From: Dave@...
Date: 2002-03-25T18:23:33+09:00
Subject: Ruby Weekly News


   Ruby Weekly News: 03/24/2002
   
   A summary of activity on the ruby-talk mailing list, brought to you
   this week by Holden Glova.
   
   ANNOUNCEMENTS
   =============
   
   ByteCodeRuby 0.1.1
          George announced that a new version of ByteCodeRuby is now
          available from the RubyVM project. ByteCodeRuby is the
          beginnings of a bytecode interpreter for Ruby. George is very
          keen for any feedback from people that downloaded the 0.1.0
          release. Get here([1]).
          
   vimRubyX
          Benoit Cerrina has released a set of enhancements to the
          VIM-Ruby interface. This allows you to easily define and call
          vim functions from Ruby. Get vimRubyX([2]).
          
   RubyMail 0.8
          Matt Armstrong has released a new version of RubyMail. RubyMail
          is a mail handling library that is designed to be convenient,
          fast and lightweight. RubyMail is faster at handling big
          messages than any other mail package written for Ruby, Python
          or Perl (see benchmarks in his post). Get RubyMail([3]).
          
   RubyFilter 0.8
          The second of Matt Armstrongs "double release", RubyFilter.
          RubyFilter is a rough collection of modules, classes and
          scripts that make up a mail filter program capable of
          delivering mail from your .forward or .qmail file. Get
          RubyFilter([4]).
          
   rpkg - Ruby Package Management System 0.3.2
          Massimiliano Mirra announced the release of version 0.3.2 of
          rpkg. rpkg is a multi-platform system for installation,
          removal, and browsing of Ruby modules inspired by the Debian
          package manager.
          
   REXML 2.0.2
          Sean Russell has released version 2.0.2 of REXML. This is the
          second bug fix release since Sean's release of REXML 2.0
          earlier this week. REXML 2.0.x aims to provides full XPath
          support. Get REXML([5]).
          
   Seattle Ruby Users Meeting
          Pat Eyler dropped a quick note to say that the Seattle RUG will
          be meeting on Thursday March 28th (read the post for more
          details). For more information check out their website([6]).
          
   RUDL 0.6
          Danny van Bruggen has released version 0.6 of RUDL. RUDL
          combines the SDL library, Ruby and a few other libraries to
          make high speed multimedia stuff possible (think games). Get
          RUDL([7]).
          
   FXRuby-1.0.3
          Lyle Johnson has announced version 1.0.3 of FXRuby. FXRuby is a
          set of Ruby bindings for the FOX GUI toolkit. FOX is a platform
          independent C++ based toolkit for developing graphical user
          interfaces easily and effectively. Get FXRuby([8]).
          
   Rubyzip 0.4.1
          Thomas Sondergaard announced a new version of rubyzip 0.4.1.
          Rubyzip is a Ruby library for reading and writing zip (pkzip
          format) files. Get Rubyzip([9]).
          
   INTERESTING THREADS
   ===================
   
   Development of Windows version of Ruby.
          Phil Tomson brought up a valid point regarding the Windows
          version of Ruby. Cygwin is being dropped in favour of the
          Windows version which is compiled with MSVC. However,
          functionality is now lost that we used to have under the Cygwin
          version, such as popen. An interesting thread follows.
          
   .'s in Dir.entries
          A short while ago there was discussion on the list about the
          Dir.entries not returning the current directory (.) and the
          parent directory(..). Matz asked for a list of the pros and
          cons for filtering out dot files.
          
   Community style question
          Ron Jefferies asked the community for an opinion on "style".
          Two code snippets where presented with a call for peoples
          preferences to either or others, and why.

References

   1. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26000
   2. http://vim.sourceforge.net/scripts/script.php?script_id=188
   3. http://www.lickey.com/rubymail
   4. http://www.lickey.com/rubyfilter
   5. http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml
   6. http://www.zenspider.com/Languages/Ruby/Seattle.html
   7. http://froukepc.dhs.org/rudl
   8. http://fxruby.sourceforge.net/
   9. http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubyzip