Hi Folks, At RubyConf 2007, some discussion came up yet again about PDF::Writer and how it''s unfortunate that such an important library has been inactive for so long. I am pleased to announce that we are going to pick up where Austin left off and get things rolling again. == The Plan = Michael Milner and myself will be acting as maintainers for the time being, but what this really means is that the doors are now re-opened for community contributions. We''re going to start by moving some of our bug fixing patches that are currently being distributed with Ruport back into PDF::Writer, and then work on applying some of the patches that have accumulated in the tracker over the last several months. We don''t really know what our grand plan for the future is, but in the short term, you can expect a 1.1.4 maintenance release by the year''s end, and some open ears for suggestions, patches, and problem reports. It''s a little early for an ''official'' announcement, but we wanted the members of this list to know that the effort to revitalize PDF::Writer is underway, and invite you to keep an eye on progress as well as participate in the coming months. == Current Status = As of this morning, I''ve answered all open bug requests in the tracker. http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=81&atid=395 If you own one of those, please take a look over it and see if I''ve requested more information or check to see if the code has been fixed and test it out. Also, if you''re using Ruport, you can try out the PDF::Writer 1.1.4 codebase with it by building Ruport from trunk. This is a good way to help us uncover bugs and issues, so please do this if you can. Finally, please see the mailing list archives for various requests I''ve made of users to help us hunt bugs. Since this codebase is essentially foreign to us except for the parts we''ve needed to work with before, we''ll need your help. == Getting Involved = We''ll be developing on our own host and migrating the RubyForge bugs over to Trac, you can take a look at it here: http://stonecode.svnrepository.com/ruby_pdf If you want to start running off of the 1.1.x maintenance branch and reporting problems to us, feel free to pull SVN: http://stonecode.svnrepository.com/svn/ruby_pdf/pdf-writer/branches/branch-1.1.x/ There are already several bug fixes in there, including a memory usage improvement to PDF::SimpleTable, so it''s worth testing out. It''s advisable to stay away from PDF::Writer''s trunk until we can investigate what the state of that code is, we''ll announce when it''s open again for development. == More News Soon = Anyway, that''s about all for now... stay tuned for more announcements, and feel free to use the ruby-pdf mailing list to let us know what parts of PDF::Writer need the most love. You can find it here: http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ruby-pdf-discuss Thanks, and happy PDF hacking! -greg --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---