Ruby Weekly News: 10/07/2002
A summary of activity on the ruby-talk mailing list, brought to you
this week by Pat Eyler.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
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JRuby beta 1.6/0.5.2
JRuby (http://jruby.sf.net) is a pure Java implementation of
the Ruby interpreter, being developed by a team lead by Jan
Arne Petersen.
JRuby is free software released under the GNU General Public
License.
JRuby is tightly integrated with Java to allow both to script
any Java class and to embed the interpreter into any Java
application.
Blogtari 0.0.2 released
Version 0.0.2 of Blogtari is available at
http://www.jamesbritt.com/articles/blogatari.html
Blogtari is blogging software. It is meant to allow people
interested in setting up a blog site to get going quickly,
while leaving open options for developers looking to add new
tricks.
WNS XFormer version 0.0.0
WnsXFormer converts a text file describing a weekly news
summary (as might be prepared for mailing list) into RSS 0.9
and an E-mail message body.
xmlscan-0.1.0rc1
xmlscan doesn’t provide a friendly interface, but it is able to
parse any XML documents exactly and fast. xmlscan also contains
htmlscan, an HTML parser.
ZenTest 1.0.1
ZenTest scans your target and unit-test code and writes your
missing code based on simple naming rules, enabling XP at a
much quicker pace. ZenTest only works with Ruby and Test::Unit.
ZenWeb 1.14.0
ZenWeb is a system for building entire websites, not just
pages. It allows you to focus on the content and the structure
of the website, while leaving page construction, markup,
layout, navigation as secondary concerns.
Inline::C meeting
The Seattle.rb will be hosting a development meeting for
Inline::C on October 8th, at 7PM. We’ll be meeting at the Omni
group’s offices, directions are at the Seattle.rb web pages.
INTERESTING THREADS
thoughts on typelessness
David Alan Black started a discussion on ruby’s typelessness.
He said: ‘Ruby objects are what they are at a given moment,
whether or not that’s what they were or what they will be. And
in their momentary permutations and capabilities, they can do
some very powerful things.’
William Djaja Tjokroaminata commented that: 'In a "statically
typed" language (such as C), variables have types, while data
do not. In a "dynamically typed" language (such as Ruby),
variables do not have types, while data do.'
Several interesting diversions were made. Lots of good
information passed along. At the end of the day, everyone was
happy.
announce@ == less email (FAQ item?)
Ryan Davis announced the advent of an announce only mailing
list. In his view, all future software announcements should be
made to this list (and thence forwarded to ruby-talk).
A lot of discussion ensued about the value of this new mailing
list, and the value of splitting rubytalk into yet more mailing
lists. See below for an extension to this thread.
Things That Newcomers to Ruby Should Know
William Djaja Tjokroaminata put together a nice list of things
that “ruby nubies” should know. Many other people contributed
their thoughts as well.
RubyConf: insurance problems solved
While it was a very short thread, David Alan Black deserves
many Kudos for getting everything worked out. He (and a variety
of other folks) have put in a lot of time and effort to pull of
RubyConf this year. Huzzah!
MetaRWN
Holden and I have been discussing the role and shape of RWN
should the great list splitting come to pass. Both of us have
enjoyed working on this weekly mailing. I’ve certainly learned
a lot about the community as well. But we’re really not sure
where things should go from here. We’ve come up with a couple
of ideas, but before we spill the beans, we’d be interested in
hearing what you think. Will RWN still provide value in the
split list world? Are there ways to make it better? What kinds
of things should we cover?
Please, take a moment and let us know what you think.