path: root/content/posts/2006-01-26-notes-from-the-first-novarug-meetup.html

---
date: "2006-01-26T03:55:35Z"
title: Notes from the First NovaRug Meetup
---

<p>Tonight I went to the first Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group
(<acronym title="Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group">NOVARUG</acronym>).  Here are my semi-distilled notes and commentary on the
evening:</p>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich Kilmer</a> spent most of the time giving a presentation on
<a href="http://alph.rubyforge.org/" title="No, not the space muppet. Alph is a Ruby/ActionScript bridge.">Alph</a>, and talking about his experience doing a functional 
prototype interface for mid-air plane refueling.  He also talked about 
bridging <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript" title="Scripting language for Flash and ShockWave.">ActionScript</a>.  The <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a>-related content
was similar to the presentation he gave at <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1380" title="My first (of several) posts about RubyConf 2004 in D.C..">RubyConf 2004</a>, so I
didn't bother taking too many notes on the actual application.</li>
<li>~44 people.  There were roughly 60 people at <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1122" title="My post about (and notes from) RubyConf 2002 in Seattle, WA.">RubyConf 2002</a>, and
maybe 100 at <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1380" title="My first (of several) posts about RubyConf 2004 in D.C..">RubyConf 2004</a>.  40+ people in for a straight 
<acronym title="Northern Virginia,">NOVA</acronym>/<acronym title="District of Columbia">DC</acronym> meetup kind of puts the recent exponential growth of
<a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a> in perspective.  <a href="http://rubycentral.com/" title="The man with the plan behind RubyConf, who apparently has no web site (or at least not one that I can find).">David Black (dblack)</a> and I talked about
that a few months ago on <acronym title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</acronym>, but I didn't appreciate the magnitude
of the increase until this evening.</li>
<li>While fiddling around on my laptop without Internet, I just discovered
that the never-released <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1384" title="My GTK+-based GUI for RubyGems.">Gemini</a> still works :D. <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1384" title="My GTK+-based GUI for RubyGems.">Gemini</a> is a 
<a href="http://gtk.org/" title="Graphical widget library.  Foundation for GNOME, GIMP, XMMS, and more."><acronym title="Gimp ToolKit">GTK</acronym></a> package management <acronym title="Graphical User Interface">GUI</acronym> for <a href="http://docs.rubygems.org/" title="Ruby packaging application.">RubyGems</a>, written in
(suprise!) <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a>.  Is anyone interested in this thing?  I could
probably touch it up and have it release-ready in about a week if
there's still a desire.</li>
<li>Rich mentioned <a href="http://mtasc.org/" title="A fast, open source, Ocaml-based ActionScript 2 compiler."><acronym title="Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler">MTASC</acronym></a>, which is a fast, open source, 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript" title="Scripting language for Flash and ShockWave.">ActionScript</a> to <acronym title="Macromedia ShockWave/Flash file (not really an acronym)">SWF</acronym> compiler written in <a href="http://caml.inria.fr/" title="General-purpose functional, imperative, and object-oriented programming language.">OCaml</a>.  Apparently
it's noticably better than <a href="http://macromedia.com/">Macromedia</a>'s (now <a href="http://adobe.com/">Adobe</a>) tools</li>
<li>Talked about <a href="http://actionstep.org/" title="Rich Kilmer's Flash GUI library based on OpenStep/Cocoa.">ActionStep</a>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash</a>-based <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep" title="An open, object-oriented API, originally used in NeXTSTEP.">OpenStep</a>/<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_%28API%29" title="Apple's object-oriented MacOS X API.">Cocoa</a> 
<acronym title="Application Programming Interface">API</acronym></li>
<li><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> apparently didn't know what <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebasing" title="Reference to smoking crack or heroin">freebasing</a> was when he named
<a href="http://freeride.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?FreeBASE" title="The core for the FreeRIDE Ruby IDE.">FreeBase</a> (I wondered about that at <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1122" title="My post about (and notes from) RubyConf 2002 in Seattle, WA.">RubyConf 2002</a>).</li>
<li><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> noted that he's using <code>camelCase</code> instead of underscores
for method names in <a href="http://alph.rubyforge.org/" title="No, not the space muppet. Alph is a Ruby/ActionScript bridge.">Alph</a> because the methods are actually 
<acronym title="Remote Method Invocation">RMI</acronym> calls from <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a> to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript" title="Scripting language for Flash and ShockWave.">ActionScript</a>.  He noted that
underscores are generally the <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a> way, and that people outside
the <acronym title="United States">US</acronym> (especially Japanese people) have a lot of trouble reading
<code>camelCase</code> code because they don't recognize the case and, by
extension, can't distinguish the words. If you think about it, it
makes sense.  Can you tell two similar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji" title="Japanese writing system derived from Chinese characters.">Kanji</a> glyphs apart?</li>
<li><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a>'s presentation uses code like <code>60.days</code> and <code>24.hours</code>.
He mentioned that that's an extension to <code>Integer</code>, but I hope he
misspoke, because that makes a whole lot more sense as an extension to
<code>Numeric</code>, because that way it gets picked up by <code>Bignum</code>, <code>Fixnum</code>,
and <code>Float</code> for free.</li>
<li><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> showed off <a href="http://infoether.net/" title="Cross-platform Flash-based personal information manager.">Indi</a>, a cross-platform <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash</a>-based <acronym title="Personal Information Manager">PIM</acronym> 
for <acronym title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</acronym> drives.  It requires <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash</a> 8, so by cross-platform he
really means <a href="http://apple.com/macosx/" title="MacOS 10. The operating system by that bitten fruit company."><acronym title="MacOS 10">OSX</acronym></a> and <a href="http://microsoft.com/windows/" title="The Microsoft Windows operating system.">Windows</a>, at least until
<a href="http://macromedia.com/">Macromedia</a>/<a href="http://adobe.com/">Adobe</a> release <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash</a> 8 for <a href="http://linux.com/" title="Free SysV/BSD hybrid Unix.">Linux</a>.</li>
<li>Apparently the current <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash</a> runtime doesn't do <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation" title="Technique for improving the performance of bytecode-compiled programming systems."><acronym title="Just In Time compilation">JIT</acronym></a> 
internally (I asked about this, apparently it parses, then walks 
the <acronym title="Abstract Syntax Tree">AST</acronym>, similar to <a href="http://ruby-lang.org/" title="A high-level, cross-platform, pure object-oriented programming language.">Ruby</a> 1.8.  If they're doing that, then
they really shouldn't be calling <acronym title="Macromedia ShockWave/Flash file (not really an acronym)">SWF</acronym> files <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bytecode" title="Intermediate assembly-like code that is intended to increase speed and portability.">bytecode</a>).  According
to <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a>, the upcoming runtime <em>will</em> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation" title="Technique for improving the performance of bytecode-compiled programming systems."><acronym title="Just In Time compilation">JIT</acronym></a>, which means an
approximate 10x speed boost at the cost of an upgrade and increased
disk footprint of roughly 200k.  Not too shabby.</li>
<li>Thought: <a href="http://infoether.net/" title="Cross-platform Flash-based personal information manager.">Indi</a> for <a href="http://linux.com/" title="Free SysV/BSD hybrid Unix.">Linux</a> could use the evil shell script stuff 
to build an all-in-one equivalent to a <a href="http://apple.com/macosx/" title="MacOS 10. The operating system by that bitten fruit company."><acronym title="MacOS 10">OSX</acronym></a> <code>.app</code> (they'd need
to statically compile stuff to make it truly portable).</li>
<li>Some group conversation about <a href="http://www.openlaszlo.org/" title="An XML-based declarative language for creating user interfaces.">OpenLaszlo</a>), an <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</acronym>-based platform
(<acronym title="Interface Definition Language">IDL</acronym>, <acronym title="Integrated Development Environment">IDE</acronym>, etc), and how it compares to <a href="http://alph.rubyforge.org/" title="No, not the space muppet. Alph is a Ruby/ActionScript bridge.">Alph</a>.  The 
difference between <a href="http://alph.rubyforge.org/" title="No, not the space muppet. Alph is a Ruby/ActionScript bridge.">Alph</a> and <a href="http://www.openlaszlo.org/" title="An XML-based declarative language for creating user interfaces.">OpenLaszlo</a> is that the former 
<em>parses</em> <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</acronym> at runtime (similar to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL" title="Declarative XML-based language for describing user interfaces.">Mozilla's <acronym title="eXtensible User Interface Language">XUL</acronym></a> and
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAML" title="Declarative XML-based language for describing user interfaces.">Microsoft's <acronym title="eXtensible Avalon Markup Language">XAML</acronym> (Avalon)</a>), while the latter compiles
the <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</acronym> <acronym title="Interface Definition Language">IDL</acronym> to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macromedia_Flash" title="A popular media plugin for web browsers.">Flash <acronym title="Macromedia ShockWave/Flash file (not really an acronym)">SWF</acronym></a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActionScript" title="Scripting language for Flash and ShockWave.">ActionScript</a> 1 was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype-based_programming" title="A form of object-oriented programming without classes used by languages such as JavaScript and ActionScript 1.">prototype-based</a> language (e.g. like 
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript" title="Prototype-based, object-oriented scripting language used in web browsers.">JavaScript</a>). apparently now it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_%28programming%29" title="Description of an object in an  object-oriented programming language.">class-based</a>.</li>
<li>Question about why not <a href="http://alph.rubyforge.org/" title="No, not the space muppet. Alph is a Ruby/ActionScript bridge.">Alph</a> isn't using <acronym title="Scalable Vector Graphics">SVG</acronym> for the runtime, 
especially since it has the advantage of being open.  <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a>
explained that <acronym title="Scalable Vector Graphics">SVG</acronym> requires a plugin (which isn't quite true,
<a href="http://mozilla.org/firefox/" title="The latest and greatest version of Mozilla Firefox.">Firefox 1.5</a> doesn't require a plugin to display <acronym title="Scalable Vector Graphics">SVG</acronym>, but
it's implementation <a href="http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/SVG_in_Firefox_1.5" title="Firefox's SVG support is a subset of SVG 1.1.">needs some work</a>). Regarding
licensing, <a href="http://macromedia.com/">Macromedia</a>/<a href="http://adobe.com/">Adobe</a> aren't likely to make any major
licensing changes, since that would screw their established user base.</li>
<li>Last year <a href="http://adobe.com/">Adobe</a> open-sourced <a href="http://opensource.adobe.com/group__asl__overview.html" title="Adobe's open source interface libraries.">Adam and Eve</a>, the C++-based core
interface framework for <a href="http://adobe.com/products/photoshop/" title="The de-facto professional image editing application.">Photoshop</a> and several other <a href="http://adobe.com/">Adobe</a> 
applications</li>
</ul>

<p>And that's all I've got for <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich Kilmer</a>'s presentation.  Afterwards
he gave the group an opportunity to talk about their projects.  I didn't
catch anyones' names, and <a href="http://google.com/" title="Some search engine. Never heard of it">Google</a> failed me, so I couldn't find
references to these projects online.</p>

<ul>
<li>Guy who works at <a href="http://nist.gov/" title="U.S. government body that handles technology standards."><acronym title="National Institute of Standards and Technology">NIST</acronym></a>, demoing app to model <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board" title="An insulated board with the circuit conductors etched in."><acronym title="Printed Circuit Board">PCB</acronym></a> standards,
in <acronym title="Three-Dimentional">3D</acronym>.  You can zoom in and out and rotate the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board" title="An insulated board with the circuit conductors etched in."><acronym title="Printed Circuit Board">PCB</acronym></a> around.
Got oohs and aahs from the crowd :).</li>
<li>"Pippen" apparently marshals data to <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</acronym>, and there was another
app called "Genie", but I didn't catch what it did.</li>
<li>He made several references to  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiducial" title="A fixed reference point to which objects can be related.">fiducials</a>, which I
thought sounded neat, so I looked it up on <a href="http://wikipedia.org/" title="A free and open encyclopedia.">Wikipedia</a>.</li>
<li>Everything his group at <a href="http://nist.gov/" title="U.S. government body that handles technology standards."><acronym title="National Institute of Standards and Technology">NIST</acronym></a> does is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain" title="The body of knowledge which no legal entity can establish or maintain proprietary interest.">public domain</a>, so 
people are more than welcome to try this stuff out.</li>
<li>Someone asked about the state of <a href="http://www2.giganet.net/~yoshi/" title="OpenGL bindings for RUby.">Ruby OpenGL</a>, since it's listed 
as a prerequisite for his demo application.  Apparently it's working
just fine for everything he's tried, except for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation" title="Collection of plane figures that fill a plane with no overlaps and no gaps.">tesselation</a>.</li>
</ul>

<p>Someone else (again, no name, although he made a passing reference to
the <acronym title="District of Columbia">DC</acronym> <acronym title="eXtreme Programming">XP</acronym> users group) talked briefly about a <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/" title="An MVC-based web framework,  written in Ruby.">Rails</a>-based
social networking tool:</p>

<ul>
<li>Allows animal rescue people to coordinate on a national level.</li>
<li>Someone suggested that he use <a href="http://maps.google.com/" title="You already know what this is.  If you don't, where have you been?">Google Maps</a>, and he said he
is thinking about it, but the more important aspect of the application
is route-planning and commentary (he doesn't want to stop at the wrong
<a href="http://mcdonalds.com/" title="Fast food.  Don't eat here.  Seriously.">McDonalds</a> and meet up with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy" title="Not someone you want to meet at a truck stop.">Ted Bundy</a>).</li>
</ul>

<p>Finally, one person to the right of me (hiding in the back, along with
all the other <em>real</em> introverts.  Either that or he was late like me
:D) mentioned an abstract <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/" title="An MVC-based web framework,  written in Ruby.">Rails</a> authentication plugin he was working
on.  No name, and no project name (he didn't provide either), so that's
the most information I can give you.</p>

<p>After that, there was some miscellaneous conversation about future
<a href="http://novarug.org/" title="Blog for the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group."><acronym title="Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group">NOVARUG</acronym></a>, specifically times and frequency.  It sounds like they're
going to be monthly, on Thursday evenings (because otherwise it
conflicts with my poker night!), and start at 7:00 (or 6:30 if you want
the free pizza).  There was one comment about starting earlier, but the
general consensus seems to be that 7:00 is just fine; any earlier and
traffic becomes a serious problem.  Personally, I'm hoping we can find a
venue that's closer to the Fairfax area, mainly because I'm selfish
and lazy, but also because that would make <a href="http://novarug.org/" title="Blog for the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group."><acronym title="Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group">NOVARUG</acronym></a> more <acronym title="District of Columbia">DC</acronym> and
Maryland accessible.  Also, the <a href="http://www.wmata.com/" title="Subway system for the greater Washinton D.C area.">Metro</a> doesn't run out to Reston,
which means people <em>have</em> to drive or carpool.  </p>

<p>(Of course, when I say "drive", I mean "sitting in stopped traffic on
495 for 30 minutes, staring at the silhouette mudflaps on the semi in
front of you and hoping the drivers on both sides don't notice you
picking the gunk out of your eyes or hear you jamming out to
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_%28entertainer%29" title="Madonna, the queen of pop.">Madonna</a>").</p>

<p>There was some talk about setting up a <a href="http://novarug.org/" title="Blog for the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group."><acronym title="Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group">NOVARUG</acronym></a> mailing list.
Apparently there are already a couple <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo collaberative tool that provides mailing lists and more.">Yahoo groups</a>, but both 
are essentially dead, and the owner of one is <acronym title="Missing In Action">MIA</acronym>.  <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> and
<a href="http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/" title="Brains and the brawn behind RubyForge.">Tom</a> are going to set something up on the <code>novarug.org</code> domain, and
provide the details on <a href="http://novarug.org/" title="Blog for the Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group.">the <acronym title="Northern Virginia Ruby Users Group">NOVARUG</acronym> blog</a>.</p>

<p><a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> mentioned something about <a href="http://paulgraham.com/" title="Popular Lisp programmer and geek writer.">Paul Graham</a> speaking at the
upcoming <a href="http://railsconf.com/" title="The upcoming conference for Ruby on Rails.">RailsConf</a> in Chicago.  Personally, I have no real interest
in <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/" title="An MVC-based web framework,  written in Ruby.">Rails</a> &mdash; I think it's a great, I just don't use it personally
&mdash; so I can't justify the cost of the conference.  I like 
<a href="http://paulgraham.com/" title="Popular Lisp programmer and geek writer.">Paul Graham's</a> writing (although I'm only aware of 
<a href="http://paulgraham.com/college.html" title="Paul Graham's one reference to Ruby.">one Ruby reference</a>), so I'd love to hear him speak.  Hopefully
that'll go better than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Cox" title="Author of Objective C.">Brad Cox</a> at <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1380" title="My first (of several) posts about RubyConf 2004 in D.C..">RubyConf 2004</a> (which was
actually really interesting, until he tried to talk about his new
proprietary <acronym title="Digital Rights Management">DRM</acronym> system...to an all open source crowd).</p>

<p>Afterwards, a couple of 3-5 person groups coalesced and talked for
about 30 minutes.  I eavesdropped in on the group around <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich Kilmer</a>
and even offered a bit of commentary. <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich Kilmer</a> said <a href="http://fox-toolkit.org/" title="An open source, cross-platform, C++-based graphical widget toolkit.">Fox</a> is ugly on
some platforms, and I said "no, <a href="http://fox-toolkit.org/" title="An open source, cross-platform, C++-based graphical widget toolkit.">Fox</a> is ugly on every platform" (it
is.  I've seen stuff I've written on themed XP systems, and it basically
looks like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tk_%28computing%29" title="An ugly open source, cross-platform widget toolkit.">Tk</a>-based app does on every platform: teeth-gnashingly
ugly).   <a href="http://docs.rubygems.org/" title="Ruby packaging application.">RubyGems</a> and <a href="http://rubyforge.org/" title="Home for Ruby open source projects.">RubyForge</a> both came up a couple of times
in conversation, so I'll mention them here: <a href="http://docs.rubygems.org/" title="Ruby packaging application.">RubyGems</a> and
<a href="http://rubyforge.org/" title="Home for Ruby open source projects.">RubyForge</a>.  And don't forget 
<a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1440" title="Never trust crypto from a guy in clown suit.">this amusing <acronym title="Internet Relay Chat">IRC</acronym> quote</a> about <a href="http://docs.rubygems.org/" title="Ruby packaging application.">RubyGems</a>.</p>

<p>On the way out I got a chance to talk to <a href="http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/" title="Brains and the brawn behind RubyForge.">Tom Copeland</a>, who I haven't
seen since he made me feel like a celebrity by recognizing me as "the
Pablotron guy!" at <a href="http://bajafresh.com/">Baja Fresh</a>.  He liked the excessively
verbose description of <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1475" title="My recent patch to add XHTML output support to Ruby CGI.">my <acronym title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</acronym> patch</a> on <code>ruby-core</code>,
and also noticed how it's difficult to get patches through on
<code>ruby-core</code>. I realize that's mainly a language/cultural barrier and
not any sort of malice,, but it's still frustrating to be on the short
side of the stick.  <a href="http://richkilmer.blogs.com/" title="Well-known Ruby hacker.">Rich</a> suggested I send <a href="http://rdoc.sourceforge.net/" title="Ruby documentation generation program.">RDoc</a> patches directly
to <a href="http://blogs.pragprog.com/cgi-bin/pragdave.cgi" title="Author of Programming Ruby, one of the Pragmatic Programmers.">Dave Thomas</a> (those particular patches have already been silently
accepted into 1.9, but not <a href="http://pablotron.org/?cid=1475" title="My recent patch to add XHTML output support to Ruby CGI.">the <acronym title="eXtensible HyperText Markup Language">XHTML</acronym> ones</a>).</p>

<p>That's it for my notes.  You know the drill: let me know if you see any
gratuitous errors. I'll definitely be at the next schindig; maybe I'll
even have something to present!</p>

<p><b>Update:</b> The colorful language about <a href="http://fox-toolkit.org/" title="An open source, cross-platform, C++-based graphical widget toolkit.">Fox</a> isn't meant to downplay the usefulness of the library; I think the <acronym title="Application Programming Interface">API</acronym> is really straightforward, and that it looks and feels nicer than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tk_%28computing%29" title="An ugly open source, cross-platform widget toolkit.">Tk</a> and a slew of other non-native widget libraries.  That said, non-native widget toolkits don't mimic the look and feel of the native system, and that almost always looks terrible to me.  That goes for <a href='http://mozilla.org/'>Mozilla</a> under, well, pretty much everything, <a href='http://gimp.org/'>Gimp</a> and <a href='http://gaim.sf.net/'>Gaim</a> in Windows and, of course, <a href="http://fox-toolkit.org/" title="An open source, cross-platform, C++-based graphical widget toolkit.">Fox</a>.  <a href='http://mozilla.org/firefox/'>Firefox</a> seems to look okay to me for some reason, except under MacOS.  Go figure.  Anyway, my comment above was intended less as an to insult the <a href="http://fox-toolkit.org/" title="An open source, cross-platform, C++-based graphical widget toolkit.">Fox</a> developers, and more as a light-hearted jab from someone at 10,000 feet who hasn't taken the time and effort required to design, create, and maintain a cross-platform widget toolkit.  
</p>

<p><b>Even Later Update (2006-02-27):</b> The "anonymous guy talking
about an authorization plugin" was <a href='http://billkatz.com/'>Bill
Katz</a>, and his <a href='http://rubyonrails.com/'>Rails</a>
authorization plugin is available <a
href='http://www.billkatz.com/authorization'>here</a>.  
</p>