Talk:Main Page

From RubySpec

Not to say that you guys are stupid or anything, but as far as I've seen, every language that relies on a spec instead of a canonical implementation ends up far more fragmented than a community can sustain to popularity.

I'd instead suggest building a set of tests that can ensure that an implementation matches standard Ruby fault for fault.

-- The problem with relying only on test cases is that they don't provide a human-readable reference. This wiki could eventually become the most up-to-date documentation available on the language, libraries, and implementations. A set of tests is also very important, but humans need something to help them understand and implement a language too, and natural-language documentation goes a long way.

Please use an account and sign your talk page comments in the future with three or four tildes. And thank you for not calling us stupid, whoever you are :) Headius 19:07, 7 October 2006 (CDT)

-- I would suggest that the choice of a spec or compliance tests is a false one. For a language to be well-specified, both are needed. The specification is for humans, both programmers and implementors; the compliance test is mostly for implementors (though users might also use it to verify a purported Ruby implementation).

As to what kind of spec, I am going to be adding material to the wiki, with the goal of helping to complete the specification. I eagerly solicit comments on what I'm submitting. -- vmanis 2007 Aug 25 15:15 PDT

I assume the following is spam, but just in case it isn't, I shall leave it here (It's not mine :-). -- (spam removed)

Hello, I would like to know if this wiki is dead, or still in alive. The purpose of it seems interesting, because there is no official specification for Ruby and providing one would be useful, first of all for the implementors (OK, there are only a few of them) but mostly for helping learning Ruby. Let me know if this wiki is still up and running. -- Xitog

--

Me again. I posted some proposed changes about 10 days ago, but there's been no reaction (not even `you're full of ****, we're deleting your edits'). I have to echo Xitog's question: is this effort live, and is the final outcome likely to become an official Ruby specification?

Please, somebody, say something. Vmanis 02:18, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

-- On thinking a few moments further, I guess my real questions are: (1) is Matz reading this stuff, and if the answer is YES, then (2) does he think this is worth going forward with? Thanks! Vmanis 02:36, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

-- Hello Xitog and Vmanis! Yes, this effort is most definitely alive. Matz himself has contributed some updates to a few of the pages, and there are other articles and changes trickling in. As for eventually becoming an official spec...that's largely up to the community. If it becomes a standard reference for the language, and for implementers implementing it, then that's about as official as you can expect from an open-source community effort. So please do contribute any updates and additions you see fit; they will benefit the spec, the community, and the various implementations immensely. Headius

Oh...and thank you both for any and all contributions :) I'm watching the spec updates through my RSS reader, and I appreciate efforts people put in to add or update articles. Headius 08:44, 6 September 2007 (CDT)

-- I've added some stuff to the Flow Control page. I'd like a pronouncement on what syntax notation we are using. I'm comfortable with something like

foo: bar baz [option] {thingie}

which says that a foo is a bar followed by a literal baz followed by either an option or nothing, followed by any number of thingies...how do others feel about that?

Also, there are lots of TODOs in that section...please feel free to make a decision, change the text, and delete the TODO where you wish. Vmanis

-- Vmanis: I think something more explicit would help; it's not clear to me looking at that what baz is supposed to be. Headius 04:21, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

-- Fair enough...normally I would use a different font, but that's probably not practical with wiki format. How about quotes? That makes string literals a bit uglier, but there's only one place where that matters.

 foo: bar "baz" [option] {thingie}

The wiki markup looks a bit grim, but again that's liveable. Vmanis 19:57, 17 September 2007 (CDT)