Hi, I'm new to the list so please forgive me if this subject has already been discussed :-)
After playing around with Shoes for a while, and whilst I wait on my copy of the book to be delivered I've been thinking about how one would distribute a Shoes application ? What I mean by this is I think Shoes should have some sort of standard packaging so that the Shoes app could be classed as a 'run time' if you will, and developers could distribute there apps in a uniformed way, which would allow the Shoes 'run time' to recognise them and launch them transparently to the end user, rather than having to either launch the app from the command line or open Shoes and then select the Ruby file. I envisage that this could be done similar to how Mac OS X app bundles work. We could have a basic folder layout, a standard insertion point (main.rb for example) which is what Shoes would automatically load when launching the bundle, and certain resource folders which would store images, data files etc. All this could be zipped up (Archived!) and given a .shoes extension. This way, we could just distribute the .shoes bundle, and the end user could double-click it and have it launch like any other application. The host OS would recognise that the .shoes extension is loaded by the Shoes 'run time'. This would also allow for a new method in Shoes to load a resource, so rather than loading an image with the image keyword, you could use a resource keyword, and then specify a type as a parameter, in this case :type => :image. Implementing such a system would also allow each bundle to include in it any dependencies, such as gems it requires (because you could just copy the appropriate folders across) so each bundle would be independent of any requirements other than Ruby and the Shoes 'run time'. Anyhow, just I thought I was having which I thought I would share. Feel free to jump in with your thoughts/ideas. -Mic
