From: Randy Lawrence <jm@...>
Date: 2004-07-06T11:13:59+09:00
Subject: Ruby Advocacy/Documentation/Sponsorship?

Having discovered Ruby recently and falling in love with it, I'm 
wondering if there are any REMAINING reasons why Ruby isn't as 
widespread as some of the older (less-productive) scripting languages.

Is there a perception that Ruby still lacks decent documentation?
Does lack of corporate backing hurt more than it helps?
Should RubyForge and RAA be merged into a single archive with an 
interface similar to CPAN?
Is there a Ruby advocacy group?

I'm assuming the lack of English documentation was the major barrier 
before 2002.  IMHO, documentation now exists but they are scattered or 
hard for newcomers to find (ie compared to Perl).  A Ruby search engine 
covering multiple websites would be really nice, starting with these 
docs (maybe we can get a corporate sponsor to host the search engine):

1. RUBY BOOKS/GUIDES
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/UsersGuide/rg/index.html
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
http://poignantguide.net/ruby/

2. RUBY CLASS/API REFERENCE
http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib/
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/rdoc/1.9/
http://www.kitebird.com/articles/ruby-dbi.html

3. RUBY CODE SNIPPETS
http://pleac.sourceforge.net/pleac_ruby/t1.html
http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?CodingInRuby
http://yagni.com/rosetta-stone/index.php

4. RUBY AND C/C++ INTEGRATION
http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/RubyInline/
http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Ruby.html

5. MOD_RUBY+ERUBY, CGIKIT, ETC.
http://modruby.net/doc/
http://www.rubydoc.org/books/modruby/book1.htm
http://www.spice-of-life.net/cgikit/en/userguide/CGIKitUserGuide.html

....damn gotta run.  At a minimum, maybe Ruby nuby's will hit this post 
in Google and find it useful.  Maybe someone else more qualified can hit 
on the other topics like advocacy, etc.