World: r3wp

For example, the first goal for a graphical server was to port the 
Syllable Desktop GUI to Server, but that project is stalled for the 
moment being because the developer is gone

So the easiest way to do it now is to just use X11, which we eventually 
needed to have, anyway

So the current graphical development version of Server uses X11 and 
the ROX desktop, installed from GoboLinux binaries for now because 
that's also a faster route

But using binaries from others gives you less control over them, 
so there are integration problems that mean the quality is not high 
enough yet to release this Syllable version

That snappy Try REBOL site is running on an old 650 MHz Pentium 3 
with 128 MB of memory. :-) The website itself is quite inefficient 
compared to regular sites, because each REBOL evaluation request 
needs to be run in its own Linux process under a separate user account 
for security

There are also other websites running on that machine. In general, 
Cheyenne makes them quite responsive. For example, it responds very 
well to a heavily loaded machine. You can fully load the machine 
with other tasks without noticing it in the responsiveness of the 
websites. In my mind, this is quite like the general behaviour of 
Syllable Desktop and earlier systems such as BeOS and Amiga

To see for yourself, try

call "uname -a"

the compare function is really cool  :-)

Thanks. :-) I thought it would be a nice touch

Very nice Kaj.

Kaj, is Ruud Kuin still involved with the Syllable project? I see 
that he produced the newsletter for a while.

Is Kristian Van Der Vliet still leading the software development? 
Besides yourself, I'm just wondering who is currently leading the 
Syllable project.

Kristian has been away since early this year, so I'm currently leading 
the project

Ruud is watching from a distance. Like most people, he was surpsised 
by the time and effort it takes to develop a project like this. When 
he didn't get the contributions he had hoped for his newsletters, 
he decided to take a step back

So it almost seems, like it is turning into being a few man show? 
Kind of AROS syndrome?

Always has been, as I told many times

Syllable was never big, because it never had a legacy system and 
community to build on

We found out that it's hard for people to get that into their heads, 
because they compare us with those other projects, and the impression 
we make is of a project that they think must be much bigger

Do you know developers base of Haiku? Is that similar to Syllable, 
or bigger?

It used to be quite similar, but since they finally made an alpha 
release last year, it has been growing

Yes, they are in Alpha2 stage, but I can't see much happening publicly 
yet ...

It used to make a bigger impression than Syllable because they listed 
many names from the BeOS community, but those were just inactive 
after finding out the effort involved. Since their release, some 
of this old community is finally being reactivated

Still, there are very few people who can do systems work, so those 
are still very few, and they're still behind Syllable in some areas. 
But there are more people now who bother working on applications

Carl is probably hoping the sleeper Rebol community is going to waken 
too

For R3, yes, but after he has willingly destroyed it for R2

What is the state of Syllable Server vs the Syllable Desktop? I mean 
- does Desktop gets any attention?

Yes, more than 99% of their code is the same, so almost any work 
on Server is also work on Desktop

I also hope that some REBOL oldtimers will give R3 a try. It is nice 
that there is at least one OS (Syllable), who openly mentions REBOL 
to the user-base. Maybe similar situation could be done for AmigaOS 
and/or Haiku.

Kaj, what do you mean by your statement, "For R3, yes, but after 
he has willingly destroyed it for R2"?

Are you in close contact still with Kristian? Is he just taking a 
rest? Do you know when he's coming back?

We haven't heard from him, so we're not sure how he is, but at last 
contact he was doing OK

You'd have to ask RT about the precise considerations of the past 
half decade, but piecing the puzzle together, they seem to have had 
a conviction that R2 would stand in the way of R3 adoption

I thought that the release of 2.7.7 earlier this year and the back-porting 
of some R3 functions was an encouraging sign for us R2 developers.

Yes, R2 has sort of been restarted. But that's now that R3 is finally 
starting to work. If R2 was going to be revived, it should never 
have been left to languish

Similar to R2 itself, there's not much REBOL community left. It will 
be tough to restore trust

David, we had a nice conference. Everything was filmed, but it always 
takes the organiser a long time to edit the videos, so I don't know 
when they will be published

I'm not very familiar with the ROX Desktop. You mentioned earlier 
that you had X running on Syllable Server. Does that mean it will 
be possible to run REBOL/View on Syllable Server?

Yes, typing into it right now (AltME) :-)

I demoed AltME on the conference and my CMS running in View, generating 
web exports of AltME

Cool!

That was one of my major motivations for producing an extra Linux 
system

Is the development version available for download? I just checked 
the website and only see a development release for 0.4

Not publicly, as it doesn't have release quality yet, but you can 
contact me privately here

OK.. My project requirements changed last week. For the project I 
mentioned earlier, I was going to have an embedded Linux server and 
then use throw-away Dell machines running Windows for REBOL/View 
nodes. Now the customer wants all embedded Linux with touch screens. 
I'm currently developing on Syllable Server and have to look at another 
distro to run X. I'm wondering out loud how stable your development 
release is for running nothing but a single REBOL/View application. 
It's for a material handling application in a manufacturing environment.

Ah, the joy of changing IT requirements :-)

It works quite well as long as you don't try to install extra software

As I told before, I'm installing X and other stuff from GoboLInux 
packages, and ROX from ZeroInstall packages. The packages that I 
include in the distro are configured and somewhat tested. Not all 
functionality works, but they're fairly alright

Only when you try to install more software you're on your own, because 
there are often more missing configurations, or conflicts between 
binary packages

The most annoying thing about the default configuration is that drag 
and drop works between some apps, but not others. Then it crashes 
the desktop. ROX will detect that and nicely restart, but you can't 
call it stable