From: Jeff Wood <jeff.darklight@...>
Date: 2005-09-02T03:21:11+09:00
Subject: Meta Information for Ruby -- Continuation of the discussion about testNG needing function attributes, etc.

I just came across this very interesting module today.  And I really
think it provides the functionality I had been looking for when
thinking about HOW to add testNG ( testNG.org ) behavior into
Test::Unit

So, if any of you have the time, please take a look at :
http://mephle.org/MetaTags/

... also, I think this wouldn't be a bad format for building
documentation into ruby.

I mean, I don't know if it's been brought up before, but I really
think it would be useful to the newbies constantly joining our ranks
to have functionality similar to pythons doc strings and function help
that's built into the language.

if the first block of stuff within a class, module, def, etc is a
document-comment ( meaning wrapped in triple-quotes ) then that
information is stored in the object.
also, as things are parsed into objects, if we could simply set aside
a snapshop of how the function was defined... then, provide all of
this information under a .help method for the object.  I think that
would be nice.

I've built something kinda like this using calls to RI from my help
function but, of course that doesn't cover things that ri can't reach
or aren't documented.

Anyways, opinions & feedback are always appreciated.

I look forward to hearing from you all.

-- 
"http://ruby-lang.org -- do you ruby?"

Jeff Wood