This is a broad set of Ruby documentation packaged into one bundle for convenient access. All of the documents are available for separate download; links are given in the "About the Authors" section. The information is aimed particularly at less experienced Rubyists, because they will often be referred to some of these documents in the newsgroup, but it is a useful set of offline material for anyone to have.
Please send feedback to Gavin Sinclair.
Gavin Sinclair is a Ruby user since June 2002. He travelled a long path to Ruby maturity, and wanted to share some wisdom with others in the same position. He packages this bundle and wrote the introduction.
David Thomas and Andrew Hunt are responsible for the canonical English Ruby document: "Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" (Addison-Wesley), also known as The Pickaxe after the picture on the cover. It is loved for its thorough engagement of the reader with the language, its breadth and its excellent reference to all the standard libraries.
Dave and Andy, as they are better known, continue to make stellar contributions to the Ruby community. Between them they have created 'ri' (an indispensible online reference), the Windows Ruby distribution, RDoc, and kickstarted the Ruby FAQ.
Mark Slagell, in addition to translating the Ruby Users Guide, wrote Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days (SAMS), which has received much praise in the Ruby community for helping people with the crucial first steps.
Goto "gotoken" Kentaro is a long-time Ruby user who, in addition to translating the Ruby Users Guide, has created several useful packages for Ruby, the most commonly-used probably being "Benchmark".
Yukihiro "matz" Matsumoto, the creator of Ruby, authored the Ruby Users Guide (in Japanese) and the Ruby Reference Manual. He is also the author of Ruby in a Nutshell, (O'Reilly), a very handy desktop guide.
Hal Fulton, although represented here as maintainer of the comp.lang.ruby FAQ, is best known for his excellent book The Ruby Way (SAMS).
Daniel Carrera and Bill Tjokroaminata are regular Ruby users who sensed a need and applied their enthusiasm to the task of creating a well-received tutorial, and the newcomer's list respectively. The tutorial is under active construction (as of 2002-12-30) and the list is liable to be updated, so keep these links handy.
All of these authors are regular participants in the Ruby mailing list, a place where much knowledge is shared and ideas advanced.