World: r3wp

But - our GUI is far from being usable, so native menu or not is 
still preliminary question for R3.

Take a look at the Air apps - you can see how it works - doesn't 
detract at all from the custom UIs.

http://www.ross-gill.com/images/GrabAir.jpg(I'm in orange, btw)

I hope such an app is 1-3 pages max in VID 3.4 :-)

Brian, the entire Flex SDK is open source.  I'm not sure where you 
get that it is coming to its end.  If anything Flex has been positions 
to expand and evolve.

Paul - what he means is probably the architecture of the language, 
which might be limiting here. Flex is open source? Doesn't it cost 
some money? Come on :-)

Well, maybe I mix two things - being an open-sourced product and 
product costing a money ...

Petr, functionally you can do the same with VID in a relatively small 
amount of code - even with R2 - but what good is that when the experience 
is second or third rate?

Deployment-Design-Integration

Pekr: The Flex SDK is free open source software. It's a command line 
compiler with a few command line tools. The FlexBuilder IDE is a 
pay for extension to Ecilpse.

Ah, ok, but we are surely talking IDE here, because that is the main 
reason why some ppl look elsewhere - because the lack of REBOL IDE 
environment ....

Chris - what do you mean by deployment-design-integration? I can 
understand design, maybe even a bit of deployment reasoning, but 
what about integration?

Pekr, I'm glad flex costs money.  It means that  people will actively 
be working on it for a long time to come.

Yeah, I echo Chris' observations regarding VID.  What good is it 
if it is third rate.

What does it mean third rate?

IOW - there is Flash/Flex/Air, Silverlight ... and then? What other 
RIA is so small and contained? Revolution? Curl? Big ... There is 
new player going to appear - REBOL 3.

Pekr, to say something is third rate is to mean it is inferior - 
not up to the standard established by what is first rate.

REBOL3 when?

What will its capabilities be?

See from what I have seen stated, I have no reason to believe it 
gives an advantage (other than parse).

For example, I don't see it giving me the ability to produce GUI's 
faster or better.

Paul, what kinds of functions would you like to see in the R3 GUI 
to produce GUIs faster or better?

Henrik, the lack of an IDE guarantees that I wont be able to produce 
a GUI faster than flex.

The IDE allows you to layout way faster than you can by hand.

You mean, because you can produce UIs visually?

For BETTER, REBOL needs to add all the extra features - for example, 
Flex offers classes for validation of form data that are very robust.

Yes Henrik.

I want to see REBOL beat the pants off of everyone but I'm just being 
realistic here.

well, I hope the new guides system will allow creating an interactive 
editor in a few kbs. I haven't seen anything other than the specs 
yet, though.

Another important thing is components.  REBOL needs to offer much 
more advanced components and maybe some new functionality into existing 
ones.

To do this probably requires some extra style modes. Given the design 
of the R3 GUI, you can add special abilities globally to styles, 
such as the current debug red rectangle. You can probably add some 
actors to alter the behavior of styles to be suitable for a GUI editor.

Describe "components".

A component for example is things like, textinput, textarea, list, 
combobox, etc..

Carl was really clever here: Each addition to the GUI system has 
so far only been about 5-10 lines of code in one location. No redesign 
was required at any point.

Components are usually a class with methods that can be invoked for 
handling event processing.

Henrik, I would definately recommend you get your hands on Flex and 
try it out and see some of the advantages it brings.  It will change 
a great deal of how you look at REBOL.

Ah, those are called container styles here. They can be built a bit 
like LEGO bricks very easily. See this shot:

http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/142.png

Design and naming is not finalized, however.

Paul: I didn't necessarily say VID was 3rd rate either, just that 
the experience is not all it could be.  Obviously I see merit in 
View if I take time to offer suggestions...

Didn't mean to imply you did Chris.

NP

Yes, Henrik, a style in REBOL is like a component in Flex.

I hope the container styles make it into the final design. This will 
make it very simple to make smart fields.

Petr: D-D-I - all things that struck me about Air that I've missed 
in View.  Integration is the feeling that the application fits.

Note that container styles are not available publicly yet.

A container style implies to me something like the canvas component 
in Flex.  I'm not sure what a container style is.

If your talking about how a container is in R3 alpha's then I follow 
what your talking about.

And on Design, it is about the UI designer getting what they want!

The current design of a container style serves two purposes: Visual 
integration and actor integration. This means a container style is 
built from a derivative of the PANEL style as a decorative container 
and contains other styles that are directly built only to fit in 
that style.

Each of those styles may contain actors that allow them to interact 
with other styles automatically inside the container style. So if 
you put a numeric field together with a mouse drag knob, the mouse 
drag knob automatically is able to adjust the numeric 


Note that this ability is generally available also outside container 
styles, as there is no design replication, but the conditions will 
be slightly different inside a container style.

Yep that sounds like a CANVAS component in Flex.

But for the casual user, all that is unimportant. Only the style 
designer needs to know this.

The casual user simply types:

	view [
		group 2 [
			label "IP Address" ip-field
			label "Gateway" ip-field
			label "DNS" ip-field
		]
	]