Ruby Weekly News: 02/25/2002
   
   A summary of activity on the ruby-talk mailing list, brought to you
   this week by Holden Glova.
   
   ANNOUNCEMENTS
   =============
   
   #ruby-lang on IRC
          Mathieu Bouchard wanted to remind people to come talk Ruby,
          help people new to Ruby, learn more about Ruby, or just hang
          out with other Rubyist's at #ruby-lang on irc.openprojects.net
          .
          
   Ruby Graph Library 0.1
          Horst Duchene has released an alpha version of his graphing
          library. RGL is a framework for graphing datastructures and
          algorithms. The RGL is largely influenced by the Boost Graph
          Library (BGL). You can get the RGL here([1]).
          
   Ruby Hardware Definition Language (RHDL)
          Our very own Phil Tomson has produced an early release of a
          Hardware Definition Language (HDL) in Ruby. A HDL can be used
          to describe hardware designs similar to textual schematics but
          with more power because it is described through a programming
          language. Refer to this message to see an example of how this
          might be used.
          
   TestUnit 0.1.2
          Nathaniel Talbott has released the successor to his popular
          Ruby testing framework Lapidary called TestUnit. TestUnit aims
          at being compatible with RubyUnit and Lapidary tests. It is
          also very easy to run (just require 'test/unit'). Get
          TestUnit([2])
          
   Ruby DataQuery Shell (RDQS) 0.3.2
          Thomas Heinen has a new release of his Ruby DataQuery Shell.
          RDQS is a (not only) SQL shell with some improvements. Get
          RDQS([3]).
          
   Ruby-Wise 0.4
          Kero has released another version of Ruby-Wise. Ruby-Wise is a
          widget set for Ruby aimed to run on an iPAQ, but should be
          useful on the desktop as well. Speed is achieved through
          binding directly with X. Get Ruby-Wise([4]).
          
   Ruby Windows installer 166-0
          Andrew Hunt is doing his best to make Ruby very accessible for
          Windows users. He has prepared the first version of the MSVC
          Ruby installer. This version does not use Cygwin so some IO
          functionality is unavailable. Get Ruby Windows Installer([5]).
          
   Pre-pre-register for RubyConf 2002
          David Alan Black has announced that he is starting to collect
          information about the potential size of this years conference.
          If you have the slightest inclination of attending this years
          conference please fill in his very brief, anonymous
          questionaire here([6]). Look forward to seeing many of you
          there!
          
   INTERESTING THREADS
   ===================
   
   Baby bugs can grow up
          A thread on the list this week reminded us of the benefits that
          running ruby with the -w flag can bring. For those that don't
          know, running ruby with -w makes it verbose and it is much more
          likely to highlight potential errors in your code. Highly
          recommended.
          
   The Rite future?
          Paulo Schreiner asked for some hints about what we might be
          able to expect in Ruby's not too distant future. A few hints
          where leaked out, but nothing major that wasn't already known
          about. Never the less, an interesting read with a hint or two
          from Matz himself.

References

   1. http://www.hduchene.de/ruby/rgl/doc
   2. http://testunit.talbott.ws/
   3. http://rdqs.sourceforge.net/
   4. http://httpd.chello.nl/k.vangelder/ruby/wise/
   5. http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ruby-install.html
   6. http://knossos.shu.edu/prepre.html