Changes to "Programming Ruby" book for 1.8.x

[Phil Tomson]

Since the text to Dave & Andy's "Programming Ruby" book is freely
available, is anyone making changes to reflect changes in Ruby 1.8.x?

The RubyGarden wiki lists ChangesToProgrammingRuby at:
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?ChangesToProgrammingRuby

Is anyone actually implementing these changes and if so is there a
version online anywhere that reflects these changes? Maybe there
could be a CVS repository where the text is kept and people could be
allowed to submit updates?

Thoughts?

Phil

 

[Dave Thomas]

Since the text to Dave & Andy's "Programming Ruby" book is freely
available, is anyone making changes to reflect changes in Ruby 1.8.x?

The RubyGarden wiki lists ChangesToProgrammingRuby at:
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?ChangesToProgrammingRuby

Is anyone actually implementing these changes and if so is there a
version online anywhere that reflects these changes? Maybe there
could be a CVS repository where the text is kept and people could be
allowed to submit updates?

I've updated the built-ins (that's where all the new ri stuff came
from). I've updated the tutorial stuff too. I'm currently stumped about
what to do with the explosion in the supplied libraries in lib and
ext/.



Cheers

Dave

 

[Ara.T.Howard]

Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 05:43:57 +0900
From: Dave Thomas <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
Subject: Re: Changes to "Programming Ruby" book for 1.8.x




I've updated the built-ins (that's where all the new ri stuff came
from). I've updated the tutorial stuff too. I'm currently stumped about
what to do with the explosion in the supplied libraries in lib and
ext/.

RCR = <<-txt
std extentions will not be included in the dist w/o rdoc compatible
doccumentation.
txt

this doesn't really seem too unreasonable does it ??

-a
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[Gavin Sinclair]

On Jan 30, 2004, at 14:29, Phil Tomson wrote:

I've updated the built-ins (that's where all the new ri stuff came
from). I've updated the tutorial stuff too. I'm currently stumped about
what to do with the explosion in the supplied libraries in lib and
ext/.

One option is to leave (most of) them out of the book. The
documentation for these libs are available online, where there are no
page restrictions.

OK, so the online documentation isn't complete. But it's probably
easier to complete that than to write the documentation into a book.

Perhaps the pickaxe could give a good summary of the purpose of each
library package with some examples, and then refer to the online docs.
That would make good paper-based reading.

Cheers,
Gavin

 

[Phil Tomson]

One option is to leave (most of) them out of the book. The
documentation for these libs are available online, where there are no
page restrictions.

OK, so the online documentation isn't complete. But it's probably
easier to complete that than to write the documentation into a book.

Perhaps the pickaxe could give a good summary of the purpose of each
library package with some examples, and then refer to the online docs.
That would make good paper-based reading.

There could be an online version of "Programming Ruby" that covers
everything (as much as possible) and a paper one (hopefully) the might not
be comprehensive but would have pointers to where you can find the info
online.

Phil

 

[Damphyr]

There could be an online version of "Programming Ruby" that covers
everything (as much as possible) and a paper one (hopefully) the might not
be comprehensive but would have pointers to where you can find the info
online.

Well, I don't mind having the online version being the most complete,
but it's extremely handy having the book in one compact, printable and ,
above all, always on hand reference. I often code while on the train for
example and not having a reference at hand can really throw you off.
Having an outdated or plainly wrong reference is even worse.
I'm not talking about a printed version. I only think that a language
distro should have a reference for every library it includes leaving any
library that doesn't provide a good reference and decent usage
documentation (ok, the latter can be incomplete) out of the distro.
Having said that, I love the .chm file for being a fast all-in-one
reference and usage guide (a pdf version would be just as good - better
cause I could use it with linux- an html one less desirable - I
personally hate clicking: pgDn,pgUp work a lot faster) and I am all for
having a project to keep it up-to-date for each subsequent release.
Having just switched to 1.8 I'm having difficulties following the
changes or figuring exactly what goes on in some libs (witness my rather
naive question about CGI and the return values of CGI#params).
I actually find the idea of having a Rubyforge for the Windows installer
and for the Pickaxe book documentation that goes with it a very nice
idea - and a good incentive to start building a set of scripts for
document generation in Ruby (but I'll look first to find who has already
started on that path).
What say Dave, Andrew and co?
V.-


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