This way lies chaos! Hal Fulton In article <8s261n$hgc$1 / nnrp1.deja.com>, aschneiderman / my-deja.com wrote: > I'd like to start playing with Ruby, but I'm having trouble sorting out > what to download. I'd like to find some precompiled binaries that will > let me run Ruby on Win98 and let me play w/ Ruby and Tk. I went to > ftp://ftp.netlab.co.jp/pub/lang/ruby/pc/, which gave me two options: > rbcw145.zip and rbdj145.zip. What's the difference between the two? > Which one do I want? And is there a precompiled binary for the latest > version of ruby (161)? > > Just for fun, I downloaded them both. When I ran "ruby.exe" in rbcw145, > I got the following error: "The rubycw.dll file cannot start. Check > the file to determine the probblem." I could get rbdj145 to work, but > it doesn't appear to have the ability to run tk. Am I missing something? > > Also, what is cygwin? > > I checked the English language FAQ but couldn't find answers to these > questions. Did I overlook it? If it's not there, some of this might be > worth putting in the next version. I'm a middling part-time programmer, > so if I'm having trouble figuring this out, there are probably other > folks who could use a pointer too. This is a particularly good time to > to add it since I'm sure there will be plenty of newbies like myself who > want to give Ruby a shot given the glowing recommendations by Hunt & > Thomas. > > Thanks, > Anders Schneiderman, who is eagerly waiting for Amazon to get H&T's > book. > The National Journal Group > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ > Before you buy. > -- Hal Fulton Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.