Ruby Weekly News

[Dave_Thomas]

Ruby Weekly News: 08/14/2002

A summary of activity on the ruby-talk mailing list, brought to you
this week by Holden Glova.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

···

=============

Radiuslib 0.5
Dan Debertin has released Radiuslib. Radiuslib is a complete
protocol and utility library for using the RADIUS protocol and
for administering RADIUS servers. Get Radiuslib([1]).

Alpha release of Ruby Windows installer
Andrew Hunt has announced that an alpha release of the Ruby
Windows installer is available for the brave. Get Ruby Windows
installer([2]).

Sys::ProcTable 0.3.0
Daniel Berger has announced a new version of Sys::ProcTable.
This is a C extension for the unix ‘ps’ command on unix
systems. Get Sys::ProcTable([3]).

JRuby beta 1.6/0.5.1
The JRuby team have announced a new beta release. JRuby is a
pure implementation of the Ruby interpreter. Get JRuby([4]).

Ruby ViM updates
Gavin Sinclair has updated the Vim ftplugin and indent files
for Ruby. Get ViM updates([5]). Also, you can get the latest
ruby ViM syntax file produced by Doug Kearns from here([6]).

YAML 0.38
The mysterious “why the lucky stiff” has released a new version
of Ruby YAML bindings. Get Ruby YAML([7]) bindings.

FXCalendar class
David Naseby submitted code for a FXCalendar class. Check it
out, the code is the body of his post.

TomsLib
Tom Sawyer has let loss his personal collection of assorted
tools. Get TomsLib([8]).

INTERESTING THREADS

DBC in Ruby
Ken Hilton has asked if anyone has attempted to implement
design by contract primitives in Ruby. Justin Johnson responded
saying that he would definately be implementing DBC in his
version of Ruby. Matz requested more discussion on this topic
as it may be considered for the future.

References

1. http://www.nodewarrior.org/radiuslib
2. http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ruby-install.html
3. http://www.enteract.com/~mghall/ruby/sys/sys.html
4. http://jruby.sf.net/
5. http://www.soyabean.com.au/gavin/vim/index.html
6. http://mugca.its.monash.edu.au/~djkea2/vim/syntax/ruby.vim
7. http://yaml4r.sf.net/
8. http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa-list.rhtml?name=TomsLib

[James6 (James)]

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion. There
were a few threads and announcements of interest this past week that weren’t
mentioned. For example, Tom Sawyer transami@transami.net began a thread
titled “ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method”.
Phil Tomson’s article in Dr. Dobbs magazine was also announced, albeit
informally. Neither were mentioned in the last weekly news roundup.

Just wondering …

James

[Pat_Eyler3 (Pat Eyler)]

Hi James,
there are a couple of reasons things might not show up in a particular
RWN. This week things were further muddled by server issues on my
end, Holden ended up filling in at the last minute.

In general, Holden and I select things which a) seem to have developed a
large ‘wake’ of email, and which b) interest us. I don’t remember Tom’s
thread, but I probably would have mentioned Phil’s announcement had I not
been wallowing in system recovery.

I’ve also noticed that a large chunk of ruby software is realeased to the
RAA without announcement to the rubytalk list. This is unlikely to show
up in an RWN as currently executed.

I’d certainly welcome a well thought out RWN submission from anyone
… just include a summary and a URL. I can’t promise that I’ll include
any specific submissions I receive, but it will certainly improve the
odds (and I’ll likely learn something from them to boot.)

-pate

···

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, JamesBritt wrote:

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion. There
were a few threads and announcements of interest this past week that weren’t
mentioned. For example, Tom Sawyer transami@transami.net began a thread
titled “ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method”.
Phil Tomson’s article in Dr. Dobbs magazine was also announced, albeit
informally. Neither were mentioned in the last weekly news roundup.

Just wondering …

James

[Mauricio_Fernndez]

Wouldn’t it be cool if this could be somehow automated? Some ideas:

• automatic thread scoring
  → activity (length) => score += x
  matz’s post => score += 3*x
  whatever
• allow the active readers of the mailing list to vote somewhere

A script could generate a candidate sorting of the threads and the human
supervisor would correct it if there’s something blatantly wrong…

Just dreaming

···

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 01:32:55AM +0900, JamesBritt wrote:

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion.

–
_ _

__ __ | | ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
'_ \ / | __/ __| '_ _ \ / ` | ’ \
) | (| | |__ \ | | | | | (| | | | |
.__/ _,|_|/| || ||_,|| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

How many chunks could checkchunk check if checkchunk could check chunks?
– Alan Cox

[Holden_Glova]

Hi James,

My apologies for missing those threads and not sumarizing them. As Pate
already mentioned this week was a late rush last night for me to produce
something (although sub-standard I will agree) due to technical issues that
Pat was having. Usually I track an entire weeks worth as the week progresses

• • this week though I only had one night to produce something. My problems
    where further amplified because I didn’t delete my previous weeks mail from
    the Ruby Weekly News folder so it was harder for me to wad through the ton of
    messages that where floating around. If you have any suggestions for other
    criteria aside from what Pat already suggested, please don’t hesitate to let
    us know.

---

Signed,
Holden Glova

···

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 04:32, JamesBritt wrote:

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion.
There were a few threads and announcements of interest this past week that
weren’t mentioned. For example, Tom Sawyer transami@transami.net began
a thread titled “ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter
method”. Phil Tomson’s article in Dr. Dobbs magazine was also announced,
albeit informally. Neither were mentioned in the last weekly news
roundup.

Just wondering …

James

[James6 (James)]

there are a couple of reasons things might not show up in a particular
RWN. This week things were further muddled by server issues on my
end, Holden ended up filling in at the last minute.

In general, Holden and I select things which a) seem to have developed a
large ‘wake’ of email, and which b) interest us. I don’t remember Tom’s
thread, but I probably would have mentioned Phil’s announcement had I not
been wallowing in system recovery.

I’ve also noticed that a large chunk of ruby software is realeased to the
RAA without announcement to the rubytalk list. This is unlikely to show
up in an RWN as currently executed.

I’d certainly welcome a well thought out RWN submission from anyone
… just include a summary and a URL. I can’t promise that I’ll include
any specific submissions I receive, but it will certainly improve the
odds (and I’ll likely learn something from them to boot.)

Thanks for the response. One thing I don’t recall seeing in a long time, or
ever, is a ruby-talk/comp.lang.ruby FAQ. I don’t know that there is a
compelling need for it, but it might be a good place to remind/inform list
readers of:

Useful subject line prefixes (e.g., ANN, ADV, OT)
The need/value of announcing new code, whether it’s placed in RAA, or
sourceforge, or wherever
What information to include when announcing new or updated software (name,
URL, version, what it is, …)
General netiquette (.e.g., trim auto-included text when appropriate, place
response after the included text, …)
Where and how to search previous list messages
How to subscribe/unsubscribe
What to include in a post if asking for help (Ruby version, OS )
Spam/advertising guidelines

If there is enough interest, and one doesn’t already exist, I’d be happy to
maintain it and post it once a month. Or it could be maintained at the
RubyGarden Wiki, and a pointer posted here. Or something.

James

···

-pate

[HAL_9000]

I really like the way you think and/or dream.

Other ideas:

• Auto-include based on prefixes like “ANN:”
• Auto-exclude based on prefixes like “OT:”
• Scan the RAA for new items not announced

On the other hand, I have a bad bad habit of
thinking up ideas that create work for other
people.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Mauricio Fernández” batsman.geo@yahoo.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: Ruby Weekly News

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 01:32:55AM +0900, JamesBritt wrote:

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion.

Wouldn’t it be cool if this could be somehow automated? Some ideas:

• automatic thread scoring
  → activity (length) => score += x
  matz’s post => score += 3*x
  whatever
• allow the active readers of the mailing list to vote somewhere

A script could generate a candidate sorting of the threads and the human
supervisor would correct it if there’s something blatantly wrong…

Just dreaming

[Holden_Glova]

I used to automate this by thread activity. I’d score threads based on the
number of responses. I think i had the threshhold set to something like 15.
In a weeks worth of traffic it still requires a lot of manual going through
and picking them out. Plus there is a lot of threads that exceed that many
posts that I don’t think really belong in the RWN such as simple howto and
such.

I wonder how voting would work - would people actually be bothered to use it?
Interesting idea Mauricio.

---

Signed,
Holden Glova

···

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 07:43, Mauricio Fernández wrote:

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 01:32:55AM +0900, JamesBritt wrote:

Please don’t take this as a knock of the efforts required to produce the
Ruby weekly news, but I was curious about the criteria for inclusion.

Wouldn’t it be cool if this could be somehow automated? Some ideas:

• automatic thread scoring
  → activity (length) => score += x
  matz’s post => score += 3*x
  whatever
• allow the active readers of the mailing list to vote somewhere

A script could generate a candidate sorting of the threads and the human
supervisor would correct it if there’s something blatantly wrong…

Just dreaming

[HAL_9000]

Thanks for the response. One thing I don’t recall seeing in a long time,
or
ever, is a ruby-talk/comp.lang.ruby FAQ. I don’t know that there is a
compelling need for it, but it might be a good place to remind/inform list
readers of:

(snip)

James,

Thank you for this reminder.

There is such a FAQ, and it has been posted many
times in the past.

It is my responsibility, since I inherited it
from Conrad Schneiker.

I’ve intended to set up an automated system that
would post it monthly, as I keep forgetting to
post manually. I’ll revisit that.

For the moment, I’ll post it NOW.

Thanks again,
Hal Fulton

···

----- Original Message -----
From: " JamesBritt" james@jamesbritt.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 2:45 PM
Subject: RE: Ruby Weekly News

[Thomas_Heinen]

• Scan the RAA for new items not announced
  Erm. Better not. I’m personally announcing on RAA first and only
  announce to freshmeat and this ML if I didn’t find any fatal bugs
  within an hour. Result from my super-stupidity with an RDQS
  release, getting a rant by David

Cu

[Holden_Glova]

Other ideas:

• Auto-include based on prefixes like “ANN:”

Yep my script picked those ones out. It did a case insensitive match on ^ann
to try and get things like Announce etc…

• Auto-exclude based on prefixes like “OT:”

I manually ignored these ones

• Scan the RAA for new items not announced

Good idea, still involves going to the project page, summarizing what it does.
Many ANN’s are like that as well, things are announced but don’t really say
what it does. Further requireing to manually go and find it.

On the other hand, I have a bad bad habit of
thinking up ideas that create work for other
people.

We appreciate the ideas and thank you for them.

---

Signed,
Holden Glova

···

On Thu, 15 Aug 2002 08:00, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

[Mauricio_Fernndez]

I think I have a better one:
include the vote in the message itself!

It would work that way:
you register yourself somehow (web form, email, whatever), and you can
get up to N vote ids per week. It’s up to you to decide how to spend
them in the messages you post. If you find an interesting thread AND
have something to say about it, you include the vote id number in your
message. Note you’re voting the thread, not your message

This way two interesting things will happen:

• longer threads are more likely to receive a high number of votes
• however, long “how do I?” questions not that interesting will not get
  automatically selected.

It’s still us who decide what is worth including in the RWN, not a
“stupid rule”

As for the implementation:
I hope we can assume nobody will try to crack this, so we don’t really
have to implement tight security measures.

It could go as follows:
to register, send a message to some mailbot, in which you basically claim
your email address is xxx@yyy. The request is rejected if you have
never participated in the mailing list. Otherwise, a login/password
pair is sent to the address you claimed. If you reply, the system will
register you as a valid user.

Then, either setup a web page somewhere where given the id
and pw a registered user can get its N voting tokens for this
week/month/whatever or send it by email.

Counting: the script is run automatically every week. It knows the
valid vote ids for that week (more on this below) and only accepts
these. A selection of the most voted threads is posted to the guy
in charge of RWN.

As for the votes:
something like ##nickname:md5_hash## included in the message.

Generating the IDs:

require “md5”

code_string = “ruby rules!” # this is only known by the maintainer
# of the script
username = gets
username.chop!

t = Time.now
interval = 7 ## issue new vote ids each interval days
basestr = “#{code_string}-#{t.month}/#{(t.day/interval).floor}/#{t.year}” +
“-#{username}”
puts “Today is " + t.to_s
puts “Using base string: #{basestr}”
numtokens = 3 # num of allowed votes per interval
(1…numtokens).each do |i|
str = basestr + sprintf(”%2d", i)
theid = “###{username}:#{MD5.hexdigest str}##”
puts “Generated token: #{theid}”
end

Output:
batsman
Today is Thu Aug 15 13:30:06 CEST 2002
Using base string: ruby rules!-8/2/2002-batsman
Generated token: ##batsman:3d473f1bc6038310932db2014ea3a06c##
Generated token: ##batsman:4a39720c0722c78df9ef4f0001cda9a6##
Generated token: ##batsman:d9af96f7bddf441f295cbd326e010271##

The way the hash is generated, only the maintainer of the script can
verify it is valid and it was indeed generated by his/her script.
Plus the votes are only valid for a limited time period. And you get a
limited number of them.

We can give matz “super voting powers” (his votes count triple or
whatever) We could ballot who has super voting powers. If Ruby ever
takes over the world we could add another layer, and another, and… X-D

···

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 04:55:45PM +0900, Holden Glova wrote:

I wonder how voting would work - would people actually be bothered to use it?
Interesting idea Mauricio.

–
_ _

__ __ | | ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
'_ \ / | __/ __| '_ _ \ / ` | ’ \
) | (| | |__ \ | | | | | (| | | | |
.__/ _,|_|/| || ||_,|| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

‘Mounten’ wird für drei Dinge benutzt: ‘Aufsitzen’ auf Pferde, ‘einklinken’
von Festplatten in Dateisysteme, und, nun, ‘besteigen’ beim Sex.
– Christa Keil

[James6 (James)]

Thank you for this reminder.

There is such a FAQ, and it has been posted many
times in the past.

It is my responsibility, since I inherited it
from Conrad Schneiker.

I’ve intended to set up an automated system that
would post it monthly, as I keep forgetting to
post manually. I’ll revisit that.

For the moment, I’ll post it NOW.

Very cool, thank you.

James

···

Thanks again,
Hal Fulton

[Mauricio_Fernndez]

1.- the script could wait for x days before announcing the thing,
assuming a new version will be out soon if there’s something critical
2.- it could send a message to the author, giving him the option
to cancel the announcement by replying within the next x days

Just be sure not to release my_soft-1.0 with subtle “THE COMPUTER WILL
EXPLODE”-style bugs and disappear right after

BTW, (1) is suspiciously close to Debian’s unstable/testing thing. Is it
that I keep seeing APT everywhere there’s software release management
involved? :->

···

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 05:21:14AM +0900, Thomas Heinen wrote:

• Scan the RAA for new items not announced
  Erm. Better not. I’m personally announcing on RAA first and only
  announce to freshmeat and this ML if I didn’t find any fatal bugs
  within an hour. Result from my super-stupidity with an RDQS
  release, getting a rant by David

–
_ _

__ __ | | ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
'_ \ / | __/ __| '_ _ \ / ` | ’ \
) | (| | |__ \ | | | | | (| | | | |
.__/ _,|_|/| || ||_,|| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

We all know Linux is great… it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
- Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium

[michael_libby1 (michael libby)]

Hi Holden,

looks like you’re using a new key to sign messages? Couldn’t find it on the
keyservers (which have your old key), mind sending it to me?

I wouldn’t pester you but my email client, KMail, gets really bogged down
on PGP-signed messages that it can’t find the key for.

-michael

···

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

[michael_libby1 (michael libby)]

and now apologizes for not taking the list out of the “to” field on what
was intended to be a private email.

On that note, anybody written a good GUI email client for Ruby? Looks like
there are some decent email libraries on RAA, but anything else beyond
that?

-michael

···

On Thursday 15 August 2002 07:17, michael libby wrote:

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

[Yukihiro_Matsumoto2 (Yukihiro Matsumoto)]

Hi,

···

In message “Ruby email applications? (was “Re: Ruby Weekly News”)” on 02/08/15, michael libby x@ichimunki.com writes:

On that note, anybody written a good GUI email client for Ruby? Looks like
there are some decent email libraries on RAA, but anything else beyond
that?

SGmail? See www.sgmail.org

						matz.

[HAL_9000]

There was one I read about… think it was called kmail or
something. I downloaded it, but had difficulty getting it
to work for me.

A good Ruby email client is something I would love to have.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 7:30 AM
Subject: Ruby email applications? (was “Re: Ruby Weekly News”)

On that note, anybody written a good GUI email client for Ruby? Looks like
there are some decent email libraries on RAA, but anything else beyond
that?

[HAL_9000]

Hi,

On that note, anybody written a good GUI email client for Ruby? Looks
like
there are some decent email libraries on RAA, but anything else beyond
that?

SGmail? See www.sgmail.org

That is the one I was thinking of. I had
trouble with it under Win98. Not surprising,
perhaps.

Maybe it is time to try again.

Hal

···

----- Original Message -----
From: “Yukihiro Matsumoto” matz@ruby-lang.org
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: Ruby email applications? (was “Re: Ruby Weekly News”)

In message “Ruby email applications? (was “Re: Ruby Weekly News”)” > on 02/08/15, michael libby x@ichimunki.com writes:

[Jason_Johnston]

I would love to see a good Ruby web-based-email solution… Who knows,
some day I may have the time to write one.

Jason Johnston
(Xoritor)

···

On Thursday 15 August 2002 11:54 am, you wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: “michael libby” x@ichimunki.com
To: “ruby-talk ML” ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2002 7:30 AM
Subject: Ruby email applications? (was “Re: Ruby Weekly News”)

On that note, anybody written a good GUI email client for Ruby? Looks
like there are some decent email libraries on RAA, but anything else
beyond that?

There was one I read about… think it was called kmail or
something. I downloaded it, but had difficulty getting it
to work for me.

A good Ruby email client is something I would love to have.

Hal