Iron Ruby in Windows Visual Studio - ruby

I have been attempting to create a Windows Application using Iron Ruby Version 1.1 and Ruby in Steel for Windows Visual Studio 2010. I have attempted many times to start a new Iron Ruby Windows Application project. I am able to create such a project, however, upon creation, the project is merely a .rb file. My question is how can I create a Windows Form file in [Design] mode?

Iron Ruby lacks any support for a designer in WinForms, currently. You'll have to manually code it, much of what the designer is doing for you.
Someone wrote a tool to convert C# designer code into Ruby, but that's as much support for a WinForms designer as Iron Ruby has.
There may be designer functionality support added later, either third party or official, but nothing exists like that right now. There is some promising progress though.

Whilst Visual Studio with Ruby in Steel does not have support for designing Windows Forms you could try using SharpDevelop at least for the Windows Forms code generation. SharpDevelop has support for creating Windows Forms projects in IronRuby and also has a forms designer that will generate IronRuby code.
As far as I am aware the IronRuby support that SapphireSteel were working on was stopped and they are concentrating on standard Ruby.

Related

WinRT with VS2010 on Win8?

To what extent is it possible and legal to developer WinRT applications with VS2010 Pro?
On the one side, I think it should be perfectly possible and legal to create an HTML5/CSS/JavaScript WinRT App with VS2010 Pro since you can probably do so using Win 8 Notepad. On the other side, I think it might be difficult and possibly illegal to create an C# WinRT App via VS2010 Pro since doing so might require the user to circumvent intentional limitations of the VS2010 Pro software.
In the old days, the user just bought a stand alone compiler and she/he was free to link it against whatever libraries she/he choose. In this way, she/he didn't have to upgrade her/his compiler anytime she wanted a newer version of MFC or *.NET. These days, the IDE seems to be married to the compiler so I'm not sure if the user is allowed to use older IDEs (such as VS2010) to link against newer libraries like those offered in WinRT
See here.
You can use the Windows SDK, along with your chosen development
environment, to write Windows Store apps (only on Windows 8)...
So it's clearly legal. I haven't tested it, but I'm going to guess that you can probably do the code side of things in VS 2010, but VS 2010 isn't setup to do Windows Store UI so xaml, html5 etc probably won't work.
It's probably much easier to simply use Visual Studio 2012 express.
To what extent is it possible and legal to developer WinRT applications with VS2010 Pro?
It is not (directly). The APIs and the packaging tools will not be available in VS 2010.
While you could potentially do this yourself, it seems far simpler to just install Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 and use it.
These days, the IDE seems to be married to the compiler so I'm not sure if the user is allowed to use older IDEs (such as VS2010) to link against newer libraries like those offered in WinRT
It's more than just newer libraries - there's an entire new runtime, and the language needed changing in order to work with it.

What options do I have in terms of porting my XNA game to Mac?

I've been reading a lot into this and MonoMac/Mono seemed to be the best if not one of the only ways to go about it. I do have a MacBook Pro and it seems Xamarin bought Mono and wants something like $800 for a business edition to be able to load in Visual Studio projects. I only downloaded the free version so when I tried to load in my VS project on my Mac into Xamarin it said it didn't recognize it and that's when I discovered it seemed I needed a business edition.
A lot of what my search found was stuff that was 1-2 years old and even older. Things seemed to have changed a bit since then and with the Xamarin integrating Mono sort of thing. I've been working on an XNA 4.0 game for PC for over 7 months now and I'd like to have a Mac version. Apparently games like Magicka have figured it out and were made in XNA. I plan to release on Steam so I suppose I need to find a way to try and make it work with Steam if that's possible too. I don't really use my MacBook that often and I don't have Steam on it so I'm not really sure how to go about this.
I guess it comes down to this. I don't understand the current situation of MonoMac and Xamarin and did they aquire Mono? Do I need that expensive business edition? Are there alternatives? How does this tie in to being able to release a Mac version on Steam?
Most of the information I can find is a few years ago now and a lot has changed it seems.
MonoGame is a re-implementation of the XNA API for various platforms, including Mac.
It depends on Mono to provide a C# runtime across different platforms. And on platform specific versions of Mono (such as MonoMac, MonoTouch, etc, from Xamarin) to provide the API bindings and other features specific to those platforms.
You don't so much "load" an existing Visual Studio project as create a new project - either in Visual Studio (if the tools are available and you've bought them - but I don't think this is the case for Mac) or MonoDevelop or Xamarin studio.
To your new project, you would add your existing source files and add a reference to the MonoGame library for that platform. That MonoGame library will provide versions of the classes in the Microsoft.Xna.Framework namespace that work on that platform. Your code gets compiled against these alternate classes, creating a new binary specific for that platform.
(MonoGame will probably have more in-depth documentation of the process on their website, including how to deal with game content.)
Put simply: Use MonoGame. It is an alternate version of the XNA library, not a conversion tool.

Use existing Win7 code base in Windows 8 App

In my company we have an existing product that runs on Windows 7 and communicates with our web services.
We wish to make a Windows 8 tablet version of our product, and my first thought was:
"Hey, its just a new Windows version, so we can probably use our existing model, data access and business layer logic projects, and just focus on making a new UI layer"
But I fear that this is not the case, or am I wrong?
I tried opening our VS2010 solution file in VS2012 Express, but received an error "This edition of Visual Studio only supports Windows Store apps".
So, my naive hope now is: Can anyone tell me the easiest way to make our existing code work in a Windows 8 App?
EDIT:
The code is .NET C#, and my thought was that I just wanted to make a Windows 8 app so that the product had a tablet/touch friendly interface.
In general, you'll make a new UI using XAML, reuse a lot of your existing code, and change the data access to use SQLite.
VS2012 Express Edition is for making Windows Store apps. By "Windows Store" app, I mean an app which uses the WinRT APIs. Depending on your code, making a Windows Store version of your app can be straightforward.
If you need other features, you might need a different version of Visual Studio 2012. You definitely need to be on 2012 though. You can't build a Windows Store application with Visual Studio 2010. I think you know this already though.
If your existing .NET app uses WPF for the UI, you can reuse a lot of your XAML knowledge for the Windows 8 port. It's not as simple as recompiling, but it should be straightforward.
SQL CE is currently not an option for Windows Store applications. Instead, consider using SQLite.
Take a look at a post on MSDN called .NET for Windows Store apps - supported APIs. Some APIs you may be familiar with have been moved to WinRT. Sometimes porting is as simple as changing namespaces.
You mention that you also write to the C: drive. There's a sample on MSDN on how to read and write files.
So You need to build a new Metro Style Interface.
Wen You built interface just copy the Logic of your old application.
You can open old application in old VS 2010 and copy code line by line.
You can't convert old Windows app to Metro Style App.

Easy Language/IDE to Develop GUI Program?

I'm planning on developing an Windows desktop-based GUI application, and I don't have a clue which language or IDE to choose. I'd REALLY like something with a WYSIWYG GUI editor. My application will rely on web-based XML feeds, so built in support for that would be great. I don't want the application to have any dependencies or require admin rights to run. Cross-platform is nice, not not required.
I'm willing to learn a new language if that's necessary.
Delphi is well reputed for Windows GUI application developpment. It's even a 'RAD' Studio (rapid application development studio) as they call it.
Check out Delphi. Alternatively FreePascal with its Lazarus IDE is pretty much an open-source Delphi clone, which while not as polished, offers cross-platform support.
For Windows, I will definitely go for C#.
If you know c++ and have MFC experiences, it should be fairly easy to learn.
Yes, it has WYSIWYG GUI editor.
Designing a User Interface (Visual C#)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173080(v=vs.80).aspx
and it seems this is what you are looking for?
SyndicationFeed Class
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.syndication.syndicationfeed.aspx
Good Luck!
There are several variants.
Windows only
C# + MSVS:
One of the best choices on Windows platform today
+good documentation
+big developers community
-you need a system which has .net installed.
Delphi
+easy to start
all-in-one tool with GUI editor
not very widespread
Cross-platfrom
Qt or wxWidgets or some other toolsets
If you're looking for a free solution, you can use SharpDevelop, which is a free IDE for C# or VB.NET, and has a GUI designer similar to the one in Visual Studio. You should be able to use any classes and libraries from/for the .NET Framework.
You'll need the .NET Framework, but starting with Windows Vista it's installed by default (.NET Framework 3.0, I think).

Stand alone sleek application for Windows - But I'm python/Java dev. What is the least learning curve way?

The application is simple and deals with showing images and simple image manipulation.
I know python and java, but haven't seen a sleek standalone application built in them on windows. I'm not sure how reliable py2exe is.
Going the .Net/C# seems to be the only way, which I dread, since I've never done any programming in those.
Is there another way ? I've heard about silverlight & prism. Don't know if they can access filesystems when you make a standalone application out of them.
Since you know Python maybe IronPython is an option for you? You can also use create a Swing Java app
It's a little fringe right now - but you can use the new Python tools for VS 2010
http://pytools.codeplex.com/
If you don't have VS, download the "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) Redistributable Package" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8e5aa7b6-8436-43f0-b778-00c3bca733d3&displaylang=en
then you can install the python tools...
Keep in mind you'll still have to learn XAML or WinForms & it's still .net...
Hope the helps.

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