RubyPad
So I’m doing a weird sort if integration between Ruby (“It’s where objects want to be”) and VoodooPad (The OS X Personal Wikiware), currently called RubyPad.
Imagine that an IDE, and eBook and a Personal Wiki (on Speed) all got together for an orgy and had a Freaky Voodoo Lovechild. You can capture your thoughts and code in one place, sort of like how we have learned to co-mingle HTML and code in one place (ERb, JSP, etc.)
Presented for your consideration…
(And yes it’s RubyConf, not RubyCon.. I know.. now.)
This next screenshot is – as they say – “where it’s at”. It’s a standard page along with the results of hitting the Magic Key. When you press Cmd-R, you run whatever Ruby code is in the page. And it’s this – and the blindingly quick SpeedWiki editing – oh, and the automatic hyperlinking to reference information – and the (pseudo)autocomplete, that makes this little fellow such an interesting Hack of Technologies.
In general though, the whole thing is fairly hard to grasp unless you’re actually using it. It’s research right now (and a lot of fun at that), but if you’re interested, ping me (gsnider at pobox dot com) and I can send you a voodoo doc example. This is quite new, and pretty theory-laden, so I’m quite interested in feedback.
BTW, It’s built on Flying Meat’s VodooPad, which is a wonderful OS X application – it’s the “Personal Wiki on Speed” and has that ‘oh so beautiful’ OS X style. If the WikiWorld tickles your fancy at all – or if you’re just anal about notes – I hightly recommend taking the next thirty seconds to get the demo and the next few hours after that being dazed and confused by the Wonder that is VoodooPad.
Back to RubyPad for a final thought… just keep in mind that:
- It’s part of a Wiki, but one without separate edit and view modes – like a word processor with on-the-fly hyperlinks.
- You press Cmd-R to execute the code in the page
All pages can have code, though some are ‘mere’ documents (like the index page in the screenshot, or the pages in every wiki in existence. :) - Navigation is weirdly simple. Think of a word (e.g. Regex) , type it, and poof becomes a hyperlink. You click and you’re at all your notes and any ruby documentation in RubyPad for regular expressions.
- I’ve even got the text of Dave Thomas’s Programming Ruby (v1) in there and am trying to organize it such that navigation is automatic (And Surreal).
- It’s all in the phenomenology and the Gestalt, Baby! (Note to self: work on my catch phrases.)
