World: r3wp

What would you call a REBOL binary that comes with GUI capabilities 
on Windows?

It depends. If it has all of View, with the viewtop, I would call 
it /View (or /View/Pro with library support). If it has none of that 
I would call it /Face. If it has all of that plus /Command stuff, 
I would call it /Command/View. There are 3 graphics builds on Windows, 
license depending.

All of them except /Face use the same registry settings, the wrong 
ones.

On Linux, there's two versions of REBOL immediately available: /Core 
and /View. /Core is a REBOL binary w/o GUI capabilities, /View is 
a REBOL binary with GUI capabilities (and beyond that, it comes bundled 
with a self-installer and the Viewtop app).

as a reboler, I don't want to write system specific and environment 
 resolving code.  


my script should be able to ply itself to whatever system its installed 
on and still read/write its files in proper OS expected places.


This is what we are talking about Andreas... viewtop specifically 
has nothing to do with this.  this is for ALL scripts to be compliant.


if I had a command which allowed me to build a system-compliant "application 
data path" then it would write stuff in ~/application/ on linux and 
whatever profile/app data/application   path is being used by your 
flavour of windows.


right now, I'd have to write a library which determines this and 
it probably will screw up on ubuntu, or Mac Or the latest windows.

Nope, /Face uses the wrong registry settings too, just less of them.

things like user names and user folders have to be extracted within 
a routine using proper OS calls, either WinAPi or Env values if that 
is what your OS uses.

though Env values are a security risk since they can easily be highjacked.

maxim, i totally understand this. but it's this kind of cross-plattform 
stuff is a pipe dream in the general case.

I have had to build such tools in the past, so no, it can really 
be done... just look at view itself... it abstracts all of the windowing 
/event etc into a common layer.

And that is stuff the runtime should be doing, so that scripts can 
be cross-platform. Platform-specific stuff has no business being 
in scripts, or the mezzanine code for that matter.

the only sensible solution is to be mostly platform ignorant and 
build a rebol-specific packaging and distribution system. which, 
iirc, you did a few times in R2.

Maxim, see this about passing arguments to apps started by file association:


http://stackoverflow.com/questions/444388/how-can-i-pass-command-line-arguments-via-file-association-in-vista-64


Re. shortcuts having arguments, yes they can - Vista shortcuts could 
as well, though.

Then the runtime would still need to look stuff up from the platform, 
and put the answers in nice, cross-platform REBOL settings in system/options, 
system/user, etc.

That is the runtime's job, to gloss over all of those pesky platform-specific 
differences.

Good luck with that :)

It's the same job performed by the host code in R3.

adrian, when I edited the shortcut on vista, and added the arguments 
it wouldn't save it, telling me the path to the executable didn't 
exist  :-(

Works just fine on 7.

Are you using .lnk format shortcuts?

and yes... you have to manually change the command-line arguments, 
but then the OS' editors break up in what I can't remember, I think 
rebol disapeared from the "installed applications" list, although 
the file association still worked.

I don't have vista installed anymore... but i'd just go on the desktop 
and right-click, create shortcut.

(using XP for as long as I can)

cool if it works on win7

is the read-only file property bug fixed in win7

Depends, which bug?

if you try to change the read-only property of files/folders they 
aren't actually applied, it was listed as a bug on severl IT sits 
on the net.  

basically, many applications suddendly coudn't write to folders anymore. 
 I had problems with rebol in SOME paths.

I even had issues with xcopy!  


looking at the files in a shell, they where all listed as read-only 
and couldn't be set to anything else... (this wasn't within windows 
folders, but on a data disk, before you ask ;-)

Haven't seen that yet. But I almost never use Vista, and rarely XP 
for that matter now, just 7.

I've bumped into the read only bug on Win 7 - pretty annoying.

not sure it was just a cosmetic thing, because in the end I managed 
to do whatever it was that I needed to do

folders are always read only ...

That doesn't affect how you write to the folder itself

maybe that's what I saw

but I kept on unchecking the read only prop, applying the change 
which asked to apply to all children and I said yes, it looked like 
it was recursing and setting the flags - then I exited the dialog, 
and upon re-checking, the settings seemed to be the same as before

its not *supposed* to be an issue, but I have had issues where it 
was.  I had read on the net and others where also having write issues 
on their data disks.  it as even flagged at a MS site... buts been 
a while (like 3 years) so I don't remember all the details of the 
problem.

Graham: re Linux font paths, that could be better solution than the 
current state. Though it is still not 'automatic' solution I can 
imagine that Linux users will be happier with that. I'll try to ask 
Carl what he thinks about it.

That sounds like a good idea to me too, so when a new distro comes 
along which locates fonts in a different location, then at least 
you can do something about it without having to wait for rebol to 
be updated. It will also require less code in rebol compared to a 
full automatic font finder.

no possibility of moving to the HTML5 Web Open Font Format? - then 
just use the same fonts in all OS?

I have a technical re-distribution question relative to the R2/forward 
code-base.


I might be forced to use an older version of R2 but need to include 
"some" of the functions within r2/forward mezz files.   


since I don't want to have to include many files in this project, 
I would like to simply include the few functions directly within 
my own "reusable" stuff module which is already part of that project...


is it ok for me to include, as a comment within my own lib, the headers 
found in the source files I would pick specific functions from?

license is bsd is it not? or apache or similar for r2/forward

for 2.7.8, I have submitted this to rambo http://www.rebol.net/cgi-bin/rambo.r?id=-4776&

R2/Forward is MIT. Use it as you will. Actually, that use is part 
of the reason for its existence. If you run into any compatibility 
problems with older versions of R2 please mention them here. I eventually 
plan to make R2/Forward work on versions as far back as 2.5.0.

If you like you can attribute what you use, but MIT was specificly 
chosen so that wouldn't be required.

Graham, the id in your link is negative(!), and gives this:
	ERROR: Ticket not found. Go back and check your input.

Before a RAMBO ticket is reviewed and accepted it has a negative 
ID. If it doesn't work now, it must have been reviewed. Don't know 
the current ID.

http://www.rebol.net/cgi-bin/rambo.r?id=4400&

As Gab says, the username has to be double url encoded for this to 
work

Can anyone think of any side effects from adding a 'dehex to the 
protocol rules ?

Yeah. The problem is that it dehexes too soon, not that it doesn't 
dehex soon enough.

Eh?