ANNOUNCE: RIGS 0.2.0 - Ruby Interface to GNUstep

[Adam Fedor]

Noteworthy changes in Version 0.2.0
===================================

   Major revision with plenty of new features. RIGS is now usable
for real development application and scripting.

   * C structure handling from and to GNUstep. Handled as Ruby Arrays.
   * All (hopefully) constants and enums of NSxxx classes now
     available in Ruby
   * NSRange, NSRect, NSSize and NSPoint methods added as
     pseudo classes to the Ruby Array class
   * More testing code written, especially for the GUI stuff
   * require 'Foundation' and require 'AppKit' now loads all
     classes at once
   * NSString, NSArray and NSNumber automatically morphed to Ruby
     string, arrays and numbers if asked
   * Process Initialization revamped. Should now work on Win32 as well.
   * Cleaner and more robust code

RIGS is available at ftp://ftp.gnustep.org/pub/gnustep/libs/



What is RIGS ?
==============

RIGS stands for Ruby Interface for GNUstep. It is a package allowing
integration between Ruby and Objective-C/GNUstep. The main purpose of
RIGS is to allow the use the GNUstep development environment from
Ruby.

One of the most interesting feature of RIGS is that it is 100%
dynamic. It means that RIGS maps Ruby object/methods to GNUstep and
vice/versa entirely on the fly when running the Ruby script. As a
consequence there is no need to generate any kind of wrapping code to
use either existing GNUstep classes or even new ones that you have
developped by yourself. Simply compile your new classes in a shared
library and then do a simple:

require('MyNewClass')       # load your extra ObjC shared library
Rigs.import("MyNewClass")   # dynamically import the class in Ruby

and you are in business! Cool, hey.

RIGS allows you to write optimized classes and components in
Objective-C, and make them available to Ruby developers. Ruby is a
great OO programming language and it is real fun to write GNUstep
applications directly from Ruby.

By the way GNUstep users who don't known Ruby can learn more at
http://www.ruby-lang.org. And Ruby users that don't know about
GNUstep can go to http://www.gnustep.org. In both cases, it's
definitely worth a visit.

RIGS is free software and part of the GNU/GNUstep project, freely
available from the Free Software Foundation under the GNU LGPL
license. (Some sample Ruby scripts are under GPL)

Disclaimer
==========

CAUTION!! This is alpha software. It is still work in progress
both because the project is just starting and because I'm new to
GNUstep and I'm learning as I go. However you can already play with
it, report problems and contribute new code. (See the Examples and
Testing directories for code samples). For known limitations see the
TODO file.

RIGS is very similar in spirit to JIGS, the remarkable Java to GNUstep
interface written by Nicola Pero. However, unlike JIGS, RIGS doesn't
focus on accessing Ruby classes from Objective C.

Authors
=======

RIGS was brought to you by Laurent Julliard
<address@hidden>
and was built in my spare time when my 3 children are in bed :-))

Maintainers
===========

Laurent Julliard <address@hidden> is on duty!
Helpers welcome


Software Needed to Use RIGS
===========================

To use the RIGS, you need:

  * A version of the Objective-C runtime library compiled as a shared
  library (and working with GNUstep).  Please refer to the INSTALL
  file for more information on how to compile and install it.

  * GNUstep make package and base library.

  * A properly installed ruby environment version 1.6.4 or later

Special Thanks
==============

To Avi Bryant (address@hidden> who wrote the very first version of this
version. I took it as a game and then I got trapped! (Thanks Avi...)

To Nicola Pero <address@hidden> for writing JIGS, the brilliant
Java Interface to GNUstep. JIGS has been (and still is) a constant
source of inspiration for RIGS.

To Tom White <address@hidden> for testing RIGS on GNUstep for
Windows and on MAC OS X.


Obtaining RIGS
==============

RIGS is available at ftp://ftp.gnustep.org/pub/gnustep/libs/

New releases are posted on the GNUstep mailing lists (see
https://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group_id=99) as well as ruby mailing
lists.

You may always get the latest version of RIGS from the GNUstep CVS -
the module is called 'ruby'. Instructions to checkout a working copy
are available at https://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group_id=99

Bug Reports
===========

The best way to submit bug reports and fixes is to email them to
<address@hidden>.