I know this is in the vein of hacky solutions, but I tend to use jruby for the purpose of packaging up ruby applications.

This is a good solution. I've used this approach as well for server daemons.

Do you still require the JVM installed in the same way you would the Ruby's VM?

JRuby's ruby VM runs on top of whatever JVM you choose. You just have to make sure you have the JVM in your path.

Emacs has done this for years.

And at least a hundred other editors. I don't get this post.

People get to talk about their favorite editor. So it gets upvoted. Programmers love to talk about their tools.

Is it a common feature to lay out a single file in multiple columns? Not split panes. Not the same file split into two with two independent scroll bars. Multiple columns the way a single article is spread across multiple columns in a new paper?