Actually I'm using App Multilingual Toolkit from Microsoft to manage translations from two different languages. I decided to translate it in Brazilian, so I'd like a friend from Brazil to translate of the strings for me. He hasbn't got any programming knowledge, Visual Studio tools and so on.
The question is how can I export from VS and pass him all the string in a readable format? Something that will be easy for me to import later as well.
I'm not sure of AMT, but I used the gnu text translation toolkit (Windows version), which was very easy to use. You can use a webapp called Pootle that non-technical users can use to provide translated strings.
Users would update the strings via the website, which I could download an updated .po file from, this was then added to my deployment, using a little C# helper that read the strings and displayed the correct version depending on the user's language. It was remarkably easy all round, and as Gettext uses English words as the key, if you add a word that is not translated for a language you will get the English 'default' instead which is better than "error: word not defined" :)
IIRC I got into this because someone on the SVN team enabled the tool as a test, since then they've moved to Transifex - I'm not sure if its significantly better as its a commercial web tool, but it might work for you.
That said, there's also Google translation toolkit - good luck getting to it as its now hidden behind Google's "one account login" guff.
There used to be a utility software, appTranslator (http://www.apptranslator.com/), that helped a lot when trying to translate MFC programs.
It will not only help you translate the strings (STRINGTABLE) but will help you translate dialog content as well (update strings in dialogs, move resources if applicable, ... )
It has not been updated in a couple of years.
(just quickly tried it and it seems to work).
I would say CSV is the most readable way to export/import
I recently stumbled upon this 2002 conference paper (Getting Erlang to talk to the outside world by Joe Armstrong) and I was wondering whether this is a standard that was ignored or if there was any adoption?
Should I focus on Apache Thrift for inter-platform communication? (whatever solution I choose will involve at least Erlang)
You might find the following information helpful about UBF (i.e. UBF User's Guide).
http://ubf.github.com/ubf/ubf-user-guide.en.html
This might help answer some of your questions about UBF. There is also an Erlang server and client implementation of Thrift using the UBF framework (https://github.com/ubf/ubf-thrift).
Joe N.
p.s. We have been using UBF, EBF, and JSF in a production environment for approximately ~5 years. The UBF contract checker is very helpful for developing, debugging, and deploying a system.
UBF never really caught on. Here's what Armstrong had to say in 2008. As you look into Thrift you might also look into Protocol Buffers. You can find an Erlang implementation here.
Hope this helps.
I don't know if anyone's using Erlang's binary serialization format per se, outside of Erlang programs; but BERT (Binary ERlang Term) is an Erlang-compatible binary data interchange format and RPC protocol specified and open-sourced by the GitHub guys. It's based on and fully binary-compatible with the Erlang external term format.
As you can see on the BERT website, there are implementations in a number of programming languages, including C++, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Scala, Haskell, Go, Factor, Scheme, Clojure, and Common Lisp. The mailing list currently has 85+ members subscribed to it, so quite a few people are indeed using BERT, and hence indirectly the Erlang binary format.
In my own use, mostly in Ruby and Common Lisp applications, BERT has proved useful as essentially a binary form of S-expressions.
I think the Hibari guys are using it.
https://github.com/ubf/ubf/
I'm sitting here writing a function that I'm positive has been written before, somewhere on earth. It's just too common to have not been attempted, and I'm wondering why I can't just go to a website and search for a function that I can then copy and paste into my project in 2 seconds, instead of wasting my day reinventing the wheel.
Sure there are certain libraries you can use, but where do you find these libraries and when they are absent, is there a site like I'm describing?
Possibly a wiki of some type that contains free code that anybody can edit and improve?
Edit: I can code things fine, I just don't know HOW to do them. So for example, right now, I'm trying to localize a robot/car/point in space. I KNOW there is a way to do it, just based off of range and distance. Triangulation and Trilateration. How to code that is a different story. A site that could have psuedo code, step by step how to do that would be ridiculously helpful. It would also ensure the optimal solution since everybody can edit it. I'm also writing in Matlab, which I hate because it's quirky, adding to my desire for creating a website like I describe.
StackOverflow.com. No, I'm not joking.
At its best, people come here saying "hasn't some library done X already", and very often the Collective Wisdom answers "yes". But the biggest obstacle is lack of a description language: even here, a big problem for many posters is describing the problem clearly enough for others to recognize it as something they've seen before.
And if people can't understand what you're trying to do, no search engine will.
Firstly, two caveats:
Copy and pasting code you don't understand is a bad idea. Make sure you understand exactly what the code does before you use it.
Make sure you respect the license of the code you are copying. This is important!
Those caveats aside, it's often language dependent. Languages with an open development ethos (not just an open source implementation, think Python as compared to Java) tend to have official archives of open source libraries. For example:
Perl (which probably started this trend) has CPAN
Python has PyPI and Python Cookbook
PHP has PEAR
C++ has boost
Ruby has gems
R has CRAN.
Haskell has Hoogle and Hackage
Furthermore, don't forget to look in your languages standard library. Some modern languages have massive standard libraries, which have often contained the functionality I am looking for:
Java has its API documentation
C# and VB.NET have the massive MSDN
Non-openly developed languages often have non-official community archives. For example:
C# tends to have a lot of code at CodePlex and CodeProject
MATLAB has the Matlab Central File Exchange
A third category of sites are language agnostic. They are often best search through POG (plain old-fashioned Google). For example:
Stack Overflow
SourceForge
The confusingly language agnostic Java2s
Planet source code
Github
Finally, a fourth category of sites that I find increasingly useful are source-code search engines:
Google Codesearch
Koders
You may also be able to find useful source code, or at least get help writing something, through various pastebins.
Pastebin is language-agnostic
HPaste is mostly Haskell, but has a little in other languages.
Often, at the end of the day it is easiest just to google it, though.
There is a wiki that contains free code that anybody can edit and improve:
Rosetta Code.
As a means of an overview there is the "Solutions by Programming Task" page.
From the former page:
"Rosetta Code is a programming chrestomathy site. The
idea is to present solutions to the same task in as
many different languages as possible, to demonstrate
how languages are similar and different, and to aid a
person with a grounding in one approach to a problem
in learning another."
Cutting and pasting code you find on the Internet into production code would be like chewing gum found in the street. - Mike Johnson
With that in mind, try sites that host opensource projects like GitHub, CodePlex, code.google.com, etc.
I'm not sure this question is language agnostic, but I use GitHub this way ;) Other languages may have places where this is possible.
Safari Bookshelf from O'Reilly has many, many books that contain many implementations from which to choose.
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/
I was a subscriber for a few years before coming to my current job, where we have a corporate account! It's one of the best perks, and one of the best resources I have available. I haven't bought a computer book in years.
Aside from sites like this (Stack Overflow) I don't think there's many, maybe CodePlex, but I almost marked you -1 for assuming that code found on the Internet is yours to copy.
I'd suggest reading about software licencing, I hope you'd at least comment where you got it from.
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
Sometimes it feels that my company is the only company in the world using Ruby but not Ruby on Rails, to the point that Rails has almost become synonymous with Ruby.
I'm sure this isn't really true, but it'd be fun to hear some stories about non-Rails Ruby usage out there.
One of the huge benefits of Ruby is the ability to create DSLs very easily. Ruby allows you to create "business rules" in a natural language way that is usually easy enough for a business analyst to use. Many Ruby apps outside of web development exist for this purpose.
I highly recommend Googling "ruby dsl" for some excellent reading, but I would like to leave you with one post in particular. Russ Olsen wrote a two part blog post on DSLs. I saw him give a presentation on DSLs and it was very good. I highly recommend reading these posts.
I also found this excellent presentation on Ruby DSLs by Obie Fernandez. Highly recommended reading!
I use Ruby extensively in my work, and none of it is Rails (or even web) based.
My domain is usually client-side Windows applications (wxRuby GUI) and scripts, automating Excel, Internet Explorer, SQL Server queries and report generation (win32ole COM automation). I also use the sqlite, pdf-writer, and gruff libraries for various data munging and graph generation tasks.
Rails' success has been great for Ruby, but I agree that Rails has received so much attention that Ruby's value beyond the web is often overlooked.
We are mainly a C++ shop, but we've found several areas where Ruby has proven quite useful. Here are a few:
Code Generation - Built several DSLs to generate C++/Java/C# code from single input files
Build Support
scripts to generate Makefiles for unix from Visual Studio Project Files
scripts for building projects and formatting the output for Cruise Control
scripts for running our unit tests and formatting the output for Cruise Control
scripts for manipulating Visual Studio projects and solutions from the command line
Integration Tests - We can crank out tests much quicker and cleaner using Ruby than C++
QA's entire testing suite is written in Ruby
Ruby is basically my go to tool for where it makes sense. And it makes sense in a lot of places.
Google Sketchup uses Ruby as an embedded scripting language. You can use it to perform all sorts of 3d modeling and import/export tasks. The scripting works with the free version and there's even decent documentation.
Ruby with a homebrew extension written in C++ does all the heavy pixel pushing for my photography processing. I was using Python+numpy but when doing artsy stuff, Ruby is just more fun. Also the relative lack of, or lesser maturity of, good image processing libraries makes me feel less like i'm reinventing wheels. I am clueless about Rails, other than i've heard of it, have a fuzzy idea what it is, and actually have a book on it (unopened)
We use Watir (Ruby library) to test our .net web application.
Check out Shoes, a simple API for building GUIs in Ruby aimed at novice programmers.
Or you could use Ruby to make music ala Giles Bowkett's Archaeopteryx. This presentation by Giles about Archaeopteryx is one of the best presentations ever. I highly recommend it.
RubyCocoa and MacRuby. Possible to make full Cocoa-based GUI apps without Rails. And then you get to use Interface Builder, too.
I worked on a museum project last year that used a lot of Ruby. (http://http://ourspace.tepapa.com/home)
The part that I spent most of my time on was an interactive floor map. The Map on the floor has sensors so when people walk on it lights are triggered and displays in the wall show images or videos and audio tracks are played.
All the control code for this part of the exhibit is ruby. I wrote C interfaces with ruby wrappers to communicate with the floor sensors and the lighting controllers. The system queries a MYSQL database for the media files to be displayed and then tells computers in the walls to play the media via UDP.
It's the most reliable part of the entire exhibit.
Ruby was used for the other major part of the exhibit, the Wall though I didn't have much to do with that. Most of the graphics were prototyped in ruby using interfaces to OpenGL, a bit of Cocoa and a physics library before being ported to pure Obj-C.
Puppet and Chef: DevOps
I didn't see a mention of Puppet or Chef in the 30 answers that preceded my arrival. Ruby appears to dominate current work in cloud automation and is the base, extension, and templating language of these two big players. They are used primarily to distribute system and application configuration information for server arrays and for general IT workstation management.
The DevOps field is quite Ruby-aware. Today, Perl has a competitor. While a really simple script may often still be written directly for sh(1), a complex task now might be done in Ruby rather than Perl.
The only site I've done with Ruby at work is using Rails, but I'd like to try Merb.
Other than that I do a lot of little utility programs in Ruby - for instance an app that reads RSS feeds and imports new posts into a dabase.
It's fun, so I also write some dumb stuff just because it's so quick. Yesterday I wrote an app to play the Monty Hall problem 100,000 times to help a friend convince her professor that switching is the correct strategy.
I almost take insult that ruby is a rails thing. It is like back when CGI was the latest trend and everyone figured that if you knew perl you must be doing it only because you programmed CGI apps. Ruby is just a scripting language for me, although not as mature as python so I somewhat regret having to jump through some of its hoops and recent changes, I still like it and use it. Although I work in a java shop and therefore groovy is the ideal choice for a scripting language, I still use ruby at home and for throw away scripts that aren't needed to be shared at work.
I was considering getting into RoR from all the buzz and how quick/simple it is, but after looking over rails I didn't see anything at all that was amazing or even the least bit innovative or rapidly fast about its development compared to any other framework. The only benefit I saw was that I could code in ruby, which would be nice, but initial setup, server maintenance and scaling is more difficult, thus re-offsetting the pleasure of coding in ruby.
I created a presentation -- coincidentally named Off The Rails -- to discuss Rack-based web applications:
https://github.com/alexch/Off-The-Rails
The git repo includes slides in Markdown format and sample code (in the form of running applications and middleware). Here's the abstract:
Ruby on Rails is the most popular web application framework for Ruby. But it's not the only one! If you think Rails is too big, or too opinionated, or too anything, you might be happy to learn about the new generation of so-called microframeworks built on Rack. And since Rails 3 is itself a Rack app, you don't have to give up Rails to get the benefit of Sinatra routes or Grape APIs.
And here are some references:
This talk lives at https://github.com/alexch/off-the-rails
Yehuda's #10 Favorite Thing About Ruby
Rack
rack-test
rack-client
Sinatra
Grape
Vegas
Siesta
Rerun
Hope you find it useful!
I'm mostly a Web developer, and I learned Ruby to use Rails, but I like the language so much that I started developing a desktop Swing application in Ruby, using JRuby and Monkeybars. I'm competent in Java, but don't much like using it, and the Swing API is horrible, so putting Ruby on top has been a big win.
We mainly use rails, but we have plenty of other non-rails ruby things - for example a standalone authentication daemon thing for centralized authentication of users, and an 'image processing server' which runs arbitrary numbers of ruby processes to process images in parallel.
Oh, and don't forget good old Rake :-)
Ruby is also used for Desktop application. Especially the use of JRuby to develop Swing desktop application.
I've used Ruby at work for
A data extractor, generating csv files from binary output.
A .ini file generator, turning a simple syntax into a repetitive .ini format.
A simple TCP/IP server, acting as stand-in for the customer's system during testing.
We use Ruby to implement our test automation software. This includes test framework and driver code for Selenium RC, WATIR and AutoIT.
Ruby is powerful enough to create comprehensive applications that can interface with Test tools like Selenium or WATIR, while at the same time reading from data files, interacting with a remote Windows UI and performing near transparent network communication. All while running on Windows or Linux.
The uncluttered syntax makes it ideal for new and inexperienced programmers to read. While its totally OO nature makes it easy for these same programmers to apply good (recently learned) OO techniques, from the start.
The flexible nature of Ruby's syntax also makes the use and creation of DSLs much easier. This allows less-technical people to get invovled, read and possibly create there own tests.
I have used Ruby for code generation of C# and T-SQL stored procedures in a project with unstable requirements. The data model was encoded in a YAML file and .erb templates were used for the classes and stored procedures. It also allowed for a much more DRY solution than would have been possible with straight C# as repetitve code could be factored out into a single method in the code generator.
Where I work, we use Ruby to do a number of different one-off type batch jobs. One example of that is a job that interacts with Amazon's S3 service. At the time, the Ruby S3 library was probably the easiest one out there for us to get up and running in a short amount of time.
I wrote an order processing expert system (see DSL answer as well), converted 100k lines of customer specific perl into about 10k lines of ruby handling dozens of customers. No web components at all, no Rails.
I am a webdriver user. ruby is used by webdriver for automating the build process thanks to rake. see http://code.google.com/p/webdriver/ for details
Heh, great question.
I used Ruby to convert Excel spreadsheet airport facility data to sqlite3 for the android phone platform while making an app for pilots.
I use Ruby with Sinatra which is much simpler than Rails. I did use Rails but just found that it has turned into a bit of a monster, although Rails is still amazing compared to web frameworks available for Java.
The main feature of Ruby that I love however is "eval" and "method_missing", which Rails actually uses for example in ActiveRecord so that you can use the amazing "find_by-field-name-" queries.
I used Ruby for a lot of back-end code simply because I was the only person who was tasked to do it and needed a nice clean language that allowed me to be very productive and write easy to maintain code. I find Ruby allows me to do that easier than Perl and Python. Other people's mileage might vary on that but it works well for me.
Besides that, I like how Sequel and Nokogiri work. I also used ActiveRecord for a while separately from Rails.
We use some Ruby for file manipulation but have not been able to incorporate rails yet.
I've used Ruby a lot professionally for quick scripts for things like shuffling files around. I'm the same way in that I was using Ruby first before touching Rails at all.
In Boulder there was an excellent group of Ruby users who met monthly. This point was made - that Ruby does have an existence beside its use in Rails. Plain Ruby users do exist, are begging for attention, have neat things to show, and can find each other at user group meetings.
They also had better pizza than the Python group, who met also the same day of the month. Can only pick one...
While we do have several Rails apps at work, we also use Ruby for some fairly intensive non-web stuff.
We've got an SMS delivery daemon, which pulls messages from a queue and then delivers them, and credit card processing daemon which other apps can call out to, which makes sure there's a central audit trail.