# Ruby Weekly News 14th - 20th November 2005 **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 22, 2005, 9:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-14th-20th-november-2005/48570 "2005-11-22T09:23:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![timsuth](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/258eb7/32.png) [@timsuth](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/timsuth)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2005, 9:23am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-14th-20th-november-2005/48570/1 "2005-11-22T09:23:02Z")
[http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20051120.html](http://www.rubyweeklynews.org/20051120.html) # Ruby Weekly News 14th - 20th November 2005 Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week’s activity on the ruby-talk mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup, brought to you by Tim S… [Contribute to the next newsletter.] # Articles and Announcements ``` * RedCloth mailing list ----------------------- why the lucky stiff introduced a new mailing list for RedCloth, ``` the Ruby library for using the Textile humane text format. ``` * Use of Ruby in Laboratory Automation -------------------------------------- Neil Benn is guest-editing 'The Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation', and is looking for examples of how Ruby ``` is used in this area. (Or, even better, someone to write an article.) ``` Devin M. said that Brent Roman gave a presentation on this ``` topic at RubyConf 2005 (“Embedding Ruby into a Robotic Marine Laboratory”), and gave links to audio & video of the talk. ``` He also mentioned the [SciRuby] project, which is concerned with ``` the use of Ruby in science. ``` * Ruby/SDL for Mac OS X ----------------------- Duane J. wrote an article on using Ruby/SDL on Mac OS X. | Ruby/SDL is a binding for the Simple DirectMedia Layer, which ``` is a | library that makes 2D (and some 3D) graphics as well as sound and | basic keyboard/mouse support available in a cross-platform way. | Perfect for building games with! ``` * Fosdem : Developers Room, Presence ------------------------------------ Thomas R. said that, with the next Fosdem (Free and ``` OpenSource Developers’ European Meeting) coming up in February 2006, we have the opportunity to register a “presence”, and arrange to have a room set aside for Ruby. ``` "Any help, and remarks are welcomed." * Help requested: new book -------------------------- Mark W. is planning on writing a new book on "Enterprise ``` Ruby", and asked for help defining the topics it will contain. ``` "I am going to release this as a free PDF file under a Creative Commons license, but I would also like to find a publisher who ``` would make hard copy versions available to readers who want a physical book." # User Group News ``` * Learning R. Hackfest Hosted by new_haven.rb this Friday ----------------------------------------------------------- Gregory B. announced a mini Hackfest run by the New Haven Ruby Brigade (Connecticut, U.S.) on November 18th. The aim is to pair ``` up experienced Ruby programmers with newbies and have them work through a Ruby Q. together. ``` * London Ruby U. Group meeting - 23 Nov ------------------------------------------ Rob announced the London Ruby U. Group meeting on the 23rd of November. "Tiest will present a summary of what happened at ``` RubyConf 2005. Followed by general Ruby chat and a move to the pub." # Image of the Week “LONELY IN THE CROWD” by napaey # Threads ## Ruby, SOAP and WSDL Henning Jansen wanted to write a Ruby server that provides a SOAP interface, matching an already-defined WSDL specification. He couldn’t find any tool for generating Ruby code from a WSDL file, and had also heard “Dyanamic languages like Ruby don’t really need WSDL”. The the first point, Hiroshi N. referred him to wsdl2ruby.rb, which is part of the SOAP4R project, but not in the standard Ruby distribution (which only includes the runtime components). It is also possible to simply call driver = SOAP::WSDLDriverFactory.new(“[http://some/foo.wsdl](http://some/foo.wsdl)”).create\_driver to load the WSDL at runtime, instead of generating code. As to whether Ruby needs WSDL, Ryan L. said that being a dynamic language it can intercept and create methods “on the fly”, so it isn’t necessary to know what the target methods are at `compile time’. James B. noted that WSDL is more than just method/type declarations; it also provides information on what services are available, and how to invoke them. ## Equvialent of RoboCode and/or Terrarium for Ruby? Kyle H. wondered if Ruby had any equivalents to “RoboCode” or “Terrarium” (or RoboWar), multi-player systems where developers create AI to compete with each other. Dave B. said there wasn’t, yet. “Tim Bates started work on Rubots, and I have early-stages code and ideas based on RoboCode, but that’s the extent of it.” There was lots of discussion and interest in creating such systems. ## ruby’s weird operators (||=) Mark asked what was with all the “weird” operators in Ruby like ||= ? Guillaume M. said that they’re not so weird; a = b is just a shorter way of writing a = a b. For example, x ||= 3 means x = x || 3, in other words, set x to 3 if it is not defined, is nil, or is false. why the lucky stiff noted the [FunnySymbolsInCode] page on RubyGarden. ## Converting between Time and DateTime This thread discussed the difference between Time, Date and DateTime, and in particular how to convert between Time and DateTime. One technique was given by David A. Black, although it was observed that it works by generating and parsing intermediate string representations, which is less efficient than a more `direct’ approach of initialising one via the fields of another. # time = … some Time # date\_time = … some DateTime d = DateTime.parse(time.iso8601) t = Time.parse(date\_time.strftime(“%c”)) Kirk H. said that this works because the parse method for both classes is based on a single shared method, while an alternative approach was given by Daniel S.: (although it doesn’t handle timezones, fractional seconds etc.) class DateTime def to\_time Time.mktime(year, mon, day, hour, min, sec) end end class Time def to\_datetime DateTime.civil(year, mon, day, hour, min, sec) end end As to the reason for the separate classes, Kirk said that they are in fact different in significant ways. | Time and Date/DateTime use two entirely different mechanisms for keeping | track of the passage of time. Time utilizes seconds since the start of | 1970-standard Unix time tracking. | | Date/DateTime uses keeps tracks of days and fractions of days using | Rational, and it’s start of time is about the start of the year in 4712 | B.C. Ron M, noting limitations with Time on systems where time\_t is 32-bits, thought it would be good if Time would automatically convert to some sort of BigTime object when the year is out of range. (In the same way that Fixnum converts to Bignum.) “Today, that’s not the case, and selecting fields representing a 200-year-lease throws an error when done through DBI.” Tanaka A. said that this would be hard, since Time just uses the underlying operating system’s time support, from which information on out-of-range years is not readily available. A solution is to use an operating system that has 64-bit time\_t. In the Time out of range when selecting from database? thread, Kirk said that it wouldn’t be too difficult to make DBI::Timestamp behave nicely when the time doesn’t fit in a Time. ## Euchre Hands (#55) James Edward G. II introduced Ruby Q. number 55, “Euchre Hands”. The problem is to write a program that determines the “trump suit” for hands in the card game Euchre. ## Small practice programs dark2: “For someone with some programming background and an interest in learning Ruby, what are a few good “practice” programs to write?” Gregory B.: [http://www.rubyquiz.com/](http://www.rubyquiz.com/). James B.: “Do you use a computer on a regular basis? Do you find yourself doing the same little things over and over, by hand? Write Ruby code to automate or simply them.” ## Crash Course on Speed for Ruby Damphyr and his colleagues will be providing a three-hour introduction to Ruby for a group of “high calibre, experienced professionals with very good theoretical and practical background, so we only need to provide a highspeed hands-on tour of Ruby and let nature take it’s course”. Has anyone already prepared material suitable for a three-hour workshop? Edwin van Leeuwen suggested the [WhyRuby] repository. ## A dRuby application running as a Windows service? Dominic M. asked how he could turn a druby (distributed Ruby) application into a Windows service. Jamey C. pointed out an example he’d written which uses the win32-service Ruby library. # New Releases ## isi.rb Version 0.8 Takeshi Nishimatsu announced for “Rubies and TeXnichians” a new version of the ISI Export Format to BibTeX Format convertor. Brian Schröder added a “shameless plug” for his rbibtex, a Ruby library for manipulating BibTeX. ## Ruby-GNOME2-0.14.1 Ruby-GNOME2-0.14.1 was announced by Masao M., fixing some serious memory leaks. All users of 0.14.0 are advised to upgrade. Ruby-GNOME2 is a set of Ruby bindings for the GNOME 2 development environment. ## Ruby RTF 0.1.0 Peter Wood released the first version of Ruby RTF, a library for creating RTF (Rich Text Format) files. ## ruby-feedparser : RSS/Atom feed parser Lucas N. said that ruby-feedparser had been extracted from the Feed2Imap project and is now available as a standalone library. It is used to parse Atom and RSS feeds, and is designed to be robust in the face of invalid input. No formal release has been made, but the SVN (Subversion repository) version is usable. ## rctool-1.1.0 rubikitch announced the latest version of his tool allowing developers to programatically update `rcfiles’ (e.g. “.emacs”), while providing notifications and control to users. ## Nitro + Og 0.25.0 Og scope, dynamic finders, evolution, helpers, bug fixes George M. was pleased to announce new versions of Nitro and Og, a web application framework and object-relational mapping library, respectively. The focus of the release was on stability, but features were also added, including “constrained / scoped queries”, dynamic finders/generators, and an experimental schema evolution system. ## Ruby/GD2 1.0 Rob L. improved the API of Ruby/GD2, a wrapper around the library for creating images. Documentation was also added. ## Ferret 0.2.1 (port of Apache Lucene to pure ruby) David B. updated Ferret, his port of the Apache Lucene searching and indexing library to Ruby. The query interface now supports searching across multiple fields at the same time, the library is threadsafe, and simple interfaces for updating and deleting documents are provided. Primary keys were also added. ## ruby-growl 1.0.1 Eric H. fixed ruby-growl to work with the version of Ruby distributed with Mac OS X Tiger. “Growl is a global notification system for Mac OS X. Applications can register messages which Growl displays on the screen in a variety of ways depending upon your preferences.” ruby-growl allows you to send growl messages from non-Mac OS systems (but not receive them). ## Nihongo Benkyo 0.3 Mathieu B. let out a new release of Nihongo Benkyo, a tool for use with Japanese dictionary files. ## Ruport 0.2.5: Enumerable DataSets, and things that go bump in the night Gregory B. bumped through the “I’m releasing too often” edition of Ruport, a report generation framework. Robert Canieso has joined the project, and will be working on the Ruport::Format module. The query interface has been improved in this release. ## Reg - Ruby Extended Grammar 0.4.6 Caleb C. made a new release of Reg, a mini-language for “matching patterns in ruby object graphs”. “Reg provides matchers for Strings (via Regexps), Symbols, Hashes, and several alternatives for matching Objects, but the main feature is the ability to match Arrays of arbitrary ruby data using vaguely Regexp-like syntax.” ## FasterCSV 0.1.3–CSV parsing without the wait! James Edward G. II posted another version of FasterCSV, a library intended to be a faster (currently ~ 10x) parser of CSV than the `csv’ library that comes standard with Ruby, while remaining pure-Ruby code.