Hey Ed,

 > Well ... first of all -- I suspect your project is rather large, and you seem 
to have factored it into a Ruby piece, a C++ piece, and a Lua piece, with each 
of those languages doing what it is good at. So, barring a complete re-write in 
a *single* language,

The existing Ruby stuff is involved in the build process, and involves
running Ruby scripts- no embedded Ruby. It works brilliantly. I am
considering replacing the LUA piece with an embedded Ruby piece. Rewriting
the existing scripts would take a day at most, once I get the embedded Ruby
interface and hooks to my code working fine. The "working fine" bit is
the issue.

You are correct regarding each language doing what it is best at, so
hopefully you'll understand when I say a rewrite is simply never going
to happen. ;) The low-level C++ code is optimised to death and the flexible
Ruby configuration and build tools would be overwhelmingly painful to write
in C++. So yeah, I need the best of all worlds. I am using multiple tools
in ways that emphasise their strengths. I just need them to play nice
together. :)

 > I'd say the most expeditious thing to do would be to fix the Lua code that's 
broken in Lua, rather than trying to rewrite it in Ruby. I don't know what your 
time and money constraints are -- if you need to earn a living with E.V.E. 
Paradox, I'd do whatever gets you on the air in the most "agile" manner.

Yes. Can't see that taking more than a day. BUT if Ruby was my scripting
language I can make huge improvements to the scope of scripting in
E.V.E. Paradox. I can move game features out into it. There is a lot of
incredible stuff I could do. I'd love to have Ruby scripting, and the
payoff in time may be worth it. But if the outcome is unattainable, I need
to consider other options.

Garth