Hi,

This is a bit of an introduction, and some possible promotion.  My company 
recently started to get involved with Ruby and I would like to give you all 
a heads up of what is coming in the next few weeks.  I apologize in advance 
if this isn't appropriate for this list, but this seemed the most focused 
place to get the information available.

1.  We will be releasing a free editor for Ruby that makes use of the Qt 
(www.trolltech.com) toolkit for the window manager, and our port of 
Scintilla for syntax highlighting.  This is meant to be useful and a taste 
of our commercial product BlackAdder.  Because of the Qt license 
restrictions we can only make the free editor available on Linux.

2.  Ruby version of BlackAdder 
(www.thekompany.com/products/blackadder).  BlackAdder is a GUI IDE for 
Python that works on Windows and Linux.  We have just added support for 
Ruby and are testing it internally now.  BlackAdder uses Qt to be 
multi-platform and a separate Python specific ODBC connectivity library.

Now I think what is especially interesting is that version 3 of Qt will 
first support the Mac (this is in beta now) and also contains an abstracted 
data access layer called Qdb.  BlackAdder will also support these as soon 
as they are available, all in the same package.

BlackAdder is still in beta, but is nearing release.  We have been selling 
it at a discounted price during the beta period for as low as $49.99.  We 
are going to be integrating the fine book on Ruby written by Dave Thomas 
and Andrew Hunt in the online help system.

So essentially in one box you will have Ruby, Python with support for Linux 
and Windows and soon the Mac as well as the database connectivity for 
Ruby.  It will take us a bit longer to get the debugger support for Ruby 
built, but it will be coming.

We are looking forward to the input and feedback from the Ruby community to 
fine tune BlackAdder once it becomes available.


Warm Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
949-713-3276