Dirk.Net

The Queenslanders are storming ahead with today’s 0.9 release of Ruby.NET, now an open source community project. The new features include designer support of Windows Forms (be sure to check out this walkthrough). You might want to compare another Windows Forms approach with IronRuby and Ruby in Steel. 
If you run into error such as

The element ‘Target’ in namespace ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003′ has invalid child element ‘RubyCompileTask’ in namespace ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003′. List of possible elements expected: ‘Task, OnError’ in namespace ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003′

you may have to remove and re-install the Visual Studio 2005 SDK as well as Ruby.NET Runtime and the Ruby.NET VS Integration. Also be sure to remove all prior versions of Ruby.NET.

For some background info on the challenges and the ingenious solutions of the QUT team read “Compiling Ruby on the CLR“. As it turns out, the difficulties lie not with the type mapping but rather with the object lifecycle and control flow prescribed by Ruby, which makes no clear distinction between compile time and runtime. The core of the challenge is harnessing the “dynamics” of Ruby with proxy classes to have them compile for the static CLR. The IronRuby approach is different (and probably somewhat easier) in that it targets the DLR (dynamic language runtime), a common type system for dynamic languages on top of the CLR also used by IronPython.

Ruby.NET project leader Wayne Kelly hints that they are “[they] are close to getting Ruby on Rails to run successfully”. This is quite exciting and having two competing (?, MS gave money to the Ruby.NET project, hopefully without strings attached) implementations on the CLR will make it harder for MS to pull a J++ on Ruby (see here, here and here), i.e. co-opting and “extending” (forking), thereby compromising competing technologies.

My Microsoft Annoyance du Jour: Trying to download Live Writer Beta 3 from any computer located in Thailand will bring up a Thai download screen. While I have problem with the Thai page as such I’m not too keen on having the Thai version of the program with all dialogs and help in Thai but this is the only choice:

There is no option to choose another language, and every browser I tested (Opera, IE6, Firefox 1.5) will not let me download the US-English version regardless of browser language settings. I presume this is localization going overboard at Microsoft because there are speakers of many different languages in most countries, including this one. Anyway, here is a download link for the US-English version of Live Writer Beta 3. 

Happy having found the link, MS delivers another blow (they’re good at that):

I’m running Windows Server 2003 and Windows Live Writer Beta 3 (unlike Beta 2) only supports 32-bit Vista (64-bit hacked, get your hex editor ready to install Live stuff) and XP SP2. Bummer. Microsoft continues the practice of forcing users to upgrade to a newer OS by means of getting users hooked on free MS offerings.
It’s now practically impossible to get a MSN Messenger client for Windows 2000 as older clients are denied entry to the service. I know, I know, Win2K is not supported anymore. But this is no justification for forcing users out of a service they’re used to and have built contacts on if they don’t want to upgrade their OS. Besides that, most Live offerings (especially Messenger) have gone from lightweight and functional to the MS-typical buggy bloat (read some comments), with Liver Writer being the exception. For now I’ll be using Beta 2 while looking at ScribeFire and not hold my breath for any Live offering supporting my OS.