Ruby Weekly News

   Ruby Weekly News: 06/10/2002

   A summary of activity on the ruby-talk mailing list, brought to you
   this week by Pat Eyler.

   ANNOUNCEMENTS
   =============

   SWIG-1.3.12
          SWIG is a software development tool that reads C/C++ header
          files and generates the wrapper code needed to make C and C++
          code accessible from other languages including Perl, Python,
          Tcl, Ruby, PHP, Java, Guile, and Mzscheme.

          This release includes a number of fixes for the Ruby module.

   Sys::Uname
          This is a C extension for the utsname.h file found in *nix
          environments. It provides 5 class methods that give you
          information about your system: sysname(), nodename(),
          version(), machine() and release().

          This is the first in what will (hopefully) be a series of
          modules that will fall under the 'Sys' namespace, such as
          hostname, top, cpu usage, process table information, etc.

   Interactive Learning Environment + Ocelot Servlet Engine
          ILE is small but powerful environment for building interactive
          learning environments. It can be used for any web application,
          particularly those that need interactive, persistent form-based
          features. Its primary audience is teachers who think that
          hauling the education to where students work and live can be
          better than the other way around.

   ruby-htmltools v1.04
          ruby-htmltools is an html parser that builds trees from HTML
          source. It can now produce output in either HTMLTree::Element
          style or in REXML::Document style.

   PageTemplate 0.3.1
          Use PageTemplate.rb to create output based on template pages
          and the code of your program. This package is inspired by Sam
          Tregar's HTML::Template package for Perl. Its main intent is to
          separate design and code for CGI programs, but it could be
          useful in other contexts as well (Ex: site generation
          packages).

          This is primarily a refactoring release, with improvements to
          the supporting framework.

   Test::Mock 1.0
          Test::Mock is a port of the older Ruby/Mock library to the new
          Test::Unit framework. It provides a convenient API for creating
          mock objects in unit tests, and for building reusable mock
          objects that can be used in multiple tests and to specify the
          expected behaviour of an outgoing interface.

   REXML 2.3.5 and 2.2.3
          These are primarily bug-fix releases of the REXML package.

   PageTemplate 0.3.2
          Fixes a bug submitted by Patrick Roemer.

   INTERESTING THREADS
   ===================

   1-second events
          Paul Brannan needed a way to create an event that occurs once
          every second (3600 events per hour, not exactly 1 second apart.
          This request generated a good deal of discussion about
          real-time and soft real-time issues.

   Solving Logic Problems with Ruby
          A good discussion of Logic Problems (along with a plug for
          Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series).

   mod_ruby and module space
          Sean O'Dell had problems with using his own modules in
          mod_ruby. He can Kent Dahl did some great experimentation to
          uncover what looks like a problem with loading modules into the
          top level namespace.

   Pascal-like 'with' statement
          Philip Mak asked about the availability of a 'with' statement.
          The usefulness of such a beast was debated and a couple of
          options where suggested (including a module on RAA).