World: r3wp

Question: How hard would it be to write a LAYOUT function that will 
transform the RebGUI layout into a HTML page?


Of course for all the action code etc. we need to find a nice way 
(but won't be priority 1 for me). The idea is to have a way to get 
my RebGUI apps to the internet.


Of course if we would have a Rebol plug-in this would solve it a 
bit but I don't expect this within the next 6 months. And, plug-in 
will not fit all user needs.

Can you transform to Curl 5.0 instead ( http://www.curl.com) ?  
Or write a Curl macro to start  the task ?  I have a few curl notes 
at eclectic-pencil and eclectic-pencil.blogspot.com  ( I work in 
Curl at a s/w co.  servicing web browser needs of F500 + int'l ) 
    The macros  {example    and   {x-example-ref    are the coolest 
    Curl is kinda link Scheme+ Tcl too ... if you have looked at 
Groovy HTML-builder then Curl will look familiar.  The REGEXP is 
Perl-like    Curl is a web-content language in the functional-mold 
rather like a JavaScript with its own RTE.   There is also TiScript 
 ( www.terrainformatica.com  ) and of course XUL for Mozilla ....

Why Curl? We want REBOL, right?

How about an embedded paint widget ?

could use easy paint from the library as a basis

I'm in a situation where I need more space for my tab panels.  Can 
we have multilevel tabs ie. two to three rows of tabs like the windows 
version?

Curl: Do you mean Curl as basic system or transforming to Curl? IIRC 
there system is quite fat and requires special servers etc. They 
have a complicated licensing scheme etc.

So, I agree with Petr, why use Curl if we have Rebol?

It's just an HTML alternative ( HTML+CSS+JavaScript )

I was once an OS.2 Zealot and a Prolog Zealot.  I love Rebol, but 
it will not make me either a Rebol bigot or a Rebol zealot.  Even 
a good advocate should not come across as either ...  Curl is not 
server-side; it is just client-side.  If what you have is a 'layout', 
why transform to HTML just to get a page into a browser while waiting 
(6+ mo)  for a Rebol plug-in ?  Curl is a web content language.  
It's good for that.  And it has great sliding panes and all just 
like scriptaculous but a s simple and consistent as good Rebol code. 
 Think of it as Scheme/Dylan for web pages instesad of HTML.

RobertS - just don't try to suggest we are REBOL zealots. Maybe I 
was Amiga zealot, but that time is long gone. OTOH I strictly refuse 
to be shy of REBOL anymore? What does Curl gives me? It is just another 
technology. I was open about Curl, or was it other technology? And 
it was Robert who suggested that the thing is slow, and that his 
fried had to restart the project because of that.

Curl and client side? Wait, is that a plug-in, or what? I don't want 
another plugin. I accept already existant plugins, or the technologies 
I like, and it is REBOL. So, ROBERT is looking for the REBOL to browser 
converter. And it is news to me the world of web browsers supports 
Curl out of the box. It does not. And that is exactly the reason 
why Curl is absolutly zero solution here ...

We should focus on REBOL here. Half a year is no time imo. I don't 
know how much time it takes to master other technology, but Robert 
could as well contract some guy to port R3 to plug-in version in 
that time ...

And I guarantee you,that REBOL plug-in, if done right, is a killer 
product. Let's show that html monkeys trying to do stupid grids slow 
as mollasses that REBOL can be light years faster. Web should never 
get past static page displays :-)

Then there are the slow-as-molasses industries that replaced 3270 
with PC's just in time to discover 'thin client' as the 'new terminal'.

Diskless-Network-PC? Give me 6 months of high fashion and the 'new 
black' any day.  Client app? Pass the X-server wlll ya ....  ;-)

How hard would it be to write a LAYOUT function that will transform 
the RebGUI layout into a HTML page?

 Dynamic or static conversion? I think it's possible to map most VID/RebGUI 
 styles/widgets to CSS and HTML with Javascript required for a few 
 of the more complex widgets; so reproducing simple layout forms online 
 is trivial, more complex apps with tab-panels, etc a whole lot harder.


This reminds me of some of the R&D work I was doing with IBM back 
in the early 90's. Layouts were IODEFs (Input/Output definitions) 
where you hooked a data source (e.g. DB, Terminal, Webpage) to an 
output target (e.g. Screen, printer, Webpage) with zero application/logic 
changes. The entire app was stored in a code repository across a 
couple of simpe DB2 tables. Anyway, I digress.

stacked tab panels?

or, are we in wait mode for R3 ?

forever [ wait 1 ]

Would a statically stacked tab-panel suffice? I could knock up a 
tab-panel2 widget that accepted two blocks of label / action pairs.

Yes.  Though I guess some people might want 3 levels ...

HTML: Doing static layouts would be OK in the first step.


And, this declarative stuff like hooking input-streams, to output-devices 
is IMO a good aproach. A lot of technologies from the mid 80s / erlay 
90s are possible these days. IMO there exist a lot of forgotten things 
that are pretty cool.

Graham;  I'm being facetious; but who, other than you, writes apps 
that need that many tabs.  You're adding too many features.  :)  
More seriously.  I've hacked an overlay widget by pulling the tab 
pane out of  Ashley's tab-panel (build 95)  that uses the same layout 
model and his select-tab action.  Put up a couple of arrows and you 
can stack as many tabs in an overlay space as you'd like (they would 
not scroll one at a time; it'd function as banks of tabs; one tab-panel 
per overlay "tab" but it'll save a fair amount of screen real estate). 
 I could post the code somewhere if you'd like.

Multiple lines of tabs are sometimes solved with just one line, and 
"scrollable" tab panel style - you get arrows on the left and on 
the right side, so you can have as many tabs as you wish. Of course 
pushing users to scroll is not very much intuitive, but it solves 
the case ...

post away :)

but I only have 4 tabs at present . it's just that I don't have the 
horizontal space

So, I need to stack the tabs vertically to employ the vertical space 
available.

I don't like the scrollable tab style because you can't see all of 
the tabs available in one glance

Graham - Cyphre's styles pack contains tabs with arrows, so that 
you can have more than is visible space. Horizontal only though ... 
You could contract Cyphre to do it for RebGUI ....

Code at http://peoplecards.ca/rebol/ld2-rebgui.rUse it just like 
a tab-panel.  I use the text that would go  on a tab for a comment. 
 Use show widget/select-tab n  to switch between overlays.  The code 
 conditionally loads rebgui and the widget; so if you are modifiying 
anything, you'll have to unset ctx-rebgui for each test load.

Sorry, don't call show with select-tab

I'll give it a go .. thanks.

Ashley I'm still seeing the dbl click on an edit-list bug

Brian, the advantage for a true tab panel style is that the currently 
selected panel keeps the button highlighted.

So, this is more of a button panel style :)

I use it to emulate the overlays in the Desktop Library, but I thought 
you might use it like 

overlay data [ "1" [tab-panel  data [ ]] "2" [tab-panel data [ ]] 
 with a couple of arrows, or buttons :) or menu options to determine 
what bank of tabs are shown.  As with many things, I may not be getting 
what you are really looking for, but I've grown fond of having overlays 
in RebGUI.

Ahhh... never thought of that!

Build#97 uploaded with a 'no-tabs option for tab-panel. Works exactly 
as per Brian's overlay widget as described above.

re: dbl-click problem. I can't reproduce this one. I assume this 
occurs on Windows? What is the dbl-click speed set to? (Control Panel|Mouse 
Properties|Buttons) Is it a mouse or pen (i.e. TabletPC) that generates 
the dbl-click in question?

Re: build 97...Very nice.  I get to dump a hack.  Thanks Ashley.

Yes, windows ... and a mouse.  Speed is set to just to the right 
of middle.

Is there something I can do to trap the error at the widget level 
so it doesn't propagate upwards?

and yes, it's not easily reproducible

I think adding the dbl-action facet to the choose function in ctx-widgets.r 
will 'fix' the problem, as in:

	choose: make function! [
		...
	][
		...
		popup: make face-iterator [
			...
			alt-action:	none
			dbl-action:	none
		]
		...
	]

ok, I'll give that a go

rebgui-widgets.r ?

Yes

thanks

How does one reset a radio-group to it's unselected state?  I tried 
rg/init, and rg/select 0 ( which crashes )

Graham, I haven't ventured into the world of RebGUI other than the 
demos, but in View the data attribute of the radio button is none 
until selected, true when selected, then false when the selection 
is changed.

ie.  Radio5/data: none

I hope RebGUI works the same way.