World: r3wp

Well, to be fair.  I wouldn't really want techs running a large corporation. 
 Skill sets

are skill sets and techs are good at techie and (most) bosses are 
good at money
(and requisitioning bigger pipes).

Etoilé .... interesting...

Your pipes are very small
 LOL, and smart...

I've been following the Silverlight and DLR developments a lot this 
week. It seems to me that this would be a good way to get REBOL in 
the browser. You could market a REBOL based on the DLR as a /Services 
integration library. Rebol Universal Services Transport, a way to 
bind all of those Iron languages to light-as-air REBOL/Services :)

I don't know something about etoile seems like its not really changing 
the actual workflow of use.  I still sense a "software" in the GUI... 
but I agree its much more pervasive.

I would like it to completely ban the use of actual apps and just 
rely on services to do everything. And then on top of that, make 
the whole damn thing scriptable. It would be a hell of a bold move, 
but I think it would work.

They are talking about banning the concept of files, and rely fully 
on persistent stores, but there is still not a solution on how to 
do that.

why services... services are softwares.

I think you will like elixir.   :-)

its close to etoile... but it also loose the false desktop metaphor.

when I say close, I mean in many underlying motivations.

What's the difference between a service and an app? 

PickOS used a DB as it's file system.

and its fully scriptable  :-)  antidote is actually used BY the GUI 
instead of coding many of the things internally... for example, all 
hotkeys are actually within an external file with character and command 
scripts which applied when that key is pressend and no focus is detected.

Services are small. They do one single thing and they do that one 
thing very well. OSX has them and they've been there for ages, but 
the system only relies on them for manipulating things in apps, not 
to construct ad hoc apps themselves. How often have you not wanted 
a cool feature from program X in program Y and vice versa? This would 
do the trick.

elixis is much more granular than etoile.

The service versus app distinction is a big gray area IMO. No great 
answers here, but if you don't provide "preconfigured service bundles" 
a.k.a. applications, how does Grandma use them?

its much simpler.

when you see the relationships.

in etoile they still consider a "desktop" to be a viable and intuitive 
interface... when in fact it isn't

I'm totally behind the concept of modular scriptable software though 
Henrik.

Gregg, compare it to how you use your real life items, like a paper, 
a pencil, eraser, etc. Grandma does not want to know that she has 
to open Word or some <weird open source name app> to write a document. 
She wants a piece of paper. A service will give her a piece of paper 
as a view port. On the technical side, you don't load a bajillion 
features into memory that you don't need, only a viewport and a text 
renderer.

hearing and seeing alan kay in the last few days has only solidified 
many of my ideas.  One capital sentence he repeats:


Adults have too many context and concepts, to be able to think simply 
and understand the most basic ideas.   kids have a "fresh" take on 
things... and they are much better at chosing simple things.

elixir, for example will seem like a bizare work environment for 
some, I guess, but its sooo simple, it needs no real learning... 
actually, the only thing people will have to learn is the panels 
which people will add to interface the internals... but at least 
we will be able to SEE the relationships and associations they have 
with the "innards"

so once you "understand" the concept of an self managing atom of 
information...

you understand EVERYTHING.

Maxim, yes, it's because we go to school. When I went to public school 
I liked electronics and wanted to work with it. I found it fun and 
could even put together little circuits that did fun stuff. When 
I became an engineer, the fun went away and everything became immensely 
complex, so what I had learned as a kid, I lost.

are you comming at the devcon henrik? I don't rememebr?

nope

The goal of elixir, is to get many people writing VERY small procedures 
and tasks.

darn... would really have liked to go over elixir with you in person.

 A service will give her a piece of paper as a view port.

 -- But what features does the service provide, and when does it become 
 an application? i.e. how do you save something, find something you 
 wrote before, add spell checking, print something, etc. These are 
 things that can be answered in different ways, and I think we'll 
 see a lot more big changes in software in the next 10 years.

the ubiquity is the key.

a pencil which actually stores data on a sheet.

a real sheat.

electronic paper already exists and is being sold by sony as a small 
book reader... no back lit.  0 consumption until you edit the page.

things like that and gestural workflow.

Gregg, you don't save anything. Like the piece of paper, the information 
is persistent the moment you write on it. How they want you to access 
documents, I'm not sure they are done working that out. I suppose 
that services that are tied together exist in contexts, so that putting 
text writing, printing and spell checking together makes sense, while 
bitmap painting and spell checking does not.

anyhow... I've got to go... but I am started to be exited for devcon... 
things are starting to "work"

I remember actually that Amiga Inc. were some of the first to start 
talking about persistent storage in desktop environments. Now everyone 
else but Amiga Inc. are doing it. :-)

I think fleecy moss called it orthogonal persistence.

Speaking of which: I'd love to see a way in Rebol to declare a piece 
of data persistent across sessions, so it would save automatically 
and you would not have to worry about it.

Yes, the whole "not saving" thing has been done before, but we haven't 
pushed far enough in that regard. Anyone remember Lotus Agenda? That 
was one smart app, and that's how you can auto-file things and find 
them again easily. 


The concept of a persistent image, ala Smalltalk, has also come up 
before. I think Maarten wanted to do something like that, but it's 
not a simple thing to do.

Like the piece of paper, the information is persistent the moment 
you write on it.

  This is the same in Qtask...we spend our time right now making it 
  faster, and much better (simpler) UI.

When you put something in the Scratch pad on Qtask's home page, no 
saving or loading.  It does it for you, and it is instantly availble 
on your Cell phone.

IT just works...

well, the close button here does not seem to work in the "Your unsupported 
browser is Safari" window :-)

As stated, Safari is not supported.  As proof, the close button does 
nothing!

Sometimes I wonder about you guys.

cool! I think. :-)

Don't people here see REBOL in line with this very thread.  I use 
REBOL for all kinds

of things, that could be an application, by why?  Use blocks.  Write 
a one-liner for the

task at hand.  That's why I was very interested that Carl may allow 
LOAD/RELAX

(although I would actually prefer a junk! or gibberish! datatype) 
in R3.  REBOL is my

non-application application.  I use this model when coding solutions 
to the

construction site bosses problems.  Use a block and write a script 
that suits the

problem.  Site managers need a button to "make it go" (the UI), but 
each

problem gets its own solution.  I'm not going to sit and try and 
write an accounting

package for a guy that just wants to invoice customers, and show 
his profit/loss.

If the user needs to export data to an actual "app", write a quick 
export etc.etc.etc. 

I don't call them Reblets per say, but it's the headspace I've been 
in for years now.

automatic persistent storage... i've done it, as the base of "your 
values!". wish i had the time to pursue that.