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January 22, 2026 libgd-gis, satellite imagery, and a new way to think about maps Most mapping libraries start from the same place: roads, labels, vectors, tiles. But what happens if the map itself is not the goal? What if the map is just a lens to observe the planet? This article is about how libgd-gis, … Continue reading A New View of Earth, Powered by Ruby
January 21, 2026 Distributing images securely is a recurring challenge in modern web applications. Whether for previews, confidential documents, or paid content, developers often need to ensure that images are not reused, hotlinked, or accessed indefinitely. Imprint is a Ruby gem that addresses this problem by providing signed, time-limited image rendering with dynamic watermarks, allowing … Continue reading Imprint: Signed, Expiring Image Rendering with Dynamic Watermarks in Ruby
Senior Ruby Engineer · Open-Source Author (ruby-libgd, libgd-gis) · FinTech & GIS January 20, 2026 In modern development teams, Proofs of Concept (PoC) are everywhere. They usually start as Jupyter notebooks: quick experiments, charts, metrics, comparisons, and visual insights. They work well for exploration — but too often, they stop there. The knowledge stays locked … Continue reading Running Notebooks the Ruby Way: From PoC to Production with RubyPyMill
For years, maps in Rails applications have lived almost entirely on the frontend:JavaScript libraries, external APIs, keys, variable costs, and a fair amount of friction. map_view starts from a simple question: What if maps in Rails were as simple as rendering a view? <%= map_for @locations %> That’s it. What is map_view? map_view is a … Continue reading map_view — Server-side maps for Ruby on Rails
Stabilizing the libgd-gis Rendering API January 19, 2026 This article documents the current state of libgd-gis following a significant internal update: the stabilization and freeze of its core rendering API. The update consolidates the project’s primary responsibilities—static GIS rendering, layered composition, and post-render image manipulation—into a stable and documented surface. Alongside this milestone, comprehensive documentation … Continue reading Now Ruby GIS Rendering: Stabilizing the libgd-gis Rendering API
January 16, 2026 Testing GIS animations in Ruby (exploratory work) Today, early in the morning, after releasing GIF and animation support in ruby-libgd, together with updated documentation, versioning, and examples, I decided to do something very concrete: spend the entire day stress-testing the alpha version of libgd-gis. And what better way to test animations than … Continue reading libgd-gis v0.2.7.pre.alpha.1
Ruby Now Has an Animated Map Engine January 15, 2026 Building real-time, animated maps in pure Ruby — no JavaScript required. A new class of maps for Ruby Over the past weeks, we’ve been extending ruby-libgd and libgd-gis far beyond static image rendering. What started as a raster + GIS toolkit is now evolving into … Continue reading Ruby Now Has an Animated Map Engine (Alpha Preview)
Text & Layout Foundations for Ruby Graphics January 14, 2026 The biggest limitation of most Ruby image libraries is not pixels — it’s text. Fonts, labels, positioning, alignment, rotation, and layout are what separate a toy renderer from a real graphics engine. Until now, ruby-libgd only exposed a very minimal wrapper around FreeType. It worked, … Continue reading ruby-libgd v0.2.2 — Text & Layout Foundations for Ruby Graphics
January 13, 2026 Rivers of Europe and Entre Ríos rendered directly in Ruby Today marks a major milestone for libgd-gis: we crossed from “experimental map renderer” into a real GIS-grade drawing engine. Using nothing but Ruby + libgd, we are now able to render continent-scale river networks, provincial hydrology, and complex GeoJSON layers with proper … Continue reading libgd-gis moves into serious cartography territory
January 12, 2026 Real-world cartography in pure Ruby RubyStackNews — January 2026 From geometry to cities Until recently, libgd-gis could render raw GeoJSON. Now it renders cities. Over the last development cycle, libgd-gis evolved from a low-level geometry renderer into a style-aware, layered GIS engine capable of producing publication-quality maps — directly from Ruby. With … Continue reading libgd-gis continues to grow — now with styles and more
Linking Ruby knowledge from the most remote places in the world. 