======================
Planning an Intro to Ruby on Windows. Aim: have people see what they can
get, let them type in code, not overload w/ Ruby concepts, only
introduce as needed.
Talks
Beyond vi – Marcus Denker
Ruby took some good ideas from Smalltalk . But it ignored the
environment completly that made Smalltalk so powerfull. Using Squeak as
an example, this talk will give an introduction some advanced tools in
the Smalltalk world (Refactoring Browser, StarBrowser, SLint, …).
Resource management for Appliances using Ruby: rconf – Alexander Bokovoy
This talk will present an attempt to develop full-fledged resource
management application for use in various appliances like firewalls,
NAS and SAN: modularization, configuration tracking, transactions,
independent multi-GUI, and security ideas will be discussed
We only had one large discussion today: “Ruby & the rest of
the world (technical)”. We were all quite tired, so the discussion
didn’t follow a clear track, and in the end, as people were leaving, it
became a tough head to head daydreaming contest No winners nor
losers, but I can say I dreamed a lot
The usual quick & dirty summary (this disc. took around 2H IIRC):
Introductory question: what can we make to make Ruby play nicer w.r.t.
the rest of the world?
interface w/ Java. Approaches:
RMI: needs deserializing Java objects. However code should be
available (in Java) Cons: hard, objects have to be mapped (attr,
etc), needs server code on the Java side. Pro: as easy to use as
druby (essentially the same thing, communicating w/ java on the
server side)
JNI: map the reflection API from Java through JNI into Ruby. Then
access all of Java through that “pipe”. I failed to see the merit of
this at first but now I believe it’s probably the idea of the day.
Should be easier to implement. Already done in Dolphin Smalltalk: www.metagnostic.org (that was our starting point).
Pro: all of Java accessible after a couple man-days!! Cons: at
first, some convenience lost (if I got it right the API would look
like ext/Win32API)
do we want to port things from Smalltalk? hehe, the Java through JNI
thing Things that would help
become: not really, not used a lot (only a dozen times in a live
Dolphin Smalltalk image)
multiple blocks: convenience, forget proc { }
serialization of everything. Right now problems with
IO: it’s OK, files are closed in Smalltalk on image save
(actually impl. dependent)
Proc: the problem is not procs, it’s code (the AST)
=> bytecode helps, we want Rite
rule-driven systems à la Prolog
backtracking: w/ continuations (?)
From this point on we lost a little bit the track and started
discussing whatever came through
formal specification of Ruby necessary?
Rubicon
C interpreter is specification. If somebody reimplements Ruby he
could say “I match 1.6.8”
who’s reimplementing Ruby anyway?
specification as guarantee for the programmer: example of Python.
however, if incompatible changes happen (as in Python), does a spec.
buy you anything, instead of just seeing the code break? Why care?
You have to keep the old thing anyway.
has any language ever been implemented following TDD?
how hard is creating a compiler anyway? => not really
yet getting AST from Ruby isn’t widely done as of now
<= node types in eval.c and no documentation on that
Ruby object model ~~ Smalltalk Object model
Objective C ~~ Smalltalk + C and types
what about Ruby <=> Objective C?
Embedding: what do we want to script?
everything: à la WSH
strategies:
per app, add Ruby interpreter and/or map existent object model to
Ruby. OpenOffice (UNO), kparts, bonobo
globally: intelligent proxying X server that sends events to
script apps. HARD
Graphic output
gnuplot: 3 bindings in RAA yet nothing satisfactory
generating PS: easy, similar to generation of Tcl/Tk in Rconf (see
talk above)
SVG and/or flash: seriously cool
We had implemented all of the above, but unfortunately the source code
got lost in the black hole as we collapsed
There need to be a specification of the C-API for extension developers.
This should include levels of support such that e.g. new 1.8 functions is in
a different class.
Doing this would allow other interpreters / compilers to be written and
still take advantage of the existing extensions.
At the same time extension writers can decide whether they really need
function rb_xxx since it might unnecessarily require a more advanced API.
Ultimately this would also make it possible to take Ruby extensions and
sometimes use them in a non-ruby enviroment.
Planning an Intro to Ruby on Windows. Aim: have people see what they can
get, let them type in code, not overload w/ Ruby concepts, only
introduce as needed.
Talks
Beyond vi – Marcus Denker
Ruby took some good ideas from Smalltalk . But it ignored the
environment completly that made Smalltalk so powerfull. Using Squeak as
an example, this talk will give an introduction some advanced tools in
the Smalltalk world (Refactoring Browser, StarBrowser, SLint, …).
Resource management for Appliances using Ruby: rconf – Alexander
Bokovoy
···
This talk will present an attempt to develop full-fledged resource
management application for use in various appliances like firewalls,
NAS and SAN: modularization, configuration tracking, transactions,
independent multi-GUI, and security ideas will be discussed
We only had one large discussion today: “Ruby & the rest of
the world (technical)”. We were all quite tired, so the discussion
didn’t follow a clear track, and in the end, as people were leaving, it
became a tough head to head daydreaming contest No winners nor
losers, but I can say I dreamed a lot
The usual quick & dirty summary (this disc. took around 2H IIRC):
Introductory question: what can we make to make Ruby play nicer w.r.t.
the rest of the world?
interface w/ Java. Approaches:
RMI: needs deserializing Java objects. However code should be
available (in Java) Cons: hard, objects have to be mapped (attr,
etc), needs server code on the Java side. Pro: as easy to use as
druby (essentially the same thing, communicating w/ java on the
server side)
JNI: map the reflection API from Java through JNI into Ruby. Then
access all of Java through that “pipe”. I failed to see the merit of
this at first but now I believe it’s probably the idea of the day.
Should be easier to implement. Already done in Dolphin Smalltalk: www.metagnostic.org (that was our starting point).
Pro: all of Java accessible after a couple man-days!! Cons: at
first, some convenience lost (if I got it right the API would look
like ext/Win32API)
do we want to port things from Smalltalk? hehe, the Java through JNI
thing Things that would help
become: not really, not used a lot (only a dozen times in a live
Dolphin Smalltalk image)
multiple blocks: convenience, forget proc { }
serialization of everything. Right now problems with
IO: it’s OK, files are closed in Smalltalk on image save
(actually impl. dependent)
Proc: the problem is not procs, it’s code (the AST)
=> bytecode helps, we want Rite
rule-driven systems à la Prolog
backtracking: w/ continuations (?)
From this point on we lost a little bit the track and started
discussing whatever came through
formal specification of Ruby necessary?
Rubicon
C interpreter is specification. If somebody reimplements Ruby he
could say “I match 1.6.8”
who’s reimplementing Ruby anyway?
specification as guarantee for the programmer: example of Python.
however, if incompatible changes happen (as in Python), does a spec.
buy you anything, instead of just seeing the code break? Why care?
You have to keep the old thing anyway.
has any language ever been implemented following TDD?
how hard is creating a compiler anyway? => not really
yet getting AST from Ruby isn’t widely done as of now
<= node types in eval.c and no documentation on that
Ruby object model ~~ Smalltalk Object model
Objective C ~~ Smalltalk + C and types
what about Ruby <=> Objective C?
Embedding: what do we want to script?
everything: à la WSH
strategies:
per app, add Ruby interpreter and/or map existent object model to
Ruby. OpenOffice (UNO), kparts, bonobo
globally: intelligent proxying X server that sends events to
script apps. HARD
Graphic output
gnuplot: 3 bindings in RAA yet nothing satisfactory
generating PS: easy, similar to generation of Tcl/Tk in Rconf (see
talk above)
SVG and/or flash: seriously cool
We had implemented all of the above, but unfortunately the source code
got lost in the black hole as we collapsed
recently I started adding such documentation here:
I hope many more of the common used function will find thier way to these
pages. At the moment its more a user-manual to the extension/embedding
API, than it is a reference-manual.
I would like comments on this:
what should such site contain ?
what is the most common extension/embedding functions ?
how should it be presented to the user ?
how much text should be written about each function ?
How can the links be improved. Example:
[/RbClassNewInstance rb_class_new_instance(argc, argv, class)]
How do I get rid of ‘/RbClassNewInstance’, so it doesn’t show up in the
link ?
···
On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:41:50 +0200, MikkelFJ wrote:
There need to be a specification of the C-API for extension developers.
This should include levels of support such that e.g. new 1.8 functions is in
a different class.
On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:41:50 +0200, MikkelFJ wrote:
There need to be a specification of the C-API for extension developers.
This should include levels of support such that e.g. new 1.8 functions is in
a different class.
I hope many more of the common used function will find thier way to these
pages. At the moment its more a user-manual to the extension/embedding
API, than it is a reference-manual.
I would like comments on this:
what should such site contain ?
what is the most common extension/embedding functions ?
how should it be presented to the user ?
how much text should be written about each function ?
How can the links be improved. Example:
[/RbClassNewInstance rb_class_new_instance(argc, argv, class)]
How do I get rid of ‘/RbClassNewInstance’, so it doesn’t show up in the
link ?
Better late than never (been migrating my old mail store to IMAP, and
saw this lying around)!
I’ve fix0red it, is the information still relevant, do you know?
How can the links be improved. Example:
[/RbClassNewInstance rb_class_new_instance(argc, argv, class)]
How do I get rid of ‘/RbClassNewInstance’, so it doesn’t show up in the
link ?
Better late than never (been migrating my old mail store to IMAP, and
saw this lying around)!
I’ve fix0red it, is the information still relevant, do you know?
I have looked at it… the links looks much nicer now. Good job.
···
On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 02:06:21 +0900, Dick Davies wrote:
