World: r3wp

The function I added to my todo list yesterday is done. Two lines 
of code, though they are tricky :)

Brian, are you sure that R3 handles case-insensitiveness in Unicode 
text better than R2 with UTF-8?

I remember Carl being againist adding language-specific tables into 
R3.

Where do we find information on the new VID of R3?

http://www.rebol.net/wiki/R3_GUI

Thanks Henrik

I sure hope we are going to redefine many of the current panels  
such as alert.  Alert looks horrible.

Alert shouldn't present a scroller unless their is scrollable text. 
 Additionally the text on alert should be centered along with the 
button.  I know that alert is just preliminary for now.

Ah, I would not worry about that. Actually not sooner, than more 
important things get into the system. There are still some concepts 
missing ...

I don't know much about the progress of R3 GUI yet.

I like the fact that it was going to take on a CSS type of method.

The UI is _very_ preliminary.

The latest shots of the UI can be seen at http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/
but it is still changing and far from done.

The layout engine still performs rather poorly so if elements appear 
off alignment, it's because the layout engine doesn't do this well 
yet. Don't worry, I want pixel precise alignment.

Henrik, do you need help?  Maybe I can get involved - if interested 
- just get me up to speed on it.

thanks, I don't need help right now.

Excellent Henrik!

R3 chat system user account creation reenabled.

Gabriele, I know that R3 handles case-insensitiveness of Latin1 characters 
in Unicode text better than R2 with UTF-8, but beyond that I don't 
know. There is still some stuff to do relative to Unicode. The implications 
of Unicode support on the rest of the system are mostly implemented 
though, with the glaring exception of PARSE.

Are there any good tutorials on using asyncronous networking in R3? 
 That changed from R2, right?

Good tutorials: Not yet. Turorials: Sort of. Changed: Drastically.

TimW, you can find some information on DocBase, notably here: http://www.rebol.net/wiki/Ports

Is there implementation information available for students?

Thanks.  The port information is pretty good.

alpha 37 is now available for OSX.

Brian: if it's just latin1, does it really change things? it won't 
always work anyway. but, there's plenty of code to convert utf-8 
to latin1 in R2, so why not just doing that if it's really important 
to have case insensitive accented character in the user names?

I'm wondering now if r3 eats a lot of CPU when running the upgrade 
procedure under linux or just by using READ with HTTP. It does so 
under OSX.

Gabriele, Unicode isn't done, so I don't understand this: "does it 
really change things?". I was just answering your question about 
R3. Whether R2 can handle case insensitivity of UTF-8 when third-party 
libraries are added is another issue.


I can't say what Carl's priorities are beyond where he had me mark 
CureCode tickets as urgent, so I can't say when or if Unicode will 
be "finished". User account creation is reenabled, so the whole reason 
this conversation started is moot now.

I noticed the GUI demo in R3 is very buggy.  Sometimes it just eats 
CPU and does nothing.

Paul, have you found patterns for the slowness?

Why are minimum-of and maximum-of being mezzanines now, instead of 
natives as in R2?

Pekr, there was an opinion for a name-change. See group "Survey Group" 
in R2-Alpha world, that you have access to. I guess, they ended up 
as mezz to be more compatible with existing code.

Henrik, not really - its intermittent.  But usually as soon as I 
bring up the demo is when it sometimes locks up.

I actually have to kill the process to regain control on Vista.

I've experienced some pauses in VMWare, but attributed them to R3 
building the text for the Text View pane. There is also a bug that 
causes it to lock up if you click buttons too quickly in the HTTP 
pane.

Why are minimum-of and maximum-of being mezzanines now, instead of 
natives as in R2?

Because we are cleaning down the core in R3, and those functions 
are rarely used. They are fast enough as mezzanines - the FORSKIP 
loop they call is native in R3.


Mezzanines can be better for some purposes too - REBOL is a much 
more powerful language than C for some things, so it is sometimes 
a good idea to write the functions in REBOL instead, particularly 
when it needs to be flexible. This is why LOAD is a mezzanine in 
R3 (which calls native code to parse the REBOL data), and half of 
DO is an intrinsic (a built-in function written in REBOL that is 
called by native code).

Part of the R3 boot-up process is an intrinsic too, as is part of 
the MAKE port! and MAKE module! actions.

BrianH: what is exactly happening now? Are we seeing start of formation 
of new DevBase? Some files are uploaded already. Or is there still 
some functionality missing, to replace devbase?

The new DevBase (3) mostly works now. I posted some suggestions today, 
but it is usable as-is. I'm only using DevBase 2 for historical reference 
now. DevBase 3 doesn't have a reviewer concept, so I'm going to ask 
Carl what the new acceptance policy is - I have the rank to accept, 
but the guidelines need to be updated for the new model. Most of 
my todo list for DevBase 2 is already implemented in DevBase 3, so 
in many ways it is already a vast improvement.

I find I'm using the help function in the console all the time. It 
would be good if the help function could have some refinements for 
searching throughout the function definitions, or limit the search 
to specific parts of the definitions. Would this be a difficult enhancement?

this would be really cool  just like searching the man pages in unix... 
the easiest way to find a shell command when you can't remember it. 
 :-)

BrianH: as for filesharing - can we share also binary files? Is it 
general mechanism, or is RebDev limited to only text files and their 
diffing?

AdrianS: some small helper, but you probably know it. What you can 
do is partial word searches. E.g. try:

help to- ; and it will list every to-* function
help pr ; it will list every function containing "pr"

Yes, I saw the partial word search, but that onl searches within 
the word, not its definition. Also nice would be something like smalltalk's 
ability to find methods by supplying a signature example - i.e. give 
me all functions where the arguments are <integer>, <string>

perhaps as a refinement to HELP, such as help/args integer!

yes, something like that would be good. Should I make this enhancement 
request in CureCode to keep track of it?

Yes, please post that to CureCode.  It's a brilliant idea!

added as http://curecode.org/rebol3/ticket.rsp?id=676

how is that usefull to you? Do you really search for function, which 
accepts some concrete args? Why would you do so? :-) What about searching 
in help string?

well, when learning a language, you need all the help you can get 
- if I know the datatype of the args, I would probably like to know 
all the things I could do with them (append one to the other, multiply, 
union, etc)