Asp Forum - Ruby Weekly News 18-24th October 2004

timsuth

10/26/2004 1:04:00 PM

I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:

http://www.rubygarden.org/rub.../...

The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.

I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
Feedback is welcome.

-------------------------------------

Ruby Weekly News 18-24th October 2004

A summary of the week's activity on the ruby-talk mailing list / the
comp.lang.ruby newsgroup. There were 634 articles in 149 threads. This
summary is brought to you by Tim Sutherland ([7]TimSuth).

Introduction

From 2001/12/8 to 2003/06/16, the Ruby Weekly News provided a weekly
summary of announcements and other interesting ruby-talk threads.
[8]http://www.rubygarden.org/rurl/html/... has the archives,
and ideas for improving the service are at [9]RubyNews.

It's back...

Ruby in the News

* [10][Introduction to Rubyx Linux - OSNews.com]

Rubyx is a source-based Linux distribution in which
installation, configuration and so on are handled with Ruby
scripts. There is a [11][Rubyx on OS News thread] on ruby-talk
discussing the article.

* [12][Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide -
Slashdot.org]

The second edition of [13]ProgrammingRuby was reviewed on
Slashdot. The ruby-talk thread starts [14][here].

Announcements

* [15][Ruby/Tk translation]

Benjamin Peterson translated Koji Arai's [16]RubyTk
documentation from Japanese into English. "(why yes, all 200
pages and 102 footnotes)". The translation was [17][posted to
the web].

* [18][diff2html - Pretty-printing big patches]

Dave Burt wrote a script to turn a unified diff into
side-by-side HTML output.

* [19][Catapult: WEBrick application for dynamic execution of code
via HTTP]

James Britt wrote an application called [20][Catapault] that
maps URLs onto Ruby file and class names, caching the resulting
objects after the first instantiation.

* [21][Rubyist Magazine vol.2 (in Japanese)]

SASADA Koichi announced the [22][second volume] of a Ruby
Magazine. It includes interviews, reports on conferences,
tutorials and tricks.

* [23][svg graph generator, early release]

Simon Strandgaard released an experimental tool for generating
SVG graphs.

* [24][rpa bash programable completion]

Brian Schröder "hacked together" [25][support for bash
completion] for the rpa packaging tool. Mauricio Fernández
[26][decided] to include it in the next release of
[27][rpa-base].

* [28][ruvi 0.4.12 PRERELEASE [rpa and gem]]

Alexander Kellett presented some first attempts at creating a
GEM for [29][ruvi], a VIM clone written entirely in Ruby.

* [30][Nitro 0.1.2]

George Moschovitis announced version 0.1.2 of Nitro.
[31][Nitro] is a web application framework utilising XSLT for
web templates and having features such as distributed state and
caching.

* [32][DocDiff 0.3.1]

Hisashi MORITA introduced [33][DocDiff], a program for showing
the difference between two files, either word by word,
character by character or line by line. It has several output
formats and supports various encodings including ASCII, UTF-8
and EUC-J.

* [34][Needle 0.6.0]

Jamis Buck announced [35][Needle], a "dependency injection
(a.k.a. "inversion of control") container for Ruby." This is
used when a number of modules of code all need to know about
each other. Needle is used to register "services" and handle
the dependencies between them. Dependency injection means that
Needle takes responsibility for instantiating the different
services. This means that the services can be written without
any knowledge of the framework. Jim Weirich has written a good
[36][description] of dependency injection.

* [37][Rabbit 0.0.4]

Kouhei Sutou came out with Rabbit 0.0.4, then quickly released
0.0.5 to fix a critical bug on the Windows platform.
[38][Rabbit] is an application that uses RD markup to generate
slides for presentations. It's now easier to install on
Windows, has a couple of new themes and is customised for
Japanese, English and French.

* [39][Ruby/ActiveLDAP 0.5.1]

Will Drewry announced a new version of [40][Ruby/ActiveLDAP], a
library which provides an object oriented mapping of LDAP
objects to Ruby objects. It can now be installed with
[41]RubyGems and many bugs were also fixed.

* [42][RubyGarden FAQ Revival]

Chad Fowler was happy to declare an updated [43][RubyGarden
FAQ], which David Alan Black has rewritten in [44][Rails]. He
went on to say "This release is part of a greater
[45]RubyGarden revitalization that is underway. If you have
ideas for content and/or [46]RubyGarden improvements, now's a
great time to let me know."

* [47][Ruby-GetText-Package-0.7.0]

Masao Mutoh announced the latest version of the
[48][Ruby-GetText] package, a Native Language support library
and set of tools modelled after GNU gettext.

* [49][XHTMLDiff 1.0.0]

Aredridel released [50][XHTMLDiff], a tool to show the
difference between two XHTML documents using <ins> and <del>
tags.

* [51][Rails 0.8]: Just shy of 100 additions, changes, tweaks, and
fixes!

David Heinemeier Hansson announced a new release of
[52][Rails], a web-application framework for Ruby. This release
includes many bugfixes and new features, including a new
framework called "Action Mailer" for email services like
password reminders.

Threads

Interesting threads this week include ...
_________________________________________________________________

[53][Can one simulate go to in Ruby? Is it possible?]

Roman K9 got more than he bargained for when he asked "Is it possible
to have a go to in Ruby without having a go to?" Solutions using
callcc were presented, and Matt Maycock gave a program that someone
described as an "Unholy morphing of Ruby into Basic". Continuations
were also discussed in [54][another thread].
_________________________________________________________________

[55][[QUIZ] Regexp.build() (#4)]

The fourth Ruby Quiz was to build a regular expression to match
integers matching lists and ranges. For example

year = Regexp.build( 98, 99, 2000..2005 )
"04" =~ year # => false
"2004" =~ year # => true
"99" =~ year # => true

A [56][summary] of responses was later posted.

Another thread [57][began].

The [58][summary] of last week's Quiz (Geodesic Faces) was also
posted.
_________________________________________________________________

[59][Re: ruby-dev summary 24298-24353]

This thread began several weeks ago, but this week there was some
discussion of "functors" as polymorphic proc. It all started with
Nowake proposed that a Proc object should be invoked with
any method name like that:

m = Proc.new( :to_s ) { 'test1' }
p m.to_s # => 'test1'
_________________________________________________________________

[60][trace_func parameters (Re: ruby-dev summary 24298-24353)]

This isn't much of a thread, comprising a single post from Matz,
however it is a very useful description of the parameters to
"trace_func". It is listed here in the hope that someone will put the
information somewhere permanent, such as on the [61]RubyGarden Wiki.
_________________________________________________________________

[62][A concise description of Ruby?]

Curt Hibbs wrote
Yesterday, a co-worker came into my office and saw the shiny, new pickaxe II
book on my desk and said "What is Ruby?"

Unfortunately, I really blew the opportunity as I attempted to come up with
a brilliant one or two sentence description. The best I could muster was
something like, "Uhh... err... it's kind of like perl or python but much
better." How lame is that!

He went on to ask for suggestions for better answers to the question,
a sort of elevator pitch for Ruby.

[63][Mike Clark]: "Ruby? Oh, you won't like this language. (Slides
Pixaxe II out of view.) It's entirely too fun and productive for most
people."

[64][Jan Krüger]: Ruby is the programming language that makes you have
more time for your girlfriend .. or less, if you fall in love with
ruby instead.

[65][Paul Sanchez]: Ruby is an elegant language in which it's easy and
natural to express solutions. It's simple enough that a beginner can
start using it immediately, yet powerful enough to deal with
sophisticated needs. It's so fun that the Puritans would have banned
it had they known about it.

[66][Simon Strandgaard]: Ruby has hidden positive suprises. Even
though I have used it for long time, it keeps amaze and suprise me. It
gives me energy.

[67][Aredridel]: I say "A language that's like the best parts of
Smalltalk, Perl and Lisp, all in one, and no line noise, parentheses
or weird VM"

[68][gabriele renzi]: it's an OO dynamic language with simple syntax.
It is fun oriented. I love ruby.

In a subthread focusing on the Javascript language, Florian Gross
[69][took the opportunity] to post an implementation of many of Ruby's
standard libraries in Javascript!
_________________________________________________________________

[70][Re: Garden Spam ]

Unfortunately there are some people who are running scripts to spam
the [71]RubyGarden Wiki (and other wikis) with links. This is a big
problem - you can spend half an hour removing spam from pages and by
the time you're done there will be more to clean. The thread discusses
the problem and approaches to dealing with it. Hopefully this can be
dealt with soon. If you're reading this Ruby Weekly News on
[72]RubyGarden there is probably spam on the page. Click "View other
revisions", select the last revision before the spam, click "Edit
revision", then "Save" with "This change is a minor edit" set. This
will revert the page to a pre-spam state.
_________________________________________________________________

References

7. http://www.rubygarden.org/ru...
8. http://www.rubygarden.org/rurl/html/...
9. http://www.rubygarden.org/rub...
10. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?ne...
11. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=200410120130.30175.transami%40...
12. http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/13/1843240&tid=156...
13. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?Progr...
14. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=1098214695.32169.23.c...
15. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=986d2608.0410220736.33333497%40posting....
16. http://www.rubygarden.org/r...
17. http://www.jbrowse.com/text/ruby...
18. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=79Mbd.26351%245O5.19025%40news-server.bigp...
19. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=4173E9D2.7000409%40neu...
20. http://www.jamesbritt.com/code...
21. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041018204428.1a86320%25ko1%4...
22. http://jp.rubyist.net/maga...
23. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=200410161419.25156.neoneye%40a...
24. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=416B27A0.506%40brian-sc...
25. http://ruby.brian-schroeder.de/rpa-c...
26. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041012192742.GA19562%40student.ei.uni-st...
27. http://rpa-base.ruby...
28. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041019115620.GB24...
29. http://www.lypanov.net/xml/developmen...
30. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=cl7p9u%24khg%241%40ulysses.n...
31. http://www.nave...
32. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=87acugm4ac.fsf%40kt...
33. http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~hisashi...
34. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=4177E907.20003%40ema...
35. http://needle.ruby...
36. http://onestepback.org/index.cgi/Tech/Ruby/DependencyInjectionI...
37. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041021.192826.127172255.kou%40co...
38. http://www.cozmixng.org/~rwiki/?cmd=view;n...
39. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=a2835d3804102208473d04157f%40mail...
40. http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-...
41. http://www.rubygarden.org/rub...
42. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=a2347a0404102209315f5a9c08%40mail...
43. http://www.rubygard...
44. http://www.rubyon...
45. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?...
46. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?...
47. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041025010216.54c63c45.mutoh%40hig...
48. http://ponx.s5.xrea.com/hiki/ruby-ge...
49. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=cc28e0d5041021141729bb66d3%40mail...
50. http://theinternetco.net/projects/ruby...
51. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=B4B29E8C-262C-11D9-82DB-000D932CD5BA%40loudth...
52. http://www.rubyon...
53. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=uabvm0lrutuf59rls2vp7dvmscjk1e5rs5...
54. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=66b7e34b04101721167bac474%40mail...
55. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=20041015131345.FPZO6435.lakermmtao04.cox.net%40localhost.l...
56. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&group=comp.lang.ruby&c2coff=1&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=18&as_minm=10&as_miny=2004&as_maxd=24&as_maxm=10&as_maxy=2004&selm=20041021124531.FFSX24840.lakermmtao01.cox.net%40localhost.l...
57. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=4962B73AD3A1704FA415C8E7A077403501B1AAD8%40i...
58. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=F59DD192-1FB3-11D9-9854-000A959CF5AC%40re...
59. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&frame=right&th=6d24607d1c7f3029&seekm=200409302052.30491.transami%40runbox....
60. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&group=comp.lang.ruby&c2coff=1&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=18&as_minm=10&as_miny=2004&as_maxd=24&as_maxm=10&as_maxy=2004&selm=1098252394.467392.9328.nullmailer%40x31.priv...
61. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?...
62. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&frame=right&rnum=1&thl=0,738512553,738497798,738374662,738497470,738493925,738491095,738373901,738335833,738489263,738478400,738478869&seekm=EAENKKNOJPMNCDMLDOMLAEKBGHAA.curt%40hibbs...
63. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=EB06324B-22AA-11D9-997E-000A95A547BC%40cla...
64. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=417684CE.1080801%40micro...
65. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=10ndbu6tgvg2ca7%40corp.sup...
66. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=200410210026.15403.neoneye%40a...
67. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=cc28e0d5041022010629d2e2%40mail...
68. http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl1504697325d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=dbudd.49615%24N45.1463273%40twister2...
69. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&selm=2tnlrpF21omqhU2%40uni...
70. http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&frame=right&rnum=1&thl=0,737179348,737142948,737102491,737100912,737086717,737050455,737037362,737071602,737049783,737046114,737087877&seekm=417B4F86.6030909%40code-exec...
71. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?...
72. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?...

7 Answers

Jamis Buck

10/26/2004 1:47:00 PM

Tim Sutherland wrote:
> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>
> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
> reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>
> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
> Feedback is welcome.

Wonderful, Tim! I've been wishing this would come back. It's a great
resource. I have several friends who want to join ruby-talk, but are
daunted by its high volume. This is an excellent alternative, I think.
Thanks!

- Jamis

--
Jamis Buck
jgb3@email.byu.edu
http://www.jamisbuck...

gabriele renzi

10/26/2004 3:29:00 PM

Tim Sutherland ha scritto:

> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>
> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
> reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>
> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
> Feedback is welcome.

thanks for reviving it!
I was thinking of doing it myself ;)
Maybe you could accept some help (a simple "lot of work this week, who
wants the ball?" on the list) ?

Bill Guindon

10/26/2004 5:25:00 PM

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:04:13 +0900, Tim Sutherland <timsuth@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>
> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
> reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>
> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
> Feedback is welcome.
>

I really needed that. Been suffering from withdrawal symptoms as my
day job has pretty much ripped me away from Ruby for a bit -- this was
the perfect way to catch up quickly.

--
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)

timsuth

10/26/2004 11:37:00 PM

In article <E2ufd.2137$Es2.43918@twister2.libero.it>, gabriele renzi wrote:
>Tim Sutherland ha scritto:
>
>> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>>
>> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>>
>> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
>> reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>>
>> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
>> Feedback is welcome.
>
>thanks for reviving it!
>I was thinking of doing it myself ;)
>Maybe you could accept some help (a simple "lot of work this week, who
>wants the ball?" on the list) ?

Yes, definitely. I've put a pre-release version of next week's on the wiki:
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...

I encourage people to add to this as the week goes on.

Also, it is possibly for someone to post
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
to http://www.ruby... or another appropriate place?

I'm guessing that many of the people who used to read Ruby Weekly News don't
read ruby-talk.

Thanks.

Chad Fowler

10/26/2004 11:44:00 PM

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:04:13 +0900, Tim Sutherland <timsuth@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>
> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if you're
> reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>
> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
> Feedback is welcome.
>

Absoutely fantastic, Tim! I've been looking for a volunteer to take
this on for a while. What do you say we make it "official" and get
you access to do it in a more permanent place on RubyGarden? Shoot me
an email if you're interested, and we'll work out the logistics.

Thanks,
Chad

Gavin Sinclair

10/26/2004 11:48:00 PM

On Wednesday, October 27, 2004, 9:39:04 AM, Tim wrote:

> I'm guessing that many of the people who used to read Ruby Weekly News don't
> read ruby-talk.

Au contraire, I use it to make sense of ruby-talk :)

Gavin

Simon Strandgaard

10/27/2004 4:34:00 PM

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 15:04, Tim Sutherland wrote:
> I have written the Ruby Weekly News for 18-24th October 2004:
>
> http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RubyNews/...
>
> The web version is nicer than plain text (lots of hyperlinks), but if
> you're reading this offline then the output from "lynx -dump" is below.
>
> I hope to continue writing this each week, but no promises ;-)
> Feedback is welcome.

Thanks for this great summary.
I have alwaysly appreciated the summaries on ruby-dev/core.
This news is good.

--
Simon Strandgaard

comp.lang.ruby

Ruby Weekly News 18-24th October 2004

timsuth

Jamis Buck

gabriele renzi

Bill Guindon

timsuth

Chad Fowler

Gavin Sinclair

Simon Strandgaard

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