World: r3wp

So, understanding you correctly , there was a time when open/direct 
worked?  I need this to get access to large files without the system 
trying to load it completely into memory/buffering it. Without this 
option there is no way for me to use REBOL for my problem. I don't 
understand where the compatibility problem should be. Open/direct 
is defined to get non buffered access to ports. Was this different 
in the past?  As you say there are scritps where this feature is 
used, so there must be a version where this worked or was it used 
with the wrong behaviour ?. If so, i understand why there is a discussion 
to change the behaviour. But then the definition of open/direct should 
be changed and a new refinement be implemented which gives you the 
possibility to take advantage of non buffered port access. 


I know the community needs new features, not only for marketing purposes, 
but often enough i really don't understand how a priority is set. 
I know, it is not my business to decide such things. I am only a 
person interested in REBOLS future.

Thorsten, I just quickly tested with

 port: open/direct/skip %user.r 3 probe copy/part port 20 close port

and found View beta versions 1.2.54.3.1 thru to 1.2.57.3.1e  do the 
skip correctly. Those versions are the ones with the async core, 
which was found not to be quite stable enough, and it was removed 
for the next beta version, View 1.2.100.3.1

I was just amazed the open/direct didn' t return anything in View 
1.3.1 not even an error. Thanks to this hint. I Think i try one of 
these to keep up development, hoping there will be a fix or new solution 
in one of next releases. Perhaps it will be in the near future ;-)

I hope so too. It's a good bet it will work the same way in future 
versions, when it will be added again.

I would try to get 1.2.57.3.1e, it being the last in that set of 
versions.

the alpha also has /seek.

also, it's not that /direct does not work; it does, always has, in 
that it does not buffer. the problem is that it does not allow seeking, 
i.e. it only allows sequential access. so you can open a 2GB file, 
as long as you read it sequentially.

Where does the 2GB limitationcomes from??

32bit-integers.

Btw, would it help to have a native dll for file-access until rebol 
is smarter? should not be that hard.

That should certainly work Volker. If I had the need under Windows, 
that's what I would do. So far I've been able to live without it.

I am considering adding this wish to RAMBO:

Add EVENT/ENTRY-FACE (or EVENT/WINDOW), which will store

the top-level window face which is the entry point for host os events.
So EVENT/FACE is then free to be set to the face that is the
target of the event, as it was originally intended to be.


OR, instead of the above, and achieving backwards compatibility, 
you could:

Add EVENT/TARGET-FACE, which stores the target face.
(So EVENT/FACE stays as it is.)

any comments ?

I think it should be quite useful in wake-event to know which face 
an event will go to. Filtering possibilities increase.

even/face would be enough, no?

ah, I should read first what you actually suggest, sorry :-)

Two new bugs discovered originally by Cyphre posted:

	load {#object! [...]} bug

and

    VALUE? crashes the interpreter

to the VALUE? crash: the following code crashes too:


    x: bind make block! {error? try [any-type? get/any 'variable]} 'system
    do x

to #3885

It might be useful to add the info, that

    f: does [g print "version 1"]
    g: does [unset 'f recycle]
    do :f

circumvents the crash

OT: Is the RAMBO script somewhere accessible?

I don't think it has been released.

I agree.

do you guys think someone could look into #3822 red-icons related 
bug? I think that we should close that issue once and for all. The 
test case is very clearly described. It is either bug in REBOL or 
in Windows, but if not solved, timestamping is not reliable with 
REBOL in any way ...

Didn't Carl say red icons was now history?

no, I do not remember it .... I openly flamed his blog article, as 
it was really rudiculous ;-) He stated it no more appears on his 
machine, so the problem is solved ;-) But other ppl including me 
identified the problem exists even with WindowsXP for us ....

Doesn't it also occur with Linux?

Or, is it a specific Windows bug?

dunno, really - I tried that on linux and it did not appeared. The 
difference is only in one thing - you let os pass time-switch point, 
or you skip it. In linux, when you report time in console, you can 
see one other letter, which signals you if time shift is accounted 
for or not, but dunno how it is with Windows ...

#3885, #3895, #3896 and speed of 1.3.2 beta OK, passed all my tests

1.3.2 beta? I had to miss that one :-)

bad name - the official name is 1.3.1d

is there a list of fixes/additions somewhere? Or can I query RAMBO 
somehow to show me what tickets were done for certain version?

I think, that the tickets are the ones I listed above

search for "1.3.2"

I want timestamp bug resorted :-)

and don't even dare releasing new View without fixing rebol.exe -i 
script.r (launching desktop, ignoring -i) :-)) ... because then rebol.exe 
can't be used for batch processing on machines, where you simply 
don't go via manual installation process ....

Bug #3873 isn't a bug. REBOL does nesting of { and } when strings 
are specified with {}, and ignores { and } when strings are specified 
with "". The ^ is unnecessary in "{^}" because the } doesn't need 
escaping. The ^ is a syntax error in {{^}} because the } would already 
be escaped by the first { inside the string (the second overall), 
so escaping it again means that the string is never finished, as 
there must be one unescaped } after every unescaped { because of 
nesting. In both cases you either shouldn't put the ^ ( "{}" or {{}} 
), or should escape the ^ if you want it in the resulting string 
( "{^^}" or {{^^}} ). Sorry if that was a little confusing - I'm 
sure someone else can explain it better.

with all respect on I completely disagree.

1) I am not able to understand, why {^{} is a syntax error

2) I completely disagree, that Rebol should check pairs of {} inside 
a string - I do want to be able to handle strings with arbitrary 
contents

Hi Ladislav, about 1) I completely agree ...

>> {^{}
{    }
** Syntax Error: Invalid string -- }
** Near: (line 2) }
>> {^}}
== "}"
>>

these should both be OK.


About 2) I agree partly ... if rebols parser counts pairs of {} I 
don't need to escape them, as long as I only have paired braces in 
a string. So that may be a nice feature ...

If the said feature works against the main purpose of strings - the 
ability to contain any sequence of characters, then I am wholeheartedly 
against it.

Well, what I meant to say on 2) if counting of braces frees me from 
escaping, fine with me. But escaping should obviously work. and it 
doesn't (at least not for opening brace)

Ladislav, I agree that since ^} is usable, so should be ^{. Counting 
of braces can be quite awkward without this. This should be submitted 
to RAMBO.


In any case, this behavior doesn't affect the ability to work with 
strings or limit the characters that they can contain. This only 
affects how strings are specified in REBOL source code. Once they 
are parsed by load, it doesn't matter where any ^ is in their contents. 
Try reading (READ native) data with arbitrary ^, { and } from a file 
and there will be no escaping performed. A load (LOAD native) of 
that same file will check REBOL data syntax and do any escaping it 
can.

Still, the behavior described in bug #3873 was actually intentional 
and documented.

I suspect that this nesting behavior was intended to better enable 
using REBOL to generate code in languages with C-like block structure. 
I know it is useful for putting Javascript in generated web pages. 
There may even be such generation of C code as part of the REBOL 
build process. For that matter, it can be useful when specifying 
REBOL source code in strings when that code also contains strings.

OK, I submitted it as a special case.

What I wanted to say is, that this property works against the possibility 
to specify a string containing some possible sequences of characters. 
The fact, that such strings can be read from file doesn't suffice 
as an argument, that Rebol can handle any string - Rebol cannot handle 
some strings using the escape convention defined in the Rebol/Core 
User's Guide.

do you test that from console? because console has some limitations. 
if i do in a script
  probe {^{}
that works. in console this works too:
!>load "{^^{}"  
== "{"

see #3873, #3872 . console simplifies a bit.

Ladislav, as I said, you make a good point that I agree with. I find 
it more than annoying that {} nesting without being able to escape 
{ is awkward, often requiring joins with the string "{". They should 
definitely escape {. The REBOL User's Guide doesn't say how escaping 
works, really. I was left with the impression that ^ would always 
escape the next character and any special treatment thereof, but 
unless the next character (or characters for ^(00) style escaping) 
fits the subset that is handled by the current REBOL version, the 
^ is stripped and ignored. At this point the { character is the only 
one that I've found that has special treatment that isn't disabled, 
but I haven't done an exhaustive search.