New list: ruby-modules - for module developers

ruby-talk
1

Howdy folks. I’ve put together a new list for ruby developers at
ruby-support.org.

developers@ruby-support.org

The list is intended for consumption by people who:

*) write Ruby modules in Ruby
*) write Ruby modules in C/Ruby
*) distribute Ruby modules
*) install Ruby modules
*) are actively engaged in developing software using modules

You can subscribe by visiting:

http://lists.ruby-support.org/lists/listinfo/ruby-developers

This list is intended to be more focused on ruby module and script
development and not all over the map with every nifty Ruby or
Comp-Sci’ish topic that comes along. :~) Come one, come all, the
lists charter is intended for developers using ruby. -sc

···

–
Sean Chittenden

2

Sorry I can’t quote your text; it comes through
in my client as an attachment.

I’m a little confused by your terminology. Do you
mean modules as opposed to classes? Or are you
using “module” in a Perlish sense?

It sounds like the latter to me.

Hal

3

Sorry I can't quote your text; it comes through in my client as an
attachment.

Client doesn't like PGP signatures, eh?

I'm a little confused by your terminology. Do you mean modules as
opposed to classes? Or are you using "module" in a Perlish sense?

Well, Classes inherit from Modules, so modules is technically the
correct term, however I do hope that when people are developing using
Ruby, I hope they're using Classes in some OOP-ish fashion, but that's
largely a developer/organization preference.

It sounds like the latter to me.

I prefer not to think about that other language, I begin to feel
dirty, but its legacy creeps in every now and then. :~) Yeah, it's
closer to the Perl-ish sense of the word. ::goes to cleanse self in a
bathtub of bleach:: -sc

···

--
Sean Chittenden

4

Client doesn’t like PGP signatures, eh?

I have the same experience with Outlook Express (on Windows XP Home
edition)… it puts the body of the email as an attachment (.TXT) and the
PGP as a separate attachment (.DAT).

Is there any setting which will avoid this from happening ?
Sorry, I know this is OT, but could not resist asking :wink:

– Shanko

5

> Client doesn't like PGP signatures, eh?
>

I have the same experience with Outlook Express (on Windows XP Home
edition)... it puts the body of the email as an attachment (.TXT) and the
PGP as a separate attachment (.DAT).

Is there any setting which will avoid this from happening ?
Sorry, I know this is OT, but could not resist asking :wink:

When I was forced to use Outlook at Cisco (::grumble::slight_smile: I ran into
this same problem. My eventual solution came down to setting up a
.forward file on one of the core mail exchangers setting up postfix +
mutt on my desktop. :~) Wish I had a better answer for 'ya than that,
sorry. -sc

···

--
Sean Chittenden

6

I have the same experience with Outlook Express (on Windows XP Home
edition)… it puts the body of the email as an attachment (.TXT) and the
PGP as a separate attachment (.DAT).

Is there any setting which will avoid this from happening ?
Sorry, I know this is OT, but could not resist asking :wink:

According to Microsoft, you can get PGP plug-in for Outlook Express here:
http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. I’ve not tried it (I couldn’t get the
website to validate my ip address as being in NA)

Chris

7

Instead of using outlook, why don’t you look into other OS options,
Evolution by Ximian for linux works well with an Exchange server and you
can configure the system however you wish.

Jared Dame

···

On Tue, 2002-09-03 at 23:28, Sean Chittenden wrote:

Client doesn’t like PGP signatures, eh?

I have the same experience with Outlook Express (on Windows XP Home
edition)… it puts the body of the email as an attachment (.TXT) and the
PGP as a separate attachment (.DAT).

Is there any setting which will avoid this from happening ?
Sorry, I know this is OT, but could not resist asking :wink:

When I was forced to use Outlook at Cisco (::grumble::slight_smile: I ran into
this same problem. My eventual solution came down to setting up a
.forward file on one of the core mail exchangers setting up postfix +
mutt on my desktop. :~) Wish I had a better answer for 'ya than that,
sorry. -sc

–
Sean Chittenden
–
Jared Dame
SAIC
Weapons Engagement Office

8

> > Client doesn't like PGP signatures, eh?
> >
>
> I have the same experience with Outlook Express (on Windows XP Home
> edition)... it puts the body of the email as an attachment (.TXT) and

the

> PGP as a separate attachment (.DAT).
>
> Is there any setting which will avoid this from happening ?
> Sorry, I know this is OT, but could not resist asking :wink:

When I was forced to use Outlook at Cisco (::grumble::slight_smile: I ran into
this same problem. My eventual solution came down to setting up a
.forward file on one of the core mail exchangers setting up postfix +
mutt on my desktop. :~) Wish I had a better answer for 'ya than that,
sorry. -sc

Well, thanks for responding, Sean.

What gets me is that not all emails with PGP signatures come as attachments.
Some do and some don't.

I wonder if there is some difference in the mechanism.

-- Shanko

9

According to Microsoft, you can get PGP plug-in for Outlook Express here:
http://web.mit.edu/network/pgp.html. I’ve not tried it (I couldn’t get the
website to validate my ip address as being in NA)

Chris

Thanks for the info, Chris.

I went to the website and downloaded the package.
It does not mention anything about Windows XP (HE) but I am going to give it
a shot.

Thanks, again.

– Shanko

10

Yes, there is. One email client is sending a plain text email and the other
is sending the PGP signature as a mime attachment. Without knowing for
certain, I’d guess Sean is using Sylpheed. But looking at his email
headers revealed he uses mutt (or at least that his mailer wants us to
believe it is mutt).

Personally, I consider this is a design flaw in the email client (and is
the primary reason I switched back to KMail after trying and liking
Sylpheed). There is no reason to send pgp-signed text as two separate
chunks when it can just as easily be sent as a unified piece of text.

Were I writing an email client (oh wait, I am writing one) I would send the
mail so that it can be piped directly into gpg --decode without the need
to locate both the text file (the .txt piece of MIME) and the signature
(the .asc piece of MIME)… although I guess this can interfere with the
content of the plain text as well, it doesn’t like rows of hyphens very
much, so there is a downside.

FYI, while my mailer can reply to Sean’s email fine, KMail does not seem to
handle verification of signatures passed as MIME attachments. I wonder if
mutt and/or sylpheed can handle both methods just fine?

As to the module developer list: hopefully the first topics will include a
documentation standard and a standard packaging format. I was all set to
run with RD, but I can’t seem to find a native tool like perldoc in the
core Ruby distribution-- are there plans to put rdtool/rd2 in there so we
can assume they are installed anywhere Ruby is found?

And while I like RDoc quite a bit, it’s definitely not the same thing as
perldoc, which I find immensely useful when dealing with new modules.

Of course, there’s no reason module developers can’t use rdtool on their
own to generate man pages, include those in their module distributions and
install them into the system appropriately. But if one were to do such a
thing, where would be the “right” place to install man pages about Ruby
modules?

-michael

···

On Tuesday 03 September 2002 20:42, Shashank Date wrote:

What gets me is that not all emails with PGP signatures come as
attachments. Some do and some don’t.

I wonder if there is some difference in the mechanism.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael C. Libby x@ichimunki.com
public key: http://www.ichimunki.com/public_key.txt
web site: http://www.ichimunki.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

11

Personally, I consider this is a design flaw in the email client (and is
the primary reason I switched back to KMail after trying and liking
Sylpheed). There is no reason to send pgp-signed text as two separate
chunks when it can just as easily be sent as a unified piece of text.

Speaking from my limitless ignorance, I’d say that
it should be possible to keep the PGP portion as an
attachment without converting the main piece of
text into an attachment as well. But I don’t really
know how MIME works.

In other words, I don’t feel a pressing need for them
to be unified, as long as the main text can be read
without opening a separate attachment.

Were I writing an email client (oh wait, I am writing one)

/me does a tripletake on this line.

You’re writing an email client? In Ruby, I assume/hope?
With what GUI?

I’m interested in a Ruby email client (see the thread
a few weeks back). I’ve looked into SGmail, but I can’t
run it until I figure out how to compile the one last
missing piece (uconv) on Windows.

And anyhow, I think it is Tk-based, so I’m not sure
how much I’d like the look-and-feel.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: New list: ruby-modules - for module developers…

12

Speaking from my limitless ignorance, I’d say that
it should be possible to keep the PGP portion as an
attachment without converting the main piece of
text into an attachment as well. But I don’t really
know how MIME works.

In other words, I don’t feel a pressing need for them
to be unified, as long as the main text can be read
without opening a separate attachment.

I suppose a good mail client should be able to handle all of the above or
be flexible enough to make it easy to handle all of the above. Not sure if
such a client exists at this time.

You’re writing an email client? In Ruby, I assume/hope?
With what GUI?

Yes, actually a multi-purpose text editor in Ruby using Tk-- essentially a
set of menus and an base Editor class/widget. The base editor is then
subclassed into “modes”-- in my first iteration, one mode will be a
rudimentary Ruby source code editor, two modes will be email related-- a
“directory” browser and an email message editor-- and a help mode (not
entirely sure of how this will look yet, but the guts are already there to
do something, um, helpful). So it’s more like emacs, and less like
Outlook.

My main goals for the email components: ability to handle PGP signatures,
built-in Bayesian spam filtering, and basic stuff like having an inbox,
local mail storage, ability to send, receive, read, reply, forward an
email.

So far I can barely send email with the program. I’ve spent most of my time
so far getting a functional base editor class rolling and building the
application’s framework, including the ability to self-modify via eval and
“rebuild” the application while it’s running.

I’m interested in a Ruby email client (see the thread
a few weeks back). I’ve looked into SGmail, but I can’t
run it until I figure out how to compile the one last
missing piece (uconv) on Windows.

I looked into that too. But I’m too lazy to install modules, so I never did
finish installing the program. It did look interesting in that it appears
to provide a web interface.

And anyhow, I think it is Tk-based, so I’m not sure
how much I’d like the look-and-feel.

I’m sure my project will be a disappointment in this regard, but I believe
I’ve got a design that will make it possible (if not easy) to port to
either a console mode (i.e. curses) or to another toolkit.

I hope to have some draft code in a public place by the end of next week. I
will certainly announce it on ruby-talk once I do.

-michael

···

On Wednesday 04 September 2002 00:29, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael C. Libby x@ichimunki.com
public key: http://www.ichimunki.com/public_key.txt
web site: http://www.ichimunki.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

13

You’re writing an email client? In Ruby, I assume/hope?
With what GUI?

Yes, actually a multi-purpose text editor in Ruby using Tk-- essentially a
set of menus and an base Editor class/widget. The base editor is then
subclassed into “modes”-- in my first iteration, one mode will be a
rudimentary Ruby source code editor, two modes will be email related-- a
“directory” browser and an email message editor-- and a help mode (not
entirely sure of how this will look yet, but the guts are already there to
do something, um, helpful). So it’s more like emacs, and less like
Outlook.

Interesting, but not the way I think.

My main goals for the email components: ability to handle PGP signatures,
built-in Bayesian spam filtering, and basic stuff like having an inbox,
local mail storage, ability to send, receive, read, reply, forward an
email.

Good, very good so far. Um, what’s a “Bayesian” spam filter?

I’ve thought of assigning positive and negative weights to keywords in
a stoplist and an anti-stoplist. Is it anything like that?

Or is it perhaps an AI type of thing where you tell the app “This is spam”
and it tries to learn what spam is?

But I should quit guessing.

I’m interested in a Ruby email client (see the thread
a few weeks back). I’ve looked into SGmail, but I can’t
run it until I figure out how to compile the one last
missing piece (uconv) on Windows.

I looked into that too. But I’m too lazy to install modules, so I never
did
finish installing the program. It did look interesting in that it appears
to provide a web interface.

I’d forgotten that part if I ever knew. What good is a web interface,
anyway? Serious question, not sarcasm.

And anyhow, I think it is Tk-based, so I’m not sure
how much I’d like the look-and-feel.

I’m sure my project will be a disappointment in this regard, but I believe
I’ve got a design that will make it possible (if not easy) to port to
either a console mode (i.e. curses) or to another toolkit.

That’s great.

Have you looked at the (pre-alpha) FreeRIDE project? They’ve wrapped
the Scintilla widget so that the editor is SciTE-like. (I have no
previous familiarity with those things, but it seems pretty cool.)

We’re going to develop an editor API so that scripts can be written
in Ruby. This might at some point in the future make a nice plug-in
replacement for parts of your app.

But you’re probably building in much the same functionality now.

I don’t really hate Tk, but it does look a little clunky to me.
Particularly such things as the Listbox widget.

I hope to have some draft code in a public place by the end of next week.
I
will certainly announce it on ruby-talk once I do.

That’s great.

Hmm. I wonder if someone should make an “email client library” to handle
the common stuff… then it would be simpler for people to develop these
things, and there would be more to pick from.

I have an email client “in my mind” but I will probably never write it.
It’s a lot of work. I guess it’s in the category of dreamware.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: New list: ruby-modules - for module developers…

14

It is usually described via the term “naive Bayesian filtering,” which
is where you basically throw together statistics on the number of
occurrances of words, and assume independence so that you can
estimate joint probabilities simply as P(A and B) = P(A) P(B).

See:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/images/ifilter.png

Basically, what it does is to go a step past AI, head over to
“statistical analysis,” and come back and pretend to be AI.

You set up folders with ‘good mail’ and folders with ‘bad mail’ and
collect statistics on how often each word occurs in each folder.

You take incoming messages, run them through the formula above, and
see which message folder they best match against.

In effect, there is no stoplist; every word in every message is taken
into consideration.

···

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, “Hal E. Fulton” hal9000@hypermetrics.com wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: New list: ruby-modules - for module developers…

You’re writing an email client? In Ruby, I assume/hope?
With what GUI?

Yes, actually a multi-purpose text editor in Ruby using Tk-- essentially a
set of menus and an base Editor class/widget. The base editor is then
subclassed into “modes”-- in my first iteration, one mode will be a
rudimentary Ruby source code editor, two modes will be email related-- a
“directory” browser and an email message editor-- and a help mode (not
entirely sure of how this will look yet, but the guts are already there to
do something, um, helpful). So it’s more like emacs, and less like
Outlook.

Interesting, but not the way I think.

My main goals for the email components: ability to handle PGP signatures,
built-in Bayesian spam filtering, and basic stuff like having an inbox,
local mail storage, ability to send, receive, read, reply, forward an
email.

Good, very good so far. Um, what’s a “Bayesian” spam filter?

I’ve thought of assigning positive and negative weights to keywords in
a stoplist and an anti-stoplist. Is it anything like that?

Or is it perhaps an AI type of thing where you tell the app “This is spam”
and it tries to learn what spam is?

But I should quit guessing.

–
(concatenate 'string “cbbrowne” “@cbbrowne.com”)
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/ifilter.html
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.

15

What would you expect from such a library – what would be your dream API,
so to speak?

– Nikodemus

···

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

Hmm. I wonder if someone should make an “email client library” to handle
the common stuff… then it would be simpler for people to develop these
things, and there would be more to pick from.

16

From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com

Good, very good so far. Um, what’s a “Bayesian” spam filter?

There I go assuming everyone reads the same stuff I do… check out
A Plan for Spam for a good explanation of how this
works. Examples are in LISP.

I’ve thought of assigning positive and negative weights to keywords in
a stoplist and an anti-stoplist. Is it anything like that?

Or is it perhaps an AI type of thing where you tell the app “This is
spam” and it tries to learn what spam is?

Both. It’s not really AI, so much as training the filter. It learns what
spam is by using some probabilities calculations to assign weights to all
the words in email, then it examines each new email based on a set of the
heaviest/lightest weight words. The words, in effect, are indicators of
the likelihood that an email is spam.

I’d forgotten that part if I ever knew. What good is a web interface,
anyway? Serious question, not sarcasm.

Set it up, go on a trip, access your email from any web browser without the
need for Hotmail? Solves the problem on your LAN, as well, since you can
now access your email from any machine without any special fileserver
setup. Solves the problem of which toolkit to use, too. The disadvantage
is that web browsers have the worst text editing facilities known to man.
Cut and paste from text editor of choice would solve that.

Have you looked at the (pre-alpha) FreeRIDE project? They’ve wrapped
the Scintilla widget so that the editor is SciTE-like. (I have no
previous familiarity with those things, but it seems pretty cool.)

We’re going to develop an editor API so that scripts can be written
in Ruby. This might at some point in the future make a nice plug-in
replacement for parts of your app.

I have looked at FreeRIDE a little. I will look at it some more. I’m not
yet a fan of Fox/Scintilla, and FreeRIDE looked a bit over my head.

But you’re probably building in much the same functionality now.

Not sure. My first goal was to get to where the program would be minimally
useful for developing the program. That stage is done. Imagine a doctor
performing surgery on herself. Now she can sew on new limbs and replace
any existing body part at will.

I don’t really hate Tk, but it does look a little clunky to me.
Particularly such things as the Listbox widget.

Hmmm. I personally don’t care for the checkboxes or the radioboxes and find
it very annoying that it doesn’t have a native way to display images
that aren’t either GIF or PPM. But otherwise I like its simplicity, both
in form and function.

Hmm. I wonder if someone should make an “email client library” to handle
the common stuff… then it would be simpler for people to develop these
things, and there would be more to pick from.

There are some email libraries on the RAA. We ought to look at those-- at
least as a starting point. No sense reinventing the wheel.

-michael

···

On Wednesday 04 September 2002 23:24, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Michael C. Libby x@ichimunki.com
public key: http://www.ichimunki.com/public_key.txt
web site: http://www.ichimunki.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

17

I’m as yet too ignorant (of MIME and such things)
to answer that fully.

Some things would be:

  1. Encoding/decoding attachments
  2. Handling PGP
  3. Integrated approach to POP3, IMAP, SMTP; I find
    that our SMTP library is especially obtuse
  4. Import/export for various tools (such as Outlook)
  5. Conversion of HTML to plain text? Vice versa?
  6. Address book management (via database?); should
    aid in name/address completion also
  7. Config-file or option management (database?)
  8. Folder/sub-folder management (database)
  9. A nice message API (for the person writing the
    client and possibly passed on to the user), e.g.
    @msg.delete if @msg.keywords.include? “Britney”
  10. Things like message quoting and signatures are
    problematic because they interact closely with
    the editor; and what do we do about the editor?

That would be a huge step forward. I am a good coder,
but a much better dreamer.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Nikodemus Siivola” tsiivola@cc.hut.fi
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 4:34 AM
Subject: Re: New list: ruby-modules - for module developers…

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

Hmm. I wonder if someone should make an “email client library” to handle
the common stuff… then it would be simpler for people to develop these
things, and there would be more to pick from.

What would you expect from such a library – what would be your dream API,
so to speak?

18

I’ve read this article, too. :wink: I’ve implemented Paul’s plan in Ruby a
few weeks ago. My implementation currently uses qmail with maildirs (but
any directory of mail files will do) and procmail to do the real work.
It seems to work pretty good so far.

You can download my ratespam under this URL:

http://www.ping.de/~flori/programs/ruby/ratespam/ratespam-0.0.1.tgz

Perhaps this is of any use to your project.

···

Am 2002-09-05 22:16:58 +0900 schrieb michael libby:

Good, very good so far. Um, what’s a “Bayesian” spam filter?
There I go assuming everyone reads the same stuff I do… check out
A Plan for Spam for a good explanation of how this
works. Examples are in LISP.

–
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to
pause and reflect.
– Mark Twain