I totally agree re: dashboard widget.  There is a 'system' call in  
the dashboard API and wrapping irb should be really straightforward.   
Due to prior coding commitments, however, I may not be the first to  
get this done ;-)

-rich

On Apr 30, 2005, at 4:09 PM, Gavin Kistner wrote:

>  Sorry if I got anyone unduly excited - this isn't an announcement  
>  of such a beast.
> 
>  I want this - I'd love a simple dashboard widget that put IRB  
>  always at my fingertips.
> 
>  Ooh, and also an ri/rdoc widget, using a Spotlight adaptor.
> 
>  How sweet would that be?
> 
>  (Any point in making a *.rb Spotlight adaptor? If nothing else you  
>  could inherit a standard text adaptor and throw 'ruby' into the  
>  keywords, but I wonder if you could do anything more intelligent  
>  with the source code.)
> 
>  --
>  (-, /\ \/ / /\/
> 
> 
>