World: r3wp

Henrik: the FreeType suport in Linux ports was added recently and 
there was some inconsistency problems how the FreeType wrapper worked 
between different distros. Now the code should be 'united' to work 
ok.

As you can see here: http://www.rebol.net/builds/lib-dep.htmlthe 
FreeType library is one of those libraries which might depend on 
different distro or version but it is not definitely the only one.

Any idea if it's possible to get anti-aliased fonts with AltMe beta 
or the Debian View build? Rebol is kinda standing out in a bad way 
on my desktop right now.

nope, if AltME uses standard VID, then AA fonts are still only a 
part of DRAW

Yes, AA fonts can be rendered using DRAW only in the current version. 
But I'm not sure that AA rendering of such small font sizes like 
in Altme mesages can improve reading ;)

I've tried to "rebol --reinstall" and that's funny, there's Windows 
installer with "create start menu item" and "create desktop shortcut" 
and with the great ending: 

** Script Error: create-reg has no value
** Where: register
** Near: if not create-reg/hklm key [return false]

(latest debian release)

rebolek, i guess that is just skipped on linux, but not when you 
force it. so please submit this to rambo :)

Testing Altme running vmwareplayer

vmplayer + Browser Appliance + Altme ... Appears to be working fine.

Sounds good. Which distro are you running that on ?

Used the Altme Debian Linux 3.1beta from http://www.altme.com/beta.html
, fonts aren't as good on mac or windows version. but otherwise it 
works. Nothing extra needed, just the vmwareplayer with their default 
 browser-appliance snapshot (Ubuntu with Firefox)

to clarify. The fonts suck on linux

the font suckiness varies for me. on some machines large fonts look 
really blocky, like an upscaled bitmap. it's probably more a question 
on which fonts the distribution has installed

It's dark magic. On some Linuxes, the REBOL fonts are really distorted. 
When they're as intended, it's still only old-style Helvetica that's 
not anti-aliased, so they stick out as a sore thumb compared to the 
rest of the system

is that really so difficult to get it right? Maybe RT could contract 
some linux developer to clear out how to properly do such things 
...

Fonts are one of the biggest messes on Linux/BSD, due to X11, really

Due to patents on truetype?

Or because of nameing, not because of look?

No, it's just a mess, with several different font systems working 
against eachother - as usual in Linux

petr: the "proper" way is to link to gtk or qt. you know, there's 
no gui standard there... the only thing you can take for granted 
on GNU/Linux is the linux kernel and the GNU utilities.

Unless of course you encounter unexpected kernel modifications or 
BusyBox or things like that :-)

yep, the main problem of doing things "properly" in Linux/BSD is 
that there is usually no standard way ;)

Q: How to know witch Distro I have in command line ? What is the 
command ?

isn't there a version string?

echo $OSTYPE display the "type" of OS using tsch shell. 

On a Mac it echoes darwin

I have /etc/SuSe-version

$0STYPE just says linux

Try uname -v

or uname -a for more info

doesn't help much

try 'ls /etc/*release

in my opinion,  'uname' is more of a standard utility  to identify 
the kernel.

Yup. There's no standard way to determine the distro beyond the kernel

kaj, which is incredibly defective IMHO :-) such as simple thing, 
so hard to do

Yep, but the way Linux distributions have evolved, it's obvious it's 
impossible and one doesn't even think about it :-/

A while ago I tried to install VMware player and it nuked my system. 
Upon investigation, it had 13,000 lines of PERL script for installation 
and configuration. The major part of that was to identify the system 
parts versions and condition...

Each mature Unix application carries around a similar configuration 
system

it's insane. which is why I'm moving away from linux as a dev system

I'm moving towards it :-)

I'm making a few mods, though. Like, redesigning the entire system 
;-)

ah, another distro basically? :-)

I love linux cause its so well designed, in order to use it, you 
have to fix everything.

Yup, but deeper than that

and now we have freedesktop.org and other standards organizations. 
I think basically it's like shoveling crap uphill. I wonder if it 
will get anywhere.

It's an improvement, but as you suspect, far from ideal

I think the Ubuntu guys are doing a good job. the problem is that 
there are 20 other organizations that are almost doing the same jobs. 
it's an incredible waste of time and effort.

I think we should take AROS and change its name.

Well, there's exchange of work. The theory in open source is that 
a certain amount of duplication of work is accepted, because there 
are many volunteers. What bothers me more is that the resulting products 
are so bad

maybe  ARIX  and say its based on linux but everything was fixed 
  ;-D

the products are bad because there is no focus or leader with strong 
visions. it happens occasionally, such as with the XGL desktop work 
done by Novell. They flat out stated that it would have sucked to 
do it among the community. Yet the community responded negatively, 
because the work was not initially shared.


sometimes I think they just can't see that the cathedral model of 
development can be much better if design is very critical. this is 
the biggest gripe I have with open source.