Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily
browse RI documentation?
I used FXIRB (a Fox-based client) on Windows a while ago, seems it is
abandoned and/or won’t run on Mac.
Thanks!
On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 12:03 PM, Sophie [email protected] wrote:
Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily browse RI
documentation?I used FXIRB (a Fox-based client) on Windows a while ago, seems it is
abandoned and/or won’t run on Mac.
Yes, I’m afraid that’s abandoned - I found it of limited use on linux,
and people using windows reported bugs that I was unable to fix. I’m
willing to help if you’d like to try getting it running on a mac.
martin
Sophi Italy wrote:
Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily
browse RI documentation?
I have to admit that I don’t see the problem with having two terminal
windows open (beyond simple user preference). Heck, I’d even just use
two tabs and not two windows.
On Monday 07 December 2009 01:50:10 pm Aldric G. wrote:
Sophi Italy wrote:
Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily
browse RI documentation?I have to admit that I don’t see the problem with having two terminal
windows open (beyond simple user preference). Heck, I’d even just use
two tabs and not two windows.
Especially with OS X.
Chances are, if you’ve got a Mac, you’ve got a nice big monitor with a
lot of
resolution, and you can turn on Spaces to get even more space.
If it’s not already the default, bind command+left/right to
next/previous
window in Terminal. If your reason for wanting tabbed windows was
keyboard
navigation, there’s an answer.
That is one thing I miss very much on Linux – I have no easy way to
cycle
through all the windows in a given application, while ignoring windows
in
other applications…
David M. wrote:
On Monday 07 December 2009 01:50:10 pm Aldric G. wrote:
Sophi Italy wrote:
Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily
browse RI documentation?I have to admit that I don’t see the problem with having two terminal
windows open (beyond simple user preference). Heck, I’d even just use
two tabs and not two windows.Especially with OS X.
Chances are, if you’ve got a Mac, you’ve got a nice big monitor with a
lot of
resolution, and you can turn on Spaces to get even more space.If it’s not already the default, bind command+left/right to
next/previous
window in Terminal.
No need. That’s what Cmd-Grave and Cmd-Sh-Grave already do.
(BTW, I recommend iTerm as a replacement for Terminal.app. It does a
better job with managing different session profiles.)
If your reason for wanting tabbed windows was
keyboard
navigation, there’s an answer.That is one thing I miss very much on Linux – I have no easy way to
cycle
through all the windows in a given application, while ignoring windows
in
other applications…
There’s a reason I don’t use desktop Linux…
Best,
–Â
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]
On Monday 07 December 2009 03:33:50 pm Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
David M. wrote:
If it’s not already the default, bind command+left/right to
next/previous
window in Terminal.No need. That’s what Cmd-Grave and Cmd-Sh-Grave already do.
Ah, fair enough – though I still prefer combinations of arrow keys or
something similar to a mutator like shift, at least for navigating in a
particular direction through tabs.
There’s a reason I don’t use desktop Linux…
FWIW, there’s far more than this that I’d miss on the Mac – or on
Windows,
for that matter. Of the top of my head:
- Sloppy focus
- WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out “pack left” or “grow pack” on
KDE –
really can’t live without them now) - Middle-click to paste currently-selected text. In ANY application.
- Workspaces that work well.
- Binary package managers for everything. On OS X, I had maybe 10-15
apps
that didn’t autoupdate, so I had to manually check. - I can boycott Apple for what they’ve done with the iPhone.
I could go on, though it’d get progressively sillier (wobbly windows).
Probably the number one reason is that I will, at some point, be able to
add
that feature I want to my window manager, or write one that supports it.
(Haven’t gotten around to it yet.) On the other hand, Apple are the only
ones
who can implement true sloppy focus on OS X, and they aren’t doing it.
I’m sure I could come up with a list about that long for why I envy OS
X.
Sophi Italy wrote:
Is there a good GUI IRB on OSX? Preferably one that lets me easily
browse RI documentation?I used FXIRB (a Fox-based client) on Windows a while ago, seems it is
abandoned and/or won’t run on Mac.Thanks!
Hi. Why don’t you try http://railsapi.com/.
David M. wrote:
On Monday 07 December 2009 03:33:50 pm Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
David M. wrote:
If it’s not already the default, bind command+left/right to
next/previous
window in Terminal.No need. That’s what Cmd-Grave and Cmd-Sh-Grave already do.
Ah, fair enough – though I still prefer combinations of arrow keys or
something similar to a mutator like shift, at least for navigating in a
particular direction through tabs.
Oh, those are Mac OS standard keystrokes for switching windows, not
tabs. I think there’s a keystroke to switch tabs, but I don’t know
what it is b
There’s a reason I don’t use desktop Linux…
FWIW, there’s far more than this that I’d miss on the Mac – or on
Windows,
for that matter.
Really? I don’t think I miss one single KDE feature on Mac OS – except
perhaps kdesu, and Pseudo comes pretty close to that. KDE’s session
restoration is also nice. And for me, that’s it. I’d almost rather use
the Windows GUI than KDE or GNOME (the underlying OS is a different
story, of course).
Of the top of my head:
- Sloppy focus
As in focus follows mouse? God, NO! I don’t have that turned on in KDE
either. I think there should be a positive action to change focus –
I’ve bumped the mouse too many times.
- WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out “pack left” or “grow pack” on
KDE –
really can’t live without them now)
I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?
- Middle-click to paste currently-selected text. In ANY application.
No easier and no harder than Cmd-V.
- Workspaces that work well.
So do Leopard’s Spaces, AFAIK. I don’t use the feature on either OS.
- Binary package managers for everything. On OS X, I had maybe 10-15
apps
that didn’t autoupdate, so I had to manually check.
Virtually everyone is using some sort of autoupdate now, and for those
that don’t, there’s AppFresh.
- I can boycott Apple for what they’ve done with the iPhone.
I love my iPhone (unjailbroken, though slightly tweaked). I don’t think
apple has done everything right with it, but I see no reason for a
boycott.
I could go on, though it’d get progressively sillier (wobbly windows).
Probably the number one reason is that I will, at some point, be able to
add
that feature I want to my window manager, or write one that supports it.
(Haven’t gotten around to it yet.) On the other hand, Apple are the only
ones
who can implement true sloppy focus on OS X,
Untrue. Plenty of people have released kernel hacks for Mac OS; I
understand some apps even have a sloppy focus option (though why anyone
would want such an abomination is beyond me).
and they aren’t doing it.
I’m sure I could come up with a list about that long for why I envy OS
X.
On Monday 07 December 2009 09:55:09 pm Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
Oh, those are Mac OS standard keystrokes for switching windows, not
tabs. I think there’s a keystroke to switch tabs, but I don’t know
what it is b
Ah. I distinctly remember a preference within Terminal, for switching to
the
previous and next Terminal window. Maybe that’s changed.
- Sloppy focus
As in focus follows mouse? God, NO!
It’s a personal preference, one you’re lucky enough to share with Steve
Jobs.
But this fits into that ideological problem – with KDE, you can click a
checkbox to enable or disable sloppy focus. With open source, you can
add that
checkbox if it isn’t there. With OS X, you WILL do it the Apple Way,
because
it’s Just Better.
And no, not focus follows mouse. Sloppy focus. The difference is that
the
focus isn’t lost when you mouse over the desktop, it only changes when
you
mouse over another window.
Also, I don’t have it auto-raise. That would be annoying.
I’ve bumped the mouse too many times.
I don’t bump my USB mouse – or at least, if I bump it, it’s
intentional. If I
bumped my trackpad, I’m as likely to “tap” (and click) as to move, so
I’ve
just taught myself not to bump it.
- WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out “pack left” or “grow pack” on
KDE –
really can’t live without them now)I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?
System Settings -> Keyboard. Or look for them in the menus. Or, in any
KDE
app, Settings -> Configure Shortcuts – most apps will also have a
Configure
Global Shortcuts, which is nice, too.
Quick overview: “pack left”, or "pack ", means “Move this
window in
this direction as far as it can go without bumping into the edge of
another
window, or the edge of a screen.” It’s a very quick, very intuitive way
of
organizing my windows.
Similar with “grow pack”, vertically and horizontally – a quick way to
get
the windows tiled just so. Maybe one day I’ll switch to a tiling window
manager, but I still like using the mouse to manually rearrange things.
Stupidly simple example: Opening a new “compose” window is probably
going to
be small-ish. I don’t want it to take over my entire screen, but I’d
like to
at least grow it vertically. For me, that’s win+up to move it to the top
of
the screen, then win+q to grow it downwards – two keystrokes and it’s
done.
On the wrong side of the screen? Win+right.
Also, I’m not sure if OS X has this yet, but I’m pretty sure Windows
doesn’t:
Alt+click anywhere in the window and drag to move the window.
- Middle-click to paste currently-selected text. In ANY application.
No easier and no harder than Cmd-V.
First, Cmd-V doesn’t do that. It pastes the contents of the clipboard.
If I
hit ctrl+C first, then ctrl+V, I can do the same thing – just as you
have to
hit Cmd-C first.
And second, it is easier, sometimes. If my hand’s already on the mouse
to
highlight the text, and I’ve now moved to another window, I don’t even
need to
raise (or focus) that window, I just find where I want to paste (maybe
use the
mouse wheel to scroll) and middle-click, I don’t even have to navigate
the
cursor there. I don’t ever have to take my hand off the mouse.
It’s similar to the advantage of dragging and dropping text, though I
never
got the hang of that.
Compare to the typical: Highlight with the mouse, ctrl+c, click on the
other
window, click somewhere inside the text area you want to paste (probably
somewhere specific to move the cursor there, ctrl+v. MUCH slower.
Now, I don’t dispute the keyboard method – if I’m already navigating
with the
keyboard here, it’s easy enough for me to select some text with
shift+arrows
(maybe shift+ctrl+arrows and/or home/end), ctrl+c (or ctrl+x), alt-tab
somewhere else (or use arrows again), and ctrl+v. But that only works if
the
thing to paste to is within easy keyboard range (easy to alt-tab to) –
if I’m
going to use the mouse anyway, may as well use middle click.
- Workspaces that work well.
So do Leopard’s Spaces, AFAIK. I don’t use the feature on either OS.
It’s been awhile, so I don’t remember exactly what was broken. I do
remember
that Leopard’s Spaces weren’t as good as just about any Linux concept of
workspaces.
- Binary package managers for everything. On OS X, I had maybe 10-15
apps
that didn’t autoupdate, so I had to manually check.Virtually everyone is using some sort of autoupdate now, and for those
that don’t, there’s AppFresh.
Ah, so at least the usability issue is gone.
All that’s left is my purist rage about how bloated a .app folder is. I
like
my package managers to handle dependencies, so I actually have shared
libraries, rather than baking everything into the app.
- I can boycott Apple for what they’ve done with the iPhone.
I love my iPhone (unjailbroken, though slightly tweaked). I don’t think
apple has done everything right with it, but I see no reason for a
boycott.
Biggest reason is the app store.
First, that users can only purchase apps through it. Or, for that
matter, only
download free apps through it.
And second, that the approval process seems so freakishly random that
even if
I didn’t have the “free as in free” problem (seriously, they want DRM in
MY
PHONE?), I’d be terrified to actually try to develop something for it.
It
really looks like I might get approved or rejected on a whim, whether or
not I
was accepted before.
But Apple is starting to get on my nerves generally – I’m just seeing
more
and more proprietary stuff. I mean, they’re more proprietary than
Windows. I
mean, my Apple keyboard (that I’m typing this on) has firmware, and I
can only
update that firmware from a Mac. (Plus, it comes with a USB extension
cable
that can only be used with this keyboard, not even with itself!)
This kind of attitude is pervasive – I get the feeling that if Apple
thought
they could get away with it, they’d replace freely downloadable Mac
software
with an App Store for your Mac.
I could go on, though it’d get progressively sillier (wobbly windows).
Probably the number one reason is that I will, at some point, be able to
add
that feature I want to my window manager, or write one that supports it.
(Haven’t gotten around to it yet.) On the other hand, Apple are the only
ones
who can implement true sloppy focus on OS X,Untrue. Plenty of people have released kernel hacks for Mac OS;
A kernel app is different than a GUI shell hack.
I
understand some apps even have a sloppy focus option
Yes, but it’s up to the app. For example, Terminal.app does have a
sloppy
focus option. If any Terminal window has focus, you can configure it
such that
mousing over another Terminal window will switch to it.
But this leaves several problems:
First of all, it’s up to the app. Safari doesn’t have this, so I can’t
mouse
over a Safari window and then over a Terminal window. I wouldn’t be at
all
surprised if Terminal was the only non-X11 app to offer this.
Second, the app has to have the foreground. So the above probably
wouldn’t
work either – it’d be more like, if Safari was already in the
foreground, I
could mouse over another Safari window to switch to it – but I’d still
have
to click (or cmd+tab) to get to Terminal.
Finally, even if every app supported this, it would still have to be
configured in every app – or you’d have to come up with a sloppy focus
framework, such that every app that could support this can be triggered
by one
setting in System Settings.
Oh, and you still couldn’t do focus-follows-mouse, unless you hacked the
desktop to allow it.
So I could hack this on, badly, if I convince every app I use to support
a
common framework for allowing this one feature that not everyone even
likes…
Or Apple could add the feature globally, adding one little checkbox to
System
Settings, and be done with it.
Or I could use Linux, where this feature is already here. And for that
matter,
I mentioned my interest in tiling window managers – cool concept, would
take
a bit of retraining my brain to get used to it – would OS X ever
support it?
Probably not, but see, on OS X, it’s not up to me. On Linux, it is.
Aldric G. wrote:
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
David M. wrote:
- WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out “pack left” or “grow pack” on
KDE –
really can’t live without them now)I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?To go back on topic a bit… Marnen, so … You don’t use VIM?
Absolutely not. I hate vi, although vim is slightly better. When I
need a console editor, I use emacs.
Best,
–Â
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
Aldric G. wrote:
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?To go back on topic a bit… Marnen, so … You don’t use VIM?
Absolutely not. I hate vi, although vim is slightly better. When I
need a console editor, I use emacs.
Ah yes, because C-x C-c makes so much more sense 
I didn’t think
think an emacs/vim user would actually discriminate against keyboard
shortcuts (troll, troll) although I understand that there’s only so many
one can hold in one’s head before one feels like beating others over the
head with a keyboard.
Actually, I do wonder - is there anything with vim / emacs to easily
view ri / rdoc ? It’s … Almost on topic
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
David M. wrote:
- WAY more keyboard shortcuts (check out “pack left” or “grow pack” on
KDE –
really can’t live without them now)I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?
To go back on topic a bit… Marnen, so … You don’t use VIM?
On Dec 8, 9:38 am, Aldric G. [email protected] wrote:
need a console editor, I use emacs.
Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You
Are you feeling lucky?
Aldric G. wrote:
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
Aldric G. wrote:
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:
I’ll look those up. But what good are keyboard shortcuts if there’s no
easy way to remind oneself of them?To go back on topic a bit… Marnen, so … You don’t use VIM?
Absolutely not. I hate vi, although vim is slightly better. When I
need a console editor, I use emacs.Ah yes, because C-x C-c makes so much more sense
I didn’t think
think an emacs/vim user would actually discriminate against keyboard
shortcuts (troll, troll) although I understand that there’s only so many
one can hold in one’s head before one feels like beating others over the
head with a keyboard.
The latter is really the issue. I only remember a small number of emacs
shortcuts; I make liberal use of apropos and where-is for everything
else. I don’t think vi has a comparable help system.
What I really hate about vi, though, is its dual-mode interface. It’s
not 1970 anymore.
Actually, I do wonder - is there anything with vim / emacs to easily
view ri / rdoc ? It’s … Almost on topic
Best,
–Â
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]