From: Gavin Sinclair Date: 2003-08-13T18:35:30+09:00 Subject: Re: Std lib and updating PickAxe (was Re: proc/block with return) On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, 6:48:23 PM, Elliott wrote: > For what it's worth, that's one of my minor niggles with the pickaxe book > --- the distinction between the different library reference sections seems > arbitrary and serves only to make it slightly harder to find things if you > don't yet know where everything is, because things are no longer in simple > alphabetical order. My FWIW comment is: alphabetical order is solved by the index of the book. If your online copy doesn't have an index, see www.ruby-doc.org. > All I, as a pragmatic programmer :-), really care about is "is this (an > undeprecated) part of the distribution?" and "what do I 'require' so that I > can use this?" The distinction between builtin and stdlib is quite important, IMO, precisely because you don't need to 'require' anything to use builtins. Also, it really pays to know them in depth, whereas the stdlib classes are more "tell me what I need to know" material. Gavin > -- elliott > -----Original Message----- > From: Gavin Sinclair > To: ruby-core@ruby-lang.org > Sent: Wed Aug 13 07:44:08 2003 > Subject: Std lib and updating PickAxe (was Re: proc/block with return) >> [Dave wrote:] >> [...] I'm still struggling to get the updated PickAxe done: the >> standard library changes alone are overwhelming. I hope to have a new >> 'ri' out in a week or so, but even that's proving to be a bigger job >> than I thought. > Out of interest, what do you (and others) consider the "standard library" > these days? 1.8.0 saw the inclusion of several packages that were > formerly strictly "third-party", like Test::Unit and REXML. > I still tend to think of classes that "come with Ruby" as being either > built in, standard library or third party - i.e. I make a difference > between "standard library" and "standard distribution". Perhaps this is > arbitrary. > What are you aiming to cover in the updated PickAxe? Iff there's benefit > in receiving any help from others (e.g. ruby-doc mailing list), let us > know. > Gavin