# What do you want to see for my Prawn (Ruby Mendicant) talk at RubyConf?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-do-you-want-to-see-for-my-prawn-ruby-mendicant-talk-at-rubyconf/152234>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 31, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-do-you-want-to-see-for-my-prawn-ruby-mendicant-talk-at-rubyconf/152234 "2008-10-31T16:45:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-do-you-want-to-see-for-my-prawn-ruby-mendicant-talk-at-rubyconf/152234/1 "2008-10-31T16:45:11Z")

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Hey,

In the spirit of Ruby Manor[0], I’m asking for feedback on what people  
would like to see in my RubyConf talk[1],  
which will be on Saturday November 8th, just after lunch (1:15).

I’ve got some things I definitely want to share, but I am reserving up  
to half of my talk for suggested topics. I can easily fill that time  
if necessary, but since this is a really big topic, I want to try to  
put together something that folks find interesting, rather than  
attempting to tell you what is interesting.

I sort of assume people want to see Prawn in action, so I’ll be sure  
to have some demonstration code.

The next most interesting thing is probably some of the techniques we  
used while building Prawn. We really had a lot of success with  
getting user contributions, and I think this is in no small part due  
to some of the things that we set out from the offset, including  
documentation standards, testing expectations, guidelines for  
contribution, the push for copious example code, etc.

If we opted for something more hard core, I could spend a little time  
talking about what it’s like to translate such a low level format as  
PDF into Ruby. Obviously, this isn’t going to have much ‘takeaway’  
value, but it might lead to some fun mind bending code samples. But  
it seems like these days, there is less of a thirst for such talks.

Finally, I could give my impressions on the whole “Ruby Mendicant”[2]  
idea. I feel like I almost rather do a BoF or some informal gathering  
than talk to a large group about how to do something crazy and  
unreasonable with your life, but I don’t really know to what extent  
this appeals to a general crowd, I may be underestimating.

These are just my thoughts. Of course, no matter what goes on in my  
talk, you’ll see some elements of each of them. What I want to know  
is what people are interested in, even if it’s not on this list. If  
there are some questions people want answered, or topics people want  
me to cover, I’d be happy to. I think it’d be great fun to give a  
community-driven talk, so please share your ideas!

Folks who aren’t attending the conference are welcome to submit ideas,  
but please indicate whether or not you’ll be there, so I know how to  
weight things.

-greg

[0] [http://rubymanor.org/](http://rubymanor.org/)  
[1] [http://rubyconf.org/talks/95](http://rubyconf.org/talks/95)  
[2] [http://rubymendicant.wikidot.com/](http://rubymendicant.wikidot.com/)

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**Author:** ![naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/e47774/32.png) [@naething](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/naething)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2008, 7:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-do-you-want-to-see-for-my-prawn-ruby-mendicant-talk-at-rubyconf/152234/2 "2008-10-31T19:53:33Z")

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On Oct 31, 2008, at 10:42 AM, Gregory B. wrote:

> In the spirit of Ruby Manor[0], I’m asking for feedback on what people  
> would like to see in my RubyConf talk[1],  
> which will be on Saturday November 8th, just after lunch (1:15).

I can’t make it, sadly, but I’ve seen you discuss Prawn before and I  
can sure tell you what I liked.

> I sort of assume people want to see Prawn in action, so I’ll be sure  
> to have some demonstration code.

Yeah, I thought that was the awesome part of the OK.rb talk. It’s  
just awesome to see 20 lines of Ruby code generating usable PDFs,  
quickly. We’ve never had that before. Period.

> The next most interesting thing is probably some of the techniques we  
> used while building Prawn.

This is nice, but not as important to me. I think we’ve all seen  
quite a few successful projects now covering most of the options.

To me, Prawn sells itself. I’m far more interested in what it really  
is, now, and how I can use that than how it grew up.

Maybe others would prefer to see this though.

> If we opted for something more hard core, I could spend a little time  
> talking about what it’s like to translate such a low level format as  
> PDF into Ruby.

I find this very interesting, but I’m a geek that way.

Translating binary formats like this is generally just more tedious  
than hard. However, I think a lot of people just don’t know where to  
start when doing something like this because no one has ever shown  
them. That’s why I think this is valuable.

> Finally, I could give my impressions on the whole “Ruby Mendicant”[2]  
> idea.

This is more interesting to me than traditional testing,  
documentation, and contribution standards because it was a unique  
approach that has been pretty successful. Others might see new ways  
to used techniques like this.

Good luck with the talk!

James Edward G. II