/arcadia

Light Ruby Ide

Primary LanguageTcl

= Arcadia Ruby Ide
version 0.6.0

by Antonio Galeone
on Feb 21, 2009


== About

Arcadia is a Light Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Ruby language 
written in Ruby using the classic tcl/tk GUI toolkit.

Some of Arcadia ruby ide project features include:
* Editor with source browsing, syntax highlighting, code completion
* Debugging support
* Working on any platform where ruby and tcl-tk work.
* Highly extensibility architecture.

== In this release
* [new] - Dynamic layout capability added: now you can change at run-time the frames's position and create new frames.
	      


== How to install
There are two way:
1. exec as root on command line "gem install arcadia"
   or as user "sudo gem install arcadia"
2. using archive distribution
   a. untar (on unix) (tar -xzf) arcadia-<version>.tar.gz
   b. unzip (on windows) arcadia-<version>.zip


== How to run
* exec on command line "ruby <path/>arcadia"


== Short User guide
Application layout is splitted in vertical 
and horizontal resizing frames. Clicking on vertical splitter 
appear two button for left or right one shot frame close. 
The horizontal splitter has two little button for the same reason.
Every frame has a title, a button to expand or resizing it and a menu-button 
for the dynamic layout functions.
There are very essential feature:

==== Main Toolbar
The toolbar button are in order:
- new, open, save
  (relatively to edit operation)
- run current, run last 
  (for execute the raised file in the editor or the last runned file)  
- debug current, debug last, quit debug panel
  (for debug need)
- show rad palette
  (for tk rad need)  
- quit (to exit from arcadia)

==== Editor
Editor use the notebook metaphor. Same command are on the popup menu 
that is raised on "Button-3" click event fundamentalally for closing the tab 
under the mouse pointer.
These are same editor short-cut:
- Ctrl-c  => copy selected text
- Ctrl-v  => paste copied text
- Ctrl-x  => cut selected text
- Ctrl-z  => undo
- Ctrl-f  => copy the selected text on input combobox of find dialog and moves focus
- Ctrl-s  => save
- Ctrl-space => completion code
- Ctrl-shift-i => indent the selected block
- Ctrl-shift-u => unindent the selected block
- Ctrl-shift-c => comment/uncomment the selected code block
- F5 => execute the file 
- F3 => find/ find next

- Double-Click on line number set or unset a debug breakpoint

==== File history
The last used files are organizing in tree so you can reopen them or there  
directory by clicking on the tree node.

==== Rad Palette
It contain the wrapper components for the tk gui building. 
It is in very unstabled and incomplete state. 
The first component is a TkTopLevel wrapper, when you click on it a new form is created and a 
Object inspector appears.
The other components must be first selected and then created by clicking on container widget.
The so created widgets has a popup menu for deleting them or in the toplevel case to switch
to a code view.
On the palette there are also two button, one for deselect and other for copy from the selected 
created widget. The copy action copy also the code into the clipboard, so you can copy the
code rapresenting the gui into the embedded editor or into external editor.

==== Rad Object Inspector
It is for modify the widget property at runtime

==== Debug
Require ruby-debug gem.
It is created when a debug session init. 
The debug button are: Step Next, Step Into, Step Over, Resume and quit.
The debug frame show the local, instance and global variables for each
step. 

==== Configuration
Same Arcadia properties are locally configurabled by editing the file arcadia.conf
under ~/.arcadia  directory. The format of property definition are:
<OPERATING SYSTEM IDENTIFY::>PROPERTY_NAME=PROPERTY_VALUE


== Requirement
I include into distribution also the BWidget lib (under tcl directory) so
are require realy only the standard tcl tk lib (tested on tcl tk 8.4 & tcl tk 8.5).
I have tested arcadia with ruby 1.8.4, 1.8.5, 1.8.6, 1.8.7 on 
* Archlinux
* FreeBsd6.x, FreeBsd7.x, 
* Vector linux 5.*,
* Windows 2000/XP, 
* Cygwin (note: same page fault error on dll under cygwin may be solved in this way:
  by ash.exe exec "/bin/rebaseall"). 
If you will test arcadia on other operating system sends me an e-mail.

==Developers information
Released on arcadia web site (http://arcadia.rubyforge.org) a first drawing of "How to extend arcadia". 


 
== License
Arcadia is released under the Ruby License

== Contacts
For questions:
antonio-galeone@rubyforge.org
For bugs, support request, features request http://rubyforge.org/projects/arcadia