From: Tyler Zesiger <mailing-lists@...>
Date: 2004-06-15T01:00:24+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Non-standard library project

Might this have a place in the "batteries included" ideas that have been 
floating around for a future ruby release? It sounds like a good start 
to me.

Gavin Sinclair wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> It's a bit cheeky to call this an announcement, since it's only
> announcing a project idea.
> 
> I would like to create a RubyForge project that builds a library of
> useful classes and modules.  That basically describes the standard
> library.  This library wouldn't be standard, hence the name
> "non-standard library".
> 
> The purposes of the project:
> 
>  * collect existing small projects (e.g. Memoize) to ensure their
>    continued maintenance, and hopefully give them higher exposure
> 
>  * provide a good environment for the development of ADTs, etc.
>    that might otherwise not seem worthwhile due to project
>    management overhead
> 
>  * provide a rich library that is easy to install and has a high
>    standard of documentation and testing
> 
>    * thus, convenience and quality
> 
> For example, a very recent thread suggested *replacing* pack and
> unpack with an OO version (Packer and Unpacker classes).  That's a
> radical suggestion that's unlikely to be accepted.  The milder
> approach of providing an OO facade to the existing methods is more
> reasonable, but if accepted, would still take a long time to appear in
> a Ruby release.
> 
> On the other hand, inclusion of this idea in a 'nonstdlib' project
> would be feasible and fast.  Before long, you could write in your
> code something like this:
> 
>   require_gem 'nonstdlib', '>= 0.3'
>   require 'nonstdlib/packer'
> 
>   p = Packer.new
>   p.word 0x01
>   p.word 0x00
>   # etc.
> 
> Notice that the version number can be specified to ensure that the
> 'nonstdlib' gem has the required feature.  Of course, you can use
> the 'require' line without the 'require_gem' line: RubyGems is not an
> actual dependency here.
> 
> The steps to getting this started are:
> 
>   1. Get feedback from interested people.
> 
>   2. Decide on a name.
> 
>   3. Start a RubyForge project and mailing list.
> 
>   4. Take it from there.
> 
> If there's no interest to start with, I'll just get going.  But this
> sort of thing would benefit from involvement by interested people.
> 
> The main thing for now is the name.  That enables the creation of the
> mailing list, on which people can express interest.
> 
> I think 'nonstdlib' is a good name.  Anyone got other ideas?
> 
> Cheers,
> Gavin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>