From: Dave@...
Date: 2003-06-17T07:47:03+09:00
Subject: Ruby Weekly News


   Ruby Weekly News: 06/16/2003

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

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

   HTML-table 0.0.1
          Daniel  Berger  announced  the  first  release  of  HTML-table.
          HTML-table  allows  you  to  build  tedious HTML tables without
          having  to worry about HTML at all. Daniel warns that this is a
          beta   release   because  the  API  may  change  slightly.  Get
          HTML-table([1]).

   FXRuby-1.0.24
          Lyle  Johnson has released a new version of FXRuby. FXRuby is a
          set of GUI bindings for the FOX GUI toolkit. Get FXRuby([2])

   Ruby-ggi 0.1
          Michael  Neumann  has  made  a  first  release  of  the General
          Graphics  Interface  (GGI),  a  portable abstraction over video
          hardware. Get Ruby-ggi([3])

   Samizdat 0.0.1
          Dmitry  Borodaenko has released Samizdat. Samizdat is a generic
          RDF-based engine for building collaboration open publishing web
          sites. Get Samizdat([4])

   REXML 2.7.0 (3.0b)
          Sean Russel has announced that REXML 2.7.0 AKA 3.0-beta is out.
          This  is a beta release for what will go into the upcoming Ruby
          1.8. Feedback desired quickly. Get REXML([5]).

   RMagick 1.2.2
          Tim Hunter has announced a new version of RMagick. RMagick is a
          set  of  Ruby  bindings  to  the ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick
          image processing libraries. Get RMagick([6]).

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

   Description of changes between Ruby versions
          Ruby  is getting new features all the time. What is new though?
          Information  on  what has changed between versions can be found
          in  the  shim-ruby([7])  package.  This  thread also gives some
          other links to rubygarden wikis for more information as well.

   High speed String concatenation
          This  is  a  very  interesting  thread  on  how  to make String
          concatenation  fast.  The  overall  consensus  seems to be that
          there  is no magic one way that is always fast. Sometimes << is
          fastest, and sometimes using Array.join seems to be faster.

   RaaInstall in the standard Ruby distribution
          A  petition  has  been started to requrest that RaaInstall([8])
          goes  into  the  Ruby  1.8 distribution. RaaInstall is aimed at
          making Ruby package management easier. Sign the petition([9]).

References

   1. http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=html-table
   2. http://www.fxruby.org/
   3. http://www.ntecs.de/downloads/ruby-ggi
   4. http://www.nongnu.org/samizdat/
   5. http://www.germane-software.com/software/rexml
   6. http://home.nc.rr.com/rmagick
   7. http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=shim-ruby16_18
   8. http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=raainstall
   9. http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?RaaInstallInRuby