# Ruby Weekly News 19th - 25th June 2006

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-19th-25th-june-2006/96369>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [June 28, 2006, 12:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-19th-25th-june-2006/96369 "2006-06-28T12:48:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![weliwarmer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@weliwarmer](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/weliwarmer)\
**Post date:** [June 28, 2006, 12:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-weekly-news-19th-25th-june-2006/96369/1 "2006-06-28T12:48:40Z")

</div>

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# Ruby Weekly News 19th - 25th June 2006

Ruby Weekly News is a summary of the week’s activity on the ruby-talk  
mailing list / the comp.lang.ruby newsgroup / Ruby forum, brought to  
you  
by Tim S…

[Contribute to the next newsletter]

# Articles and Announcements

```
 * DABlog (ruby-talk)
 --------------------

   David A. Black announced a new Ruby blog: DABlog, and in its 

```

first  
post said:

```
   > I've never been a fan of the term "blog", so I'm doing an end 

```

run  
\> around it by naming this log after myself. Anyone who wants to  
think  
\> of it as “Da Blog” may do so, and I get to think of it as the  
log of  
\> David A. Black. So everyone is happy.

```
 * A new home for RubyForge (ruby-talk)
 --------------------------------------

   RubyForge is no longer hosted in Rich Kilmer's basement, thanks 

```

to  
Ruby Central and lots of work from Rich and Tom C…

```
   Tom: "May RubyForge's next three years be as lively as its first
   three..."

 * RubyConf 2006 talk proposals now being accepted (ruby-talk)
 -------------------------------------------------------------

   David A. Black: "In case you missed it the first time (and rather 

```

a  
lot of you seem to have…)", you are now able to submit RubyConf  
2006  
talk proposals.

```
   "You can, and you should, and if you intend to, you MUST!"

   The deadline is June 30, 2006.

```

# User Group News

```
 * Ruby Beach group in Miami/Fort Lauderdale (comp.lang.ruby)
 ------------------------------------------------------------

   In the last newsletter we saw a post calling out to Ruby users in
   Miami/Fort Lauderdale. There were several followups this week, 

```

saying  
that two groups in South Florida have recently formed and had  
their  
first meetings: South Florida Rubyists and RubyRailsSofla.

# Image of the Week

## Disembarcadero

Disembarcadero by Automatt, posted to Flickr under the Creative  
Commons  
Attribution 2.0 license.

[Disembarcadero | Thanks for viewing everyone and for your va… | Flickr](http://flickr.com/photos/automatt/124920022/)

# Threads

## General API design question: FooError vs Foo::Error (ruby-talk)

Daniel B. wondered about the convention for exception naming  
after  
noticing that e.g. TimeoutError in the `timeout’ standard library is  
now  
deprecated in favour of Timeout::Error.

There were no replies.

## Problems with Ruby and C++ (ruby-talk)

In this thread Paul B. linked to a valgrind suppressions file  
for  
Ruby. Developers of C extensions can use this for debugging memory  
issues.

## pp Pascal (#84) (ruby-talk)

This week’s Ruby Q. is by Dirk M., and challenges you to write  
a  
Ruby program that outputs Pascal’s Triangles.

## templating systems (comp.lang.ruby)

A list of Ruby templating systems was given by Trans:

> eruby is the most common as it is one of the first and comes with  
> Ruby.  
> Rails apps use it. There are also plenty of others. Amrita is very  
> nice  
> one for instance. And Facets include a TAL (tag attribute language)  
> in  
> rtals.rb. I beleive Kwartz is another that’s maintained, and the  
> list  
> goes on. I think somewhere there’s even an attempt at an emulation  
> of  
> Perl’s template toolkit.

Radius is another option.

## Rails Live CD (comp.lang.ruby)

Brian K.'s “Rails Live CD” has had tremendous progress over the  
last  
few weeks.

The CD boots into Linux, with Ruby, Rails, MySQL, RadRails and more  
ready  
for you to play with. There is also a “VMWare Player Virtual  
Appliance”  
available.

## Whats new/fixed in Ruby 1.9 and Ruby 2.0 (ruby-talk)

In an otherwise dismal thread, Matz made an interesting comment  
regarding  
Ruby 1.9 and 2.0: “All major incompatibility shall be introduced by  
1.9  
hopefully”.

## New RMagick tutorial: Web 2.0 Graphics (ruby-talk)

Timothy H. created a new RMagick tutorial that shows you how to  
“dynamically create images with transparency, the “glass” effect,  
gradients, shadows, and text.”

RMagick is a Ruby library for the ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick  
image-processing tools.

## ALSA bindings? (comp.lang.ruby)

Phil T. asked if anyone had created Ruby bindings for ALSA  
(Advanced  
Linux Sound Architecture). Hans F. didn’t think so, but said he’d  
be  
interested in helping out and integrating it with his ruby/audio  
library.

# New Releases

## GeoCoding API updates (ruby-talk)

Eric H.'s Yahoo, Google and [geocoder.us](http://geocoder.us) geocoding APIs are now  
joined  
by one for MetaCarta.

## mongrel\_cluster 0.2.0 – Mongrel 0.3.13 Compliant (ruby-talk)

Bradley Taylor’s mongrel\_cluster had some features added, and the  
license  
changed.

“Mongrel\_cluster is a GemPlugin that wrappers the mongrel HTTP server  
and  
simplifies the deployment of webapps using a cluster of mongrel  
servers.”

## Syndication 0.6 (RSS & Atom parsing) (comp.lang.ruby)

Syndication 0.6 has new experimental support for Google C.  
feeds.  
“This module provides classes for parsing web syndication feeds in  
RSS and  
Atom formats”, written by mathew.

## Radius 0.5.1 – Powerful Tag-Based Templates (ruby-talk)

John W. Long fixed a bug in Radius, a tag-based template language for  
Ruby.

“It uses tags similar to XML, but can be used to generate any form of  
plain text (HTML, e-mail, etc…). Radiant CMS currently uses Radius  
in  
its unique templating system.”

## Announcing Beta Release of GP [Ruby.NET](http://Ruby.NET) Compiler (ruby-talk)

Wayne K. (of Queensland University of Technology): “We are pleased  
to  
announce the preliminary Beta release of the Gardens Point [Ruby.NET](http://Ruby.NET)  
compiler. Note: this is not just a Ruby/.NET bridge, nor a Ruby  
Interpreter implemented on .NET, but a true .NET compiler.”

> The compiler can be used to statically compile a Ruby source file  
> into a  
> verifiable .NET v2.0 assembly or it can be used to directly execute  
> a  
> Ruby source file (compile, load and execute). Our implementation is  
> not  
> yet fully complete, but it is the only Ruby compiler that we know  
> of for  
> either the .NET or JVM platforms that is able to pass all 871 tests  
> in  
> the samples/test.rb installation test suite of Ruby 1.8.2.

The software is developed by Wayne K., Douglas Stockwell, Brian  
Blackwell, Chien Jon Soon and Wayne Reid, and receives some  
sponsorship  
from Microsoft. It is realised under a liberal free software license  
(BSD-like).

Sanxiyn posted a followup “Compiling GP [Ruby.NET](http://Ruby.NET) Compiler on Mono”.

## Mongrel 0.3.13.1 – Quick Small Fixes (ruby-talk)

Zed S. fixed a small bug in Mongrel, corrected some documentation,  
and  
(thanks to Jonas P.) added RedirectHandler for doing  
redirects.

> Mongrel is a fast HTTP library and server for Ruby that is intended  
> for  
> hosting Ruby web applications of any kind using plain HTTP rather  
> than  
> FastCGI or SCGI. It is framework agnostic and already supports Ruby  
> On  
> Rails, Og+Nitro, and Camping frameworks.

## rubyFreenet 0.1 (ruby-talk)

Phillip H. created a Ruby interface to Freenet Client Protocol  
2.0,  
for the “decentralised anonymous network that provides data storage  
services”.

## ruby-prof-0.4.0 (ruby-talk)

Charlie S. and Shugo M.'s ruby-prof had a new release “chock  
full  
of new features”.

It’s faster (now 15-50% overhead), supports multiple threads, has  
cross-referenced html reports, “vastly improved documentation”,  
Windows  
support, a gem, and more.

Yeah, wow.

## Mongrel 0.3.13.2 – RailsConf 2006 Release (ruby-talk)

Zed S. found some time at RailsConf 2006 to make some improvements  
to  
Mongrel, such as notification filters (see the  
mongrel\_upload\_progress gem  
by \_why and Rick Olsen).
