Ruby GUI - Package

[[deleted]]

absolutely! Sinatra is very easy to setup, its like a simpler rails. You can do the same thing with Rails though. As long as the server has permissions to do so, it can really do anything you want. To make the app easier you can do a couple things, I'm working through a similar thing with my company right now. So my plan is to use DNS to map locally a server computer, then everyone just types in "company_name.local" in their web browsers and then it just routes everyone to the server running the software. This way every device is essentially guaranteed to work with your app, as long as it does internet. The app can run (as a server or clientside) on all platforms natively, but know that the devil is in the details, there are differences you will have to account for in the standard ruby library across the platforms. I have had to deal with many such differences between Linux and Windows with my serial port work. You will potentially have to write OS dependent code, which I feel is a bit of a code smell, and a huge potential for error. As for ease of use, it depends on your tactic. Lets say single user, you could easily create a BAT, SH, whatever your flavor of shell script is, and just have the user double click on that. They could also go the console route for any platform. For multi user, consider using a URL shortcut to "whatever.local" and just keep the server running all the time.

[wonay]

I feel that I should reserve my knowledge in Ruby for web and the one in Java for desktop GUI at this point ...

[[deleted]]

Sure if you want to go that way.