[ruby-talk:15912] Re: MetaRuby (0.5,0.6,CVS)

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Mario Lang wrote:

> Hmm, I read about MetaRuby some times in this newgroups. But everytime someone
> used the word, he expected every reader to know what it means :-).
> Does anyone have a link which explains what metaruby is supposed to be?

I forgot to update the entry in the RAA for MetaRuby. As a result, lots of
people have downloaded version 0.5, which is very obsolete. Latest release
0.6 has been released over 2 months ago. :-(

So I have updated it yesterday and it has a new description too:

	a collection of tools. makes base classes easy to customize.
	simplifies writing of alternate Ruby intepreters. Provides
	unparsing of data structures. (more to come later) 

the "more to come later" is stuff like the MainLoop (event loop) I have
posted on this list a few days ago; also the Undo feature has been
improved a lot since 0.6, and will be improved again for 0.7...

Text widgets in Hybris will only accomodate Strings that are either
Observable or constant (frozen or otherwise not touched). An Observable
String can be coded in only ~10 lines with MetaRuby (and some big number
of lines without) 

class ObservableString < AutoString
	include Observable
	def put    (i,  v); super; changed; end
        def put_seq(i,n,v); super; changed; end
	def modify
		m = @modifying
		@modifying = true
		begin super ensure @modifying = m end
		notify_observers if not @modifying
	end
end

Haven't tested it, but if there's no bug, the above should be the whole
source code to your text buffer class. 

matju