T
Tim Sutherland
http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20051106.html
Ruby Weekly News 31st October - 6th November 2005
=================================================
Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week's activity on the ruby-talk
mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup, brought to you by
Tim Sutherland.
[Contribute to the next newsletter.]
Articles and Announcements
==========================
* Nice article...
-----------------
Jeff Wood linked to an article at news.com,
[Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming].
* O'Reilly Ruby Blog - Bloggers Wanted
--------------------------------------
Steve Mallett: "O'Reilly is looking for some Ruby devotees to help man
a new group blog about, you guessed it, Ruby."
"I've been pushing for this for years & want to see it blossom!"
* Faster RubyGem downloads...
-----------------------------
"..and a generally faster RubyForge are the news of the day, thanks to
various folks who are now hosting Gem mirrors", Tom Copeland
announced.
* Why the Lucky Stiff on Noboto
-------------------------------
Raymond Brigleb:
| I wanted to mention to the Ruby list that Why the Lucky Stiff,
| author of the Poignant Guide and a very excellent storyteller,
| appears on the latest episode of Noboto.
* Euruko 05 videos
------------------
"Euruko Video Productions proudly present the European blockbuster of
this year's Halloween night": [videos from Euruko `05].
* Test First Challenge
----------------------
Pat Eyler has announced a new Ruby mailing list devoted to learning
test-first programming with Ruby based on the Test-First Challenge by
Bill Wake.
* Beta book: Enterprise Integration with Ruby
---------------------------------------------
Dave Thomas announced the "beta" of the upcoming book "Enterprise
Integration with Ruby", written by Maik Schmidt, published of course
under the Pragmatic Programmer banner.
"Beta" means that you can buy the PDF now in an unfinished state and
get updates, and a paper copy, as they are made available.
The book covers topics such as databases, LDAP, XML, SOAP and CORBA.
* "RubyConf for Stragglers" has moved (mp3/video from the conf)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Sanheim said that "RubyConf for Stragglers" (a collection of audio
and video files from RubyConf 2005) has moved to a different server.
User Group News
===============
* Chicago.rb Meetup
-------------------
John W. Long announced the November 7th 2005 meeting of the
Chicago Area Ruby Group.
"I may even give people a sneak peak at some of the stuff we are
working on for the ruby-lang.org redesign."
* Any OKC Rubyists?
-------------------
James Edward Gray II (of Ruby Quiz fame) asked if anyone else was
interested in having meetings in the Oklahoma City area.
* Toronto Ruby User Group Nov 6 Meeting
---------------------------------------
The Toronto Ruby User Group (TRUG) met on Sunday November 6.
Watir, RubyConf and PDF::Writer were all discussed.
Threads
=======
Haiku Challenge
===============
Jabari Zakiya:
| Ruby, Python, Perl.
| For me, Ruby easiest.
| But I like Forth too.
Bill Kelly:
| FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN
| RUBY MATZ CREATE JOY DOES>
| CHERRY-BLOSSOM !
! is pronounced `store'.
PDF with Arabic
---------------
Tobin Harris asked what the best option was for creating multi-lingual
PDFs, in "English, Arabic, Dutch and Danish".
Austin Ziegler said that support is being added to PDF::Writer for this,
but it is not yet ready. "I have a number of font issues to figure out,
but I expect sometime early next year we will have full multilingual PDF".
Andreas S. said that an alternative option is to use Ruby to create LaTeX
files, from which a PDF can then be generated. ERb can be used to process
templated LaTeX documents.
See also [Japanese font patch for pdf-writer-1.1.3].
Ruby making inroads at big corporation... small anecdote.
---------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Waits asked for a show of hands at a talk for how many people used
Ruby. One of them worked for Qualcomm and "mentioned that historically,
they've done lots of PERL stuff, but now Ruby is slowly being phased in,
gaining momentum as a choice over PERL."
James Britt: "Perhaps the real sign of Big Corporate Acceptance will be
when people start referring to RUBY."
"Then we'll have to invent a backronym for it."
| Rapid Understanding Before Yesterday
| Really Ugly Bastards Yodeling
| RUBY: Uplifting Beautiful Yammering
| RUBY unmasks brutal youth
| Rarely unnatural block yielding
"RUBY: Upholding the Beauty of YAML" - Jacob Fugal
"RUBY ultimately begets YARV" - James Britt
"Ranguage Undertaken By Yukihiro" - Hal Fulton
"RUBY Ultimately Bedazzles You" - Lloyd Zusman
"Radically Utopian Block Yields" - Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
Devin Mullins:
| Really, U Better Yoose-it
| Rapid Usage's Banned, Yes?
| Run it Until it Begs You
| Rapid Understanding, Block Yielding
| Released Under a Branch of Yggdrasil
| Remember, Understand, Believe, Yield
| Rough Underneath, But Yummy
| Relentless Use Brings Youth
| RUBY Usually Believes You
| Rarely Usurped By Yacc
| $refreshing unless brain { yield }
| $ruby.untaint { bias... yo }
| Ruby Un-Bring Your (Love To Town)?
create Date from Monthname
--------------------------
Hardy Henneberg asked how to turn a string like `28/Sep/2005' into a Date.
Hirofumi Watanabe gave the answer:
date = Date.strptime("28/Sep/2005", "%d/%b/%Y")
Stefan Lang added that documentation for the formatting symbols like %Y
can be viewed by running 'ri Time#strftime'.
ruby-dev summary 27393-27541
----------------------------
Minero Aoki posted the summary of the Japanese list ruby-dev.
In it, Shugo Maeda's proposed syntax for selector namespaces received a
lot of discussion (YACC was again villainous) and Matz announced Ruby
1.8.4 preview1.
Some comments on new 1.9 features
---------------------------------
This thread discussed some of the [new features in Ruby 1.9].
(Thanks to Mauricio Fernandez's excellent analysis and documentation.)
New Releases
============
traits-0.8.0 - better living through meta-programming
-----------------------------------------------------
Ara.T.Howard: "traits.rb is set of attr_* like methods on steroids,
caffeine, and botox. it encourages better living through meta-programming
and uniform access priciples."
This release features the addition of hooks, for example pre/post the
setting of an attribute.
Ruby/GD2 alternative to Ruby/GD
-------------------------------
Rob Leslie posted an alternative interface to the GD graphics library.
"I wrote it because I wasn't satisfied with the original; in particular,
there was no support for creating images from JPEG or PNG data already in
memory. My alternative is 100% Ruby, relying on Ruby/DL to link with the
gd shared library."
urirequire: I got yer Web 2.0 right here
----------------------------------------
Francis Hwang:
| How many times have you thought to yourself: "If only there was a more
| elegant way to download and execute code from all over the internets!"
| Well, urirequire is the lib for you. By hijacking Kernel.require,
| urirequire makes it a snap to include code from anywhere on the World
| Wide Whatever. Sure, eval'ing code that you don't own might be
| dangerous; for all you know, that remote Ruby file could be undefining
| Class or emailing your ex-girlfriends. But I say it's time to get with
| the bleeding edge! Control of your own code is so February 2005.
require 'urirequire'
require 'http://fhwang.net/urirequire_test'
"urirequire: It's not just a solution looking for a problem. It's a
solution looking for a victim."
CommandLine-0.7.10
------------------
Jim Freeze updated the CommandLine library, which is used to provide
command-line option processing for your applications.
The API was tweaked so that you can access objects as opt.myoption as an
alternative to opt['myoption'].
rubyforge-0.0.0
---------------
Ara.T.Howard released the first version of a script that automates some
RubyForge functions, such as creating a new release.
_why shouted out "YES."
See also [auto rubyforge releasing].
lazy.rb 0.1
-----------
MenTaLguY released another version of his lazy-evaluation library.
Exception handling was improved, Lazy:
ivergenceError added, as well as
"nearly seamless implicit evaluation, thanks to Pit Capitain".
Rant 0.4.8
----------
Stefan Lang announced the release of Rant, version 0.4.8.
| Rant is a flexible build tool written entirely in Ruby, similar to Rake.
Because of this similarity, he also wrote a Rake/Rant comparison, although
he "can't guarantee that it is 100% objective..."
getopt-1.3.0
------------
Daniel Berger let out another getopt release, a "sane replacement for
command line parsing libraries like getoptlong and optparse".
Rubyipq v0.1.0: Bindings for Netfilter's libipq
-----------------------------------------------
Leonardo Eloy wrote a binding for Linux's netfilter (via libipq - IP Queue
Library), making it possible to write Ruby programs that determine whether
a packet is accepted or not.
Reiserfs for ruby 0.2
---------------------
Adam released RReiserfs version 0.2, an implementation of the Resierfs3
filesystem in Ruby.
File sizes are now shown, and files can be streamed instead of having to
be always loaded into memory.
Ruby Weekly News 31st October - 6th November 2005
=================================================
Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week's activity on the ruby-talk
mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup, brought to you by
Tim Sutherland.
[Contribute to the next newsletter.]
Articles and Announcements
==========================
* Nice article...
-----------------
Jeff Wood linked to an article at news.com,
[Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming].
* O'Reilly Ruby Blog - Bloggers Wanted
--------------------------------------
Steve Mallett: "O'Reilly is looking for some Ruby devotees to help man
a new group blog about, you guessed it, Ruby."
"I've been pushing for this for years & want to see it blossom!"
* Faster RubyGem downloads...
-----------------------------
"..and a generally faster RubyForge are the news of the day, thanks to
various folks who are now hosting Gem mirrors", Tom Copeland
announced.
* Why the Lucky Stiff on Noboto
-------------------------------
Raymond Brigleb:
| I wanted to mention to the Ruby list that Why the Lucky Stiff,
| author of the Poignant Guide and a very excellent storyteller,
| appears on the latest episode of Noboto.
* Euruko 05 videos
------------------
"Euruko Video Productions proudly present the European blockbuster of
this year's Halloween night": [videos from Euruko `05].
* Test First Challenge
----------------------
Pat Eyler has announced a new Ruby mailing list devoted to learning
test-first programming with Ruby based on the Test-First Challenge by
Bill Wake.
* Beta book: Enterprise Integration with Ruby
---------------------------------------------
Dave Thomas announced the "beta" of the upcoming book "Enterprise
Integration with Ruby", written by Maik Schmidt, published of course
under the Pragmatic Programmer banner.
"Beta" means that you can buy the PDF now in an unfinished state and
get updates, and a paper copy, as they are made available.
The book covers topics such as databases, LDAP, XML, SOAP and CORBA.
* "RubyConf for Stragglers" has moved (mp3/video from the conf)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Sanheim said that "RubyConf for Stragglers" (a collection of audio
and video files from RubyConf 2005) has moved to a different server.
User Group News
===============
* Chicago.rb Meetup
-------------------
John W. Long announced the November 7th 2005 meeting of the
Chicago Area Ruby Group.
"I may even give people a sneak peak at some of the stuff we are
working on for the ruby-lang.org redesign."
* Any OKC Rubyists?
-------------------
James Edward Gray II (of Ruby Quiz fame) asked if anyone else was
interested in having meetings in the Oklahoma City area.
* Toronto Ruby User Group Nov 6 Meeting
---------------------------------------
The Toronto Ruby User Group (TRUG) met on Sunday November 6.
Watir, RubyConf and PDF::Writer were all discussed.
Threads
=======
Haiku Challenge
===============
Jabari Zakiya:
| Ruby, Python, Perl.
| For me, Ruby easiest.
| But I like Forth too.
Bill Kelly:
| FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN
| RUBY MATZ CREATE JOY DOES>
| CHERRY-BLOSSOM !
! is pronounced `store'.
PDF with Arabic
---------------
Tobin Harris asked what the best option was for creating multi-lingual
PDFs, in "English, Arabic, Dutch and Danish".
Austin Ziegler said that support is being added to PDF::Writer for this,
but it is not yet ready. "I have a number of font issues to figure out,
but I expect sometime early next year we will have full multilingual PDF".
Andreas S. said that an alternative option is to use Ruby to create LaTeX
files, from which a PDF can then be generated. ERb can be used to process
templated LaTeX documents.
See also [Japanese font patch for pdf-writer-1.1.3].
Ruby making inroads at big corporation... small anecdote.
---------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Waits asked for a show of hands at a talk for how many people used
Ruby. One of them worked for Qualcomm and "mentioned that historically,
they've done lots of PERL stuff, but now Ruby is slowly being phased in,
gaining momentum as a choice over PERL."
James Britt: "Perhaps the real sign of Big Corporate Acceptance will be
when people start referring to RUBY."
"Then we'll have to invent a backronym for it."
| Rapid Understanding Before Yesterday
| Really Ugly Bastards Yodeling
| RUBY: Uplifting Beautiful Yammering
| RUBY unmasks brutal youth
| Rarely unnatural block yielding
"RUBY: Upholding the Beauty of YAML" - Jacob Fugal
"RUBY ultimately begets YARV" - James Britt
"Ranguage Undertaken By Yukihiro" - Hal Fulton
"RUBY Ultimately Bedazzles You" - Lloyd Zusman
"Radically Utopian Block Yields" - Nicholas Van Weerdenburg
Devin Mullins:
| Really, U Better Yoose-it
| Rapid Usage's Banned, Yes?
| Run it Until it Begs You
| Rapid Understanding, Block Yielding
| Released Under a Branch of Yggdrasil
| Remember, Understand, Believe, Yield
| Rough Underneath, But Yummy
| Relentless Use Brings Youth
| RUBY Usually Believes You
| Rarely Usurped By Yacc
| $refreshing unless brain { yield }
| $ruby.untaint { bias... yo }
| Ruby Un-Bring Your (Love To Town)?
create Date from Monthname
--------------------------
Hardy Henneberg asked how to turn a string like `28/Sep/2005' into a Date.
Hirofumi Watanabe gave the answer:
date = Date.strptime("28/Sep/2005", "%d/%b/%Y")
Stefan Lang added that documentation for the formatting symbols like %Y
can be viewed by running 'ri Time#strftime'.
ruby-dev summary 27393-27541
----------------------------
Minero Aoki posted the summary of the Japanese list ruby-dev.
In it, Shugo Maeda's proposed syntax for selector namespaces received a
lot of discussion (YACC was again villainous) and Matz announced Ruby
1.8.4 preview1.
Some comments on new 1.9 features
---------------------------------
This thread discussed some of the [new features in Ruby 1.9].
(Thanks to Mauricio Fernandez's excellent analysis and documentation.)
New Releases
============
traits-0.8.0 - better living through meta-programming
-----------------------------------------------------
Ara.T.Howard: "traits.rb is set of attr_* like methods on steroids,
caffeine, and botox. it encourages better living through meta-programming
and uniform access priciples."
This release features the addition of hooks, for example pre/post the
setting of an attribute.
Ruby/GD2 alternative to Ruby/GD
-------------------------------
Rob Leslie posted an alternative interface to the GD graphics library.
"I wrote it because I wasn't satisfied with the original; in particular,
there was no support for creating images from JPEG or PNG data already in
memory. My alternative is 100% Ruby, relying on Ruby/DL to link with the
gd shared library."
urirequire: I got yer Web 2.0 right here
----------------------------------------
Francis Hwang:
| How many times have you thought to yourself: "If only there was a more
| elegant way to download and execute code from all over the internets!"
| Well, urirequire is the lib for you. By hijacking Kernel.require,
| urirequire makes it a snap to include code from anywhere on the World
| Wide Whatever. Sure, eval'ing code that you don't own might be
| dangerous; for all you know, that remote Ruby file could be undefining
| Class or emailing your ex-girlfriends. But I say it's time to get with
| the bleeding edge! Control of your own code is so February 2005.
require 'urirequire'
require 'http://fhwang.net/urirequire_test'
"urirequire: It's not just a solution looking for a problem. It's a
solution looking for a victim."
CommandLine-0.7.10
------------------
Jim Freeze updated the CommandLine library, which is used to provide
command-line option processing for your applications.
The API was tweaked so that you can access objects as opt.myoption as an
alternative to opt['myoption'].
rubyforge-0.0.0
---------------
Ara.T.Howard released the first version of a script that automates some
RubyForge functions, such as creating a new release.
_why shouted out "YES."
See also [auto rubyforge releasing].
lazy.rb 0.1
-----------
MenTaLguY released another version of his lazy-evaluation library.
Exception handling was improved, Lazy:
ivergenceError added, as well as"nearly seamless implicit evaluation, thanks to Pit Capitain".
Rant 0.4.8
----------
Stefan Lang announced the release of Rant, version 0.4.8.
| Rant is a flexible build tool written entirely in Ruby, similar to Rake.
Because of this similarity, he also wrote a Rake/Rant comparison, although
he "can't guarantee that it is 100% objective...
"getopt-1.3.0
------------
Daniel Berger let out another getopt release, a "sane replacement for
command line parsing libraries like getoptlong and optparse".
Rubyipq v0.1.0: Bindings for Netfilter's libipq
-----------------------------------------------
Leonardo Eloy wrote a binding for Linux's netfilter (via libipq - IP Queue
Library), making it possible to write Ruby programs that determine whether
a packet is accepted or not.
Reiserfs for ruby 0.2
---------------------
Adam released RReiserfs version 0.2, an implementation of the Resierfs3
filesystem in Ruby.
File sizes are now shown, and files can be streamed instead of having to
be always loaded into memory.