From why at poignantguide.net Mon Mar 1 10:34:21 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Mon Mar 1 12:45:01 2004 Subject: development office up, an offer to translators, developers In-Reply-To: References: <18751.67.40.116.230.1078020840.squirrel@mail.soccerriot.com> Message-ID: <4043741D.4060202@poignantguide.net> Chris Hoge wrote: > I'm happy to help with TeX and pdf. Probably the simplest formats out > there (probably famous last words). Shoot, I would help even without > the bribe, not that I would turn it down, though. a kind offer, thankyou. as for obstacles: the flow of images and sidebars could make some editions difficult to build. fortunately, this is a strength of css. i truly respect its cooperation in this regard. pdf won't be so cooperative. currently, the images checked into cvs are 800px wide. but i'd really like to keep 300dpi or 600dpi images somewhere in cvs so that nicely printed versions could be produced. can anyone suggest a good resolution for these master images? what image depth would you like to see in the pdf version? _why From why at poignantguide.net Mon Mar 1 14:05:03 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Mon Mar 1 16:16:39 2004 Subject: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Chapter Four: Little Leaves of Code Message-ID: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> Chapter Four of my ongoing Ruby book is done, done, walk on, walk on. I know this chapter was supposed to be six months in the making, but what can I say? I looked at it today and said, "Yeah, that's good." Here's a link directly to the chapter: http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html If you find yourself wanting to pitch in and help translate the book or convert to new formats, head over the the development office: http://poignant.rubyforge.org/ Just a few ideas there on how you can help tease this thing along. Thanks everybody, _why From ckhoge at mac.com Mon Mar 1 13:51:15 2004 From: ckhoge at mac.com (Chris Hoge) Date: Mon Mar 1 17:01:33 2004 Subject: Error in building wpgtr In-Reply-To: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> Message-ID: <901CC75E-6BCA-11D8-B2B8-000502771EB0@mac.com> Hi, Ok, so maybe I'm suffering because I live in OS X land. Tonight when I get the chance to drop into Linux I will try to reproduce this on a different OS. Using Ruby 1.8, complete with the 0.6 version of the YAML library and the current versions of erb (2.0.4) and redcloth (2.0) from the RAA, I get the following error when I run "ruby poignant.rb" on the CVS tree: /sw/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load': parse error on line 1162, col 4: ` - !^sidebar' (ArgumentError) from /sw/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load' from poignant.rb:11:in `load' from poignant.rb:71 (the /sw prefix you see in front of everything is the fink sandbox. Think of it as the /usr/local of OS X) I've taken a quick look at the libraries and at the poignant.yml file. None of the other sidebars fail to load correctly, the libraries seem to be up to date, and I'm wondering if anyone has ideas on how to proceed. On a different note, I'm using anonymous CVS access at RubyForge. I've made an account, but does CVS access work for project contributors? I can't check out the project using my RubyForge login. Thanks, Chris On Mar 1, 2004, at 1:05 PM, why the lucky stiff wrote: > Chapter Four of my ongoing Ruby book is done, done, walk on, walk on. > I know this chapter was supposed to be six months in the making, but > what can I say? I looked at it today and said, "Yeah, that's good." > > Here's a link directly to the chapter: > http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html > > If you find yourself wanting to pitch in and help translate the book > or convert to new formats, head over the the development office: > http://poignant.rubyforge.org/ Just a few ideas there on how you can > help tease this thing along. > > Thanks everybody, > > _why > _______________________________________________ > poignant-stiffs mailing list > poignant-stiffs@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/poignant-stiffs From jgb3 at email.byu.edu Mon Mar 1 16:14:22 2004 From: jgb3 at email.byu.edu (Jamis Buck) Date: Mon Mar 1 18:28:02 2004 Subject: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Chapter Four: Little Leaves of Code In-Reply-To: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> Message-ID: <4043C3CE.3070307@email.byu.edu> why the lucky stiff wrote: > Chapter Four of my ongoing Ruby book is done, done, walk on, walk on. > I know this chapter was supposed to be six months in the making, but > what can I say? I looked at it today and said, "Yeah, that's good." > > Here's a link directly to the chapter: > http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html > > If you find yourself wanting to pitch in and help translate the book > or convert to new formats, head over the the development office: > http://poignant.rubyforge.org/ Just a few ideas there on how you can > help tease this thing along. > > Thanks everybody, > > _why > _______________________________________________ > poignant-stiffs mailing list > poignant-stiffs@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/poignant-stiffs > . > Another inspired chapter from the master of Ruby prose. :) Thanks, _why_! However, one gripe, and I'm afraid it's a tough one... the art work, though wonderful, is a real strain to read. :( I found myself getting mildly frustrated tring to decipher the text in strips. It's not difficult, it's just more time-consuming than I would like. The wild fonts are great decoration, and from an artistic perspective I really like them, but when I'm trying to read them, it really slows me down. I saw a few typos, too, but didn't mark them. :) I'll do a second read-through later and post the ones I catch. -- Jamis Buck jgb3@email.byu.edu http://www.jamisbuck.org/blog/jamis.cgi ruby -h | ruby -e 'a=[];readlines.join.scan(/-(.)\[e|Kk(\S*)|le.l(..)e|#!(\S*)/) {|r| a << r.compact.first };puts "\n>#{a.join(%q/ /)}<\n\n"' From why at poignantguide.net Mon Mar 1 17:59:02 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Mon Mar 1 20:09:22 2004 Subject: Chapter Four in CVS In-Reply-To: <901CC75E-6BCA-11D8-B2B8-000502771EB0@mac.com> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> <901CC75E-6BCA-11D8-B2B8-000502771EB0@mac.com> Message-ID: <4043DC56.5030201@poignantguide.net> Chris Hoge wrote: > Ok, so maybe I'm suffering because I live in OS X land. Tonight when I > get the chance to drop into Linux I will try to reproduce this on a > different OS. Using Ruby 1.8, complete with the 0.6 version of the > YAML library and the current versions of erb (2.0.4) and redcloth > (2.0) from the RAA, I get the following error when I run "ruby > poignant.rb" on the CVS tree: > > /sw/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load': parse error on line 1162, col > 4: ` - !^sidebar' (ArgumentError) > from /sw/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:39:in `load' > from poignant.rb:11:in `load' > from poignant.rb:71 Just committed Chapter Four to CVS. Try it out. If you continue to have errors, there may be some YAML in there that's triggering a bug that's been fixed in Ruby CVS. Quite a bit has been debugged from 1.8.0 to 1.8.1 and 1.8.1 to the present. _why From why at poignantguide.net Mon Mar 1 18:04:29 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Mon Mar 1 20:15:00 2004 Subject: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Chapter Four: Little Leaves of Code In-Reply-To: <4043C3CE.3070307@email.byu.edu> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> <4043C3CE.3070307@email.byu.edu> Message-ID: <4043DD9D.1080507@poignantguide.net> Jamis Buck wrote: > However, one gripe, and I'm afraid it's a tough one... the art work, > though wonderful, is a real strain to read. It's all sort of leafy and overgrown I suppose. I didn't think of this, but now that you've pointed out the problem I can't tolerate it at all. I'll tame down these letters and see if I can improve the scans. _why From ckhoge at mac.com Mon Mar 1 18:21:34 2004 From: ckhoge at mac.com (Chris Hoge) Date: Mon Mar 1 21:31:52 2004 Subject: Success in building wpgtr locally In-Reply-To: <4043DC56.5030201@poignantguide.net> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> <901CC75E-6BCA-11D8-B2B8-000502771EB0@mac.com> <4043DC56.5030201@poignantguide.net> Message-ID: <53A69F00-6BF0-11D8-B2B8-000502771EB0@mac.com> Hi, I just finished building wpgtr from the CVS source on my local machine. First, the OS: Mac OS X 10.3 with dev tools and fink installed. Next, the Ruby installation: Ruby Stable Snapshot (available from http://ruby-lang.org) Redcarpet CVS (available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/yaml4r/) erb 2.0.4 (available from http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=erb) You can not build wpgtr using earlier versions of the packages I listed above. Finally, the build (with bugs?): You need to create a target directory. I used wpgtr/html/ Enter the command "ruby poignant.rb html/" to build the book in the wpgtr/html/ directory. You need to specify a build location, or the copy commands in ftools.rb library will clobber your guide.css and every image in wpgtr/i/. It is sad when that happens. Maybe something like this should go into a README file? -Chris From demerzel at fastmail.fm Mon Mar 1 19:58:34 2004 From: demerzel at fastmail.fm (Shajith C T) Date: Mon Mar 1 23:09:04 2004 Subject: Typos in Chap. 4 Message-ID: <1078199914.26378.181930413@webmail.messagingengine.com> A couple that I noticed on the site (http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html): 1) Below " Now You?re Going to Hear the Animal Perfect Mission Statement Because This Is A Book And We Have Time And No Rush, Right?" in http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html#section1 7th paragraph: "But now, the whole operation is up and running. And the cleaniless of the place is astonishing.[..]" ^^^^^^^^^^ "cleanliness" ? 2) Below "Your Repetitiveness Pays Off" in http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html#section3 3rd paragraph: "The code word well be swapped in for the real word." ^^^^ "will" ? Also, THANK YOU for this wonderful book, and godspeed on the next chapters! - Shajith -- http://www.fastmail.fm - A no graphics, no pop-ups email service From rasputnik at hellooperator.net Tue Mar 2 13:29:40 2004 From: rasputnik at hellooperator.net (Dick Davies) Date: Tue Mar 2 08:40:05 2004 Subject: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Chapter Four: Little Leaves of Code In-Reply-To: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> Message-ID: <40448C44.1060406@hellooperator.net> why the lucky stiff wrote: > Chapter Four of my ongoing Ruby book is done, done, walk on, walk on. > I know this chapter was supposed to be six months in the making, but > what can I say? I looked at it today and said, "Yeah, that's good." > > Here's a link directly to the chapter: > http://poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-4.html Typo: Nil ..... This sketelon?s smiling in all the pictures. ^^^^^^^^^ skeleton? And it's probably just me but starmonkey = ratchet.attach( captive_monkey, pipe.catch_a_star ) + deco_hand_frog makes me twitchy. I know the + is a method but that hasn't been explained yet. How about: starmonkey = ratchet.attach( captive_monkey, pipe.catch_a_star ) starmonkey.left_hand.glue(deco_hand_frog) ? You can even show how to smash those together: ratchet.attach( captive_monkey, pipe.catch_a_star).left_hand.glue(deco_hand_frog) Ugh. Actually maybe not, that's a bit confusing (plus there's no starmonkey to grab hold of)... +1 for the Jesus Jones reference though! From why at poignantguide.net Tue Mar 2 13:36:28 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Tue Mar 2 15:47:08 2004 Subject: Typos in Chap. 4 In-Reply-To: <1078199914.26378.181930413@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1078199914.26378.181930413@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <4044F04C.2070301@poignantguide.net> Shajith C T wrote: >Also, THANK YOU for this wonderful book, and godspeed on the next >chapters! > most salient thanks to you, shajith! (mentioned misspellings are vanquished from the premises.) _why From why at poignantguide.net Tue Mar 2 13:47:10 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Tue Mar 2 15:57:47 2004 Subject: Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Chapter Four: Little Leaves of Code In-Reply-To: <40448C44.1060406@hellooperator.net> References: <4043A57F.2050204@poignantguide.net> <40448C44.1060406@hellooperator.net> Message-ID: <4044F2CE.5050301@poignantguide.net> Dick Davies wrote: > And it's probably just me but > > starmonkey = ratchet.attach( captive_monkey, pipe.catch_a_star ) + > deco_hand_frog > > makes me twitchy. I know the + is a method but that hasn't been > explained yet. How about: > > starmonkey = ratchet.attach( captive_monkey, pipe.catch_a_star ) > starmonkey.left_hand.glue(deco_hand_frog) okay. that might work nicely. i have largely been ignoring methods which act as properties so far in the book. while operator methods get quite a bit of show time in chapter four. referring to 'starmonkey.left_hand' might help prep that discussion. what does everyone think of the two above examples? _why From why at poignantguide.net Thu Mar 4 02:01:50 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Thu Mar 4 04:12:41 2004 Subject: Blix, the foxes, the elf, the pet ham all agree: "it feels so good to merchandise!" Message-ID: <4046F07E.5000809@poignantguide.net> Are you dying to find subtle ways to introduce Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby to your friends and business colleagues? Why be subtle any longer when you can wear (poignant) merchandise at point-blank? Be blunt. Let them see exactly what kinds of foxes you read. http://www.cafeshops.com/blixytees Blixy Tees. Six hi-quality shirts featuring a few highlights of the first four chapters. "Addiction is like Pokemon! Let's collect every cigarette ever!" Blix introducing the Elf. The complementary starmonkey cutouts. And a medley of "chunky bacon" panels that will have the other manservants laughing so hard, they'll leave their wheelbarrows rolling straight down the mountainside unattended! Seriously, how great is the Internet? You can buy t-shirts advertising a book that is nowhere near completion from a complete stranger who is personally haranguing you from his home computer (which is incidentally stationed on an ironing board at the moment.) I *starch* you! _why From why at poignantguide.net Mon Mar 8 11:53:11 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Mon Mar 8 14:05:51 2004 Subject: recent reviews Message-ID: <404CC117.30503@poignantguide.net> here's a few reviews that i've been sent over the past week which you might find faceted: * Tomas Jogin - http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/000502/ so Tomas told me that he was only reading the Guide for the comics. he said he didn't want to learn Ruby, but it looks like Ruby's gonna take its prey. dying to see how this sort of thing plays out. * Bret Pettichord - http://www.io.com/~wazmo/blog/archives/2004_03.html#000071 the Guide as a trap for non-proggies. and: will they make it through the code examples? * Ned Batch Elder - http://www.nedbatchelder.com/reactor/comment.php?entryid=e20040223T211359 a variety of reactions. admittedly, i can see how the structure of the instruction could really get under someone's skin. i guess before i started, i sort of felt like taming everything down. but really, what's the point in that? i just don't feel like exercising a whole lot of restraint at the moment. it's an experiment. and truthfully: not really up to snuff with most other literature out there. _why From bret at pettichord.com Mon Mar 8 21:32:02 2004 From: bret at pettichord.com (Bret Pettichord) Date: Mon Mar 8 22:48:06 2004 Subject: recent reviews In-Reply-To: <404CC117.30503@poignantguide.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040308212355.0227d008@127.0.0.1> >Nat 4:43 PM on 24 Feb 2004 > >It's certainly an entertaining read about Ruby. I especially liked the >comics. Technical manuals need more comics, dammit! > >I can't say it got me excited about the Ruby though. I don't know if it >was just the examples, but I find Ruby to be almost as cryptic as Perl. >For instance: > >exit unless "restaurant".include? "aura" > >The author talks about how the language makes good use of punctuation. It >may make sense in Japanese, but in English, question marks go at the end >of the sentence. Give this line to one of the foxes. >Python, on the other hand seems clearer: > >if "aura" in "restaurant": sys.exit(-1) It may make sense in German, but in English, you don't stick negative numbers at the end of a sentence. >His other example is even more confusing: > >[toast, cheese, wine].each {|food| eat food} > >What's going on here? Does the food eat itself? Again, Python is much more >elegant (in my opinion, anyway) Have you ever heard the phrase "each one teach one?" it means that whenever someone teaches you something, you should turn around and teach some one else what you learned. That concept has the same meter as what you have here. Use it. >for food in ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine']: eat(food) > >I'll admit I'm a bit of a Python zealot and I should really learn about >Ruby. But so far, Python is still king. Python is cleaner here, because it overfocuses on iterators at the expense of support for blocks. So you need a good block example later sell the Python folks. >Nat _____________________________________ Bret Pettichord, Software Tester Book - www.testinglessons.com Consulting - www.pettichord.com Blog - www.io.com/~wazmo/blog Homebrew Automation Seminar March 19, Redmond, Washington www.sasqag.org/99days/#automation From dave at pragprog.com Mon Mar 8 21:48:08 2004 From: dave at pragprog.com (Dave Thomas) Date: Mon Mar 8 23:00:31 2004 Subject: recent reviews In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20040308212355.0227d008@127.0.0.1> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20040308212355.0227d008@127.0.0.1> Message-ID: <948BEEF2-717C-11D8-B198-000A95676A62@pragprog.com> On Mar 8, 2004, at 21:32, Bret Pettichord wrote: >> for food in ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine']: eat(food) >> >> I'll admit I'm a bit of a Python zealot and I should really learn >> about Ruby. But so far, Python is still king. > > Python is cleaner here, because it overfocuses on iterators at the > expense of support for blocks. So you need a good block example later > sell the Python folks. Actually, the OP is spreading snake oil. His Python code is also syntactically correct Ruby: dave[~ 21:47:10] irb irb(main):001:0> def eat(food) irb(main):002:1> puts "Yum: #{food}" irb(main):003:1> end => nil irb(main):004:0> for food in ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine']: eat(food) irb(main):005:1> end Yum: toast Yum: cheese Yum: wine Cheers Dave From nutate at speakeasy.net Tue Mar 9 10:04:30 2004 From: nutate at speakeasy.net (Richard Seymour) Date: Tue Mar 9 10:16:01 2004 Subject: recent reviews In-Reply-To: <948BEEF2-717C-11D8-B198-000A95676A62@pragprog.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20040308212355.0227d008@127.0.0.1> <948BEEF2-717C-11D8-B198-000A95676A62@pragprog.com> Message-ID: <404DDCFE.7030806@speakeasy.net> Yum: irony I'm going to take the liberty to post that on the OPs blog in the next half hour. With proper attribution, of course. -Rich Dave Thomas wrote: > > On Mar 8, 2004, at 21:32, Bret Pettichord wrote: > >>> for food in ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine']: eat(food) >>> >>> I'll admit I'm a bit of a Python zealot and I should really learn >>> about Ruby. But so far, Python is still king. >> >> >> Python is cleaner here, because it overfocuses on iterators at the >> expense of support for blocks. So you need a good block example later >> sell the Python folks. > > > Actually, the OP is spreading snake oil. His Python code is also > syntactically correct Ruby: > > dave[~ 21:47:10] irb > irb(main):001:0> def eat(food) > irb(main):002:1> puts "Yum: #{food}" > irb(main):003:1> end > => nil > irb(main):004:0> for food in ['toast', 'cheese', 'wine']: eat(food) > irb(main):005:1> end > Yum: toast > Yum: cheese > Yum: wine > > > Cheers > > Dave > > _______________________________________________ > poignant-stiffs mailing list > poignant-stiffs@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/poignant-stiffs From why at poignantguide.net Tue Mar 16 11:51:48 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Tue Mar 16 14:06:38 2004 Subject: the continuing adventures of one frail and very slow author with achy joints Message-ID: <40574CC4.3050508@poignantguide.net> just checking in to let everyone know that the fifth chapter is going really well. i think the fourth chapter met my expectations of digging into Ruby and moving the plot along. things start to get quite busy in the next two chapters and, by end of chap 6, you should feel fully immersed in a deep, tangled wilderland of assorted animals, do-gooders, and smoky corridors. i'm tempted to flash you some imagery from chapters five and six (which I've been working on side-by-side), but I really want the whole thing to spill out on to your lap at once. this is wonderful. once these chapters are out, i'll be at the halfway point. chapter five won't be ready until april. i'm sorry about this. i have vacation all through next week and i intend to leave the writing alone for the time and concentrate on feeling air currents and adjusting the strap on my backpack. surprisingly, the site is still going so strong. i believe we owe that to being #2 on google for the word 'poignant'. hopefully the guide can become the exclusive home to poignancy on web. no one will feel a thing without checking the site first. thanks to everyone who has bought shirts. i ordered an 'addiction' shirt [1] to check the quality and it's really nice actually. you can tell they did it with a transfer if you look closely, but the colors and dots are well done. == now, a question == i would like to include some basic reference materials with the guide. here are a few ideas i've had. you can vote or propose as you please: * flash cards. SIDE A SIDE B [ 'bear', 'rabbit', 'racoon'] caterpillar stapled into code is AN ARRAY :fizz antacid with bubbles is A SYMBOL YukihiroMatsumoto capital letters, it is specific, unchanging, A CONSTANT ...illustrations on side B. * a reference poster with a block of code, dissected into parts like the above, with illustrations. * oggs of verbal drills and memory songs. * costumes which could be made entirely from a roll of tin foil. * yo-yo tricks, sleights-of-hand which illustrate iteration, mixins. alright, then. i hear ya. a mix of it. a musical for salt-dough hand puppets to be performed from a bathtub with curtains. well done! _why [1] http://www.cafeshops.com/blixytees.10117492 From jgb3 at email.byu.edu Thu Mar 18 07:59:06 2004 From: jgb3 at email.byu.edu (Jamis Buck) Date: Thu Mar 18 10:14:48 2004 Subject: Translations Message-ID: <4059B93A.8000409@email.byu.edu> For what it's worth: ever seen the Dialectizer? It'll translate the Guide into Jive, Redneck, or any of several other dialects. Might help get to some of those hard-to-reach demographics... http://rinkworks.com/dialect/ It's worth a grin, anyway. ;) -- Jamis Buck jgb3@email.byu.edu http://www.jamisbuck.org/jamis ruby -h | ruby -e 'a=[];readlines.join.scan(/-(.)\[e|Kk(\S*)|le.l(..)e|#!(\S*)/) {|r| a << r.compact.first };puts "\n>#{a.join(%q/ /)}<\n\n"' From why at poignantguide.net Wed Mar 31 11:01:21 2004 From: why at poignantguide.net (why the lucky stiff) Date: Wed Mar 31 13:20:50 2004 Subject: recommended? Message-ID: <406B0771.80808@poignantguide.net> cheerio. just been getting back from vacation. was very nice, thankyou. getting back, here's the question primary on my mind: 'can you foresee any reason you wouldn't recommend the Guide as the #1 starting point for a Ruby newcomer?' i can understand not recommending it as it is incomplete. but so far, does the book meet your criteria for instructing a newcomer? are the topics being covered in an intuitive manner? do you like the order they are being presented? do you feel it is the premier launchpad for a learner? _why