[#45942] win32ole and excel — Martin Stannard <martin@...>

Hi,

19 messages 2002/08/01

[#45948] "gets" blocking process not thread (in Windows only) — Matt Pattison <mfp@...>

The problem with my program is that (in Windows) gets seems to block the entire

13 messages 2002/08/01

[#46030] IO.readlines is slow ? — "Shashank Date" <ADATE@...>

I really like the convenience of doing:

18 messages 2002/08/02

[#46072] How to Load Script from a C Extension? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

Hi,

20 messages 2002/08/02

[#46107] embed or swig? — ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)

I'm working a C++ project for a contract I'm doing. Originally, the

21 messages 2002/08/03

[#46128] Assoc Class (Hash Pairs) — Tom Sawyer <transami@...>

i've been thinking about posting this as an RCR.

28 messages 2002/08/03

[#46136] Should this work? — "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>

Should multiple assignment work for the

17 messages 2002/08/03

[#46192] Detecting when an instance variable is created/set — Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...>

Imagine we have a class like ...

22 messages 2002/08/04
[#46198] Re: Detecting when an instance variable is created/set — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/04

On Sun, 2002-08-04 at 06:03, Harry Ohlsen wrote:

[#46207] Re: Detecting when an instance variable is created/set — Harry Ohlsen <harryo@...> 2002/08/04

> > Can I write a method (of class Object or Kernel, perhaps) that will be

[#46226] Re: Detecting when an instance variable is created/set — Massimiliano Mirra <list@...> 2002/08/04

On Sun, Aug 04, 2002 at 10:32:44PM +0900, Harry Ohlsen wrote:

[#46264] Dynamic creation of classes and methods — Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@...>

I want to create classes and methods on fly.

11 messages 2002/08/05

[#46341] More questions on automation from na誰ve Windows user. — Chris Gehlker <gehlker@...>

Hi all,

15 messages 2002/08/05

[#46356] Coding challenge (on Ruby Garden) — David Alan Black <dblack@...>

Hello --

47 messages 2002/08/06

[#46357] Compiling Ruby to Native Code? — web2ed@... (Edward Wilson)

Having looked at OCaml, after following a post to this group, one

20 messages 2002/08/06

[#46426] Is There an Inverse of 'rb_define_method'? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

Hi,

15 messages 2002/08/06

[#46442] COM on Unix? — Chris Gehlker <gehlker@...>

As part of my crusade to make Ruby an automation language I read up a little

12 messages 2002/08/06

[#46443] Dup and Clone — "Justin Johnson" <justinj@...>

Could anyone kindly point out the difference between 'dup' and 'clone'?

17 messages 2002/08/06

[#46475] Named paramters again — "Justin Johnson" <justinj@...>

26 messages 2002/08/07
[#46534] Re: Named paramters again — "Gavin Sinclair" <gsinclair@...> 2002/08/07

[#46537] RE: Named paramters again — "Rich Kilmer" <rich@...> 2002/08/07

[#46550] GUI's and the Rouge, Part IV — Kero van Gelder <kero@...>

Funny, two savannah accounts for the same objective:

12 messages 2002/08/07

[#46565] Re: Unicode in Ruby now? — "Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk" <qrczak@...>

Wed, 7 Aug 2002 16:41:18 +0900, Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> pisze:

12 messages 2002/08/07

[#46732] ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Tom Sawyer <transami@...>

does anyone else find it annoying that local variable assignment is

56 messages 2002/08/09
[#46788] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — dblack@... 2002/08/10

Hi --

[#46791] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/10

On Fri, 2002-08-09 at 22:50, dblack@candle.superlink.net wrote:

[#46794] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — dblack@... 2002/08/10

Hi --

[#46734] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...> 2002/08/09

On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 03:00:28AM +0900, Tom Sawyer wrote:

[#46737] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/09

On Fri, 2002-08-09 at 12:05, Paul Brannan wrote:

[#46739] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Dave Thomas <Dave@...> 2002/08/09

Tom Sawyer <transami@transami.net> writes:

[#46741] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — GOTO Kentaro <gotoken@...> 2002/08/09

At Sat, 10 Aug 2002 03:44:45 +0900,

[#46748] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Dave Thomas <Dave@...> 2002/08/09

GOTO Kentaro <gotoken@notwork.org> writes:

[#46753] Re: ambiguity between local variable assignment and writter method — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/09

On Fri, 2002-08-09 at 13:30, Dave Thomas wrote:

[#46841] Ah, I'm finally back from Japan ... — Dossy <dossy@...>

Not like anyone cares (or noticed) but my two week stay in Japan

12 messages 2002/08/10

[#46875] To be a Module, or not to be... — Holden Glova <dsafari@...>

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12 messages 2002/08/11

[#46911] Choosing ruby? — Rhymes <raims@...>

27 messages 2002/08/11

[#46957] Handling forms on database driven websites — Philip Mak <pmak@...>

Ever since I learned Perl, Ruby and MySQL, I've built several database

10 messages 2002/08/12

[#47000] Primary Key Hash help — "Chris Morris" <chrismo@...>

I have a huge data file with rows like this:

17 messages 2002/08/12

[#47134] Data_Make_Struct Considered Dangerous? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

Hi,

39 messages 2002/08/13

[#47212] Ruby Weekly News — Dave@...

21 messages 2002/08/14

[#47292] Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>

I've been brooding again on the circularities

28 messages 2002/08/15
[#47342] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...> 2002/08/15

----- Original Message -----

[#47346] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — dblack@... 2002/08/15

Hi --

[#47365] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — "MikkelFJ" <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...> 2002/08/15

[#47369] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — dblack@... 2002/08/15

Hello --

[#47372] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — "MikkelFJ" <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...> 2002/08/15

[#47377] Re: Thought question: Where does "new" come from? — dblack@... 2002/08/16

Hi --

[#47344] eruby editor — "Kyle Wilson" <kyle.wilson@...>

Hello. I was wondering if anyone knows of a text editor which will

17 messages 2002/08/15

[#47440] Help with a segv in mod_ruby — Dave Thomas <Dave@...>

14 messages 2002/08/16

[#47461] How do I dup file descriptors in ruby? (diverting STDERR) — "Richard A. Ryan" <ryan@...>

Hello,

12 messages 2002/08/16

[#47464] IDE vs. editor — Holden Glova <dsafari@...>

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43 messages 2002/08/16

[#47547] Re: What Ruby needs. — "Shashank Date" <ADATE@...>

I do not have any problem with item 1) on your wish list as long as I don't

13 messages 2002/08/18

[#47559] Ruby Bot — Giuseppe Bilotta <bilotta78@...>

Hello,

14 messages 2002/08/18

[#47643] thread control — "Shashank Date" <ADATE@...>

I am trying to write a ruby script (Ruby 1.7.2 mswin32) which does the

21 messages 2002/08/20

[#47695] What makes a "good" Ruby extension? — Tim Hunter <cyclists@...>

So I'm reading the "Comparing Gui Toolkits" wiki page

14 messages 2002/08/20

[#47749] What New Language After Ruby? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

To Andrew Hunt and David Thomas:

74 messages 2002/08/21
[#47754] Re: What New Language After Ruby? — Wilkes Joiner <boognish23@...> 2002/08/21

Although activity seems to have died down, here are some links

[#47817] A Repeat: New Language After Ruby? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

Hi,

54 messages 2002/08/21
[#47820] RE: A Repeat: New Language After Ruby? — " JamesBritt" <james@...> 2002/08/21

[#47918] Win32 Scripting — Sean Middleditch <elanthis@...>

Hi,

13 messages 2002/08/22

[#48035] Why Ruby Uses Mark-and-Sweep GC? — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...>

Hi,

39 messages 2002/08/23

[#48062] Ruby and Judy — Joseph McDonald <joe@...>

29 messages 2002/08/23

[#48082] Distributed Object Container — junderdown@... (Jason Underdown)

Is anyone out there in the Ruby community working on an object

23 messages 2002/08/24
[#48185] Re: Distributed Object Container — "Gavin Sinclair" <gsinclair@...> 2002/08/26

----- Original Message -----

[#48223] Ruby Based App Server — junderdown@... (Jason Underdown)

I posted a similar question a few days ago, but didn't get any

21 messages 2002/08/26

[#48264] Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — itsnewsforme@... (M S)

A big complaint from people looking into Ruby is that they don't see

36 messages 2002/08/27
[#48292] Re: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — ts <decoux@...> 2002/08/27

>>>>> "M" == M S <itsnewsforme@yahoo.ca> writes:

[#48296] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — "Rich Kilmer" <rich@...> 2002/08/27

Actually, it would be nice to have them online, but not necessarily

[#48336] Re: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — Massimiliano Mirra <list@...> 2002/08/27

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 09:39:32PM +0900, Rich Kilmer wrote:

[#48358] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — "Rich Kilmer" <rich@...> 2002/08/28

http://kt-www.jaist.ac.jp/~ttate/ruby/ruby-dl.html

[#48362] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!! (it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/28

On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 19:32, Rich Kilmer wrote:

[#48367] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!!(it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — "Rich Kilmer" <rich@...> 2002/08/28

You can just install it in another directory and then go to that

[#48369] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usage forward!!(it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — Tom Sawyer <transami@...> 2002/08/28

uh, sorry, how do i get 1.7.2? i tried anonymous cvs but it said NO. did

[#48371] RE: Ruby developers: help push RPKG development and usageforward!!(it is like CPAN.pm, only Ruby) — "Rich Kilmer" <rich@...> 2002/08/28

Nightly CVS snapshot:

[#48274] ANN: RJudy-0.1 - Judy Arrays for Ruby — Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>

All,

17 messages 2002/08/27

[#48477] Newbie converting brain from perl — William Pietri <william-news-383910@...>

20 messages 2002/08/28

[#48544] Best GC for Ruby? — "Justin Johnson" <justinj@...>

34 messages 2002/08/29

[#48573] FXRuby Threading Problem Solved? — Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>

All,

14 messages 2002/08/29

[#48584] suggestions to the Ruby community — stibbs <stibbs@...>

Hi, first i would like to state that i absolutely love Ruby more than any

85 messages 2002/08/29
[#48923] Re: suggestions to the Ruby community — <bbense+comp.lang.ruby.Sep.03.02@...> 2002/09/03

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[#48930] RE: suggestions to the Ruby community — " JamesBritt" <james@...> 2002/09/03

> >I was surprised just now to find that there is no absolute requirement

[#49017] Re: suggestions to the Ruby community — <bbense+comp.lang.ruby.Sep.04.02@...> 2002/09/04

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[#48657] ICFP Programming Contest — Alan Chen <alan@...>

http://icfpcontest.cse.ogi.edu/task.html

12 messages 2002/08/30

[#48705] Ruby aesthetics — vegai@...

Hello. I've been checking into python lately quite a lot, and I

192 messages 2002/08/31
[#49010] Re: Ruby aesthetics — "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...> 2002/09/04

----- Original Message -----

[#49100] Re: Ruby aesthetics — Paul Prescod <paulp@...> 2002/09/05

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Hal E. Fulton wrote:

[#49112] Re: Ruby aesthetics — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...> 2002/09/05

Hi,

[#49154] Re: Ruby aesthetics — Paul Prescod <paulp@...> 2002/09/05

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

[#49161] Re: Ruby aesthetics — Christian Szegedy <szegedy@...> 2002/09/05

Paul Prescod wrote:

[#49173] Re: Ruby aesthetics — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...> 2002/09/05

Hi,

[#49183] Re: Ruby aesthetics — <paul@...> 2002/09/05

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

[#49189] Re: Ruby aesthetics — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...> 2002/09/05

I think we have communicated very well; I agree with all you said. May I

[#49191] Re: Ruby aesthetics — <paul@...> 2002/09/05

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, William Djaja Tjokroaminata wrote:

[#49272] Re: Ruby aesthetics — William Djaja Tjokroaminata <billtj@...> 2002/09/06

Hi Matz,

[#49293] Re: Ruby aesthetics — matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto) 2002/09/06

Hi,

[#49312] Re: Ruby aesthetics — <paul@...> 2002/09/06

On Sat, 7 Sep 2002, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

[#49321] Re: Ruby aesthetics — dblack@... 2002/09/06

Hello --

RE: suggestions to the Ruby community

From: " JamesBritt" <james@...>
Date: 2002-08-31 06:23:21 UTC
List: ruby-talk #48700
>
> >I feel that in my original post i was specific as i could be. If people
> >here feel that the the overall online english ruby documentation does not
> >need improvement, great.
>
> All you've said is that the online docs for "modules and methods" was not
> complete or thorough - Personally, I think the online Pickaxe book is as
> good as any book for any other language in it's descriptions of the
> various built-in classes, modules and methods in the Ruby library.
>
> So I'll try one more time: Can you give us a _specific_ example where you
> found that you needed more information or the information wasn't clear?
> For example, you could say: "The explanation of the foo method in the
> module Fooable didn't tell me anything about how instance
> variables of the
> class it is being mixed into will be affected".


If somebody from the "outside" (for lack of a better word) makes a comment
or an observation, those on the "inside" should consider that, all possible
explanations/refutations/rationalizations aside, that *is* how things appear
to at least one, and probably more, outsider.

Clearly, somebody has a problem locating and using Ruby documentation.

One issue, if I'm reading this right, is that there is no one single place a
developer may go to look for complete documentation on all Ruby classes,
libs and modules.  This is a valid concern.  The Pick-Axe book covers a lot
of ground, but does not include documentation for every standard library.
For example, I recently needed to understand monitor.rb.  Searching the
WinHelp version of the Pick-Axe turned up nothing. The paper version doesn't
list it in the index.

The source code has some sparse RD doc, but it does not *explain* the module
or its methods, giving only a rather sparse example.  Besides, if you're new
to Ruby, you need to know what the RD doc format is, and know to go install
rdtool to see it as formatted output.  (Oddly, it does not come as part of
the standard installation, even though so much source uses RD.)

ri tells me, "Couldn't find class/module `MonitorMixin'."

Searching the ruby-talk archives doesn't give any doc pointers, either. The
Ruby Developer's Guide book doesn't list monitor.rb in the index; neither
does Ruby in 21 Days.  The Ruby Way has an entry for monitoring, and turning
to page 378 I see it discusses monitor.rb.  OK, so I can read the
description and look over the example.  It's helpful, but, in the end, I
don't think it's quite accurate to say monitor.rb is *documented* in The
Ruby Way.

This isn't an isolated case, just one that's fresh in my mind.  And it isn't
meant as a slam on anybody who's taken the time and effort to contribute to
Ruby development.   Not to single out Ruby or any developers, I have a
problem in general with much open-source software and the almost universal
lack of even cursory documentation.  (About the only good thing about it is
that it offers opportunities for industrious book writers.)

Now, there can be any number of explanations for this.  An obvious one is
that many Ruby developers are not native English speakers. Another reason,
common to pretty much all development, is that developers just don't like to
write documentation.   (When called on this, many simply tell you to read
the source code, as if dismantling a bike will tell you how to ride one.)
Sometimes it's just a matter of time; writing  free software as part of a
busy life doesn't leave much opportunity for certain niceties.

Ideally, when somebody asks about documentation for such-and-such, we should
be able to say, "try http://some.example.com/docs/such-and-such", much as
you can do with PHP.  We could perhaps start an Adopt a Library program, and
see to it that every bit of Ruby is documented in *one* place, with a
simple, uniform means of access.

One should also be able to run RDoc or rdtool on the Ruby source tree, and
get reasonable documentation for every class and module.

(By "reasonable documentation" I mean class and module names, a list of
methods and parameters, what the parameters are supposed to be, what the
code is intended to do, circumstances for appropriate use, known problems,
version number, required files, and related classes and modules.)

There was a thread some time back about adding documentation to the 1.7 or
1.8 source, but I don't know what came of it.

In general, if somebody has a criticism of Ruby, and it takes more than one
succinct  sentence to refute the claim, then there's a problem.  (To quote
JC Watts, an American ex-politician, "If you have to explain, you've already
lost." )

We should not shoot the messenger, nor pick apart the comment, nor tell the
person the problem is with him or her.  Do not tell the person that, since
he or she has pointed out the problem, he or she should offer to head up a
project to fix it.  (Not to say these things have happened in this thread,
but they have happened at different times in the past.)

Documentation needs work, and we need a plan to improve it.
I would be happy to contribute.

Perhaps, as a start, we might get a list of all classes/modules, and find
out who owns each one.  See if the owner is willing and able to write any
needed documentation.  If not, start looking for somebody to take over that
documentation, and see if the code owner is at least available for
consultation when questions arise.

We would need a documentation repository (perhaps a wiki), agreement on what
the documentation should contain, and what formatting is used.

It would be nice, too, if at the end we had documentation in both Japanese
and English.


James

In This Thread