World: r3wp

Carl's latest REBOL blog is dated 28-Mar-2011:
http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r

So seem to be 1 month 2 weeks since last REBOL blip.

They are all information I have. I monitor those channels.

We are still at buil A111

Yes, and I don't put my expectations up. But I feel, people are hard 
at work with alternatives to REBOL.

RED...

That's one, yes.

It is great but a Waste of time. If only REBOL was open sorced DOC 
could put his offorts on it.

Insteda we are reinventing the wheel

If the first wheel can't run, reinvension can be a good thing.

Think "reinvention" is with a t.

Also with all other languages, you have more than one implementation. 
I don't think, all those are waste of time. How many different C 
compilers have been made over the years?

One of the nice things about Red is that it's not really the new 
wheel, but quite different

Still, I wonder why people object so strongly against new wheels. 
Do you employ wooden donkey cart wheels on your electric automobile?

Yeah, there might come many new great developments from some of the 
REBOL ideas. Some of them will be very much like REBOL, but others 
will be something new.

Like all good operating systems are strongly inspired by Amiga

Red, I think, could complement R3 quite well.

would it be possible (in general) to encapsulate the whole R2/3 GUI 
functionality incl. antigrain etc. into a lib, usable for other languages 

 as a out of the box GUI generator? communication & event handling 
 e.g. via TCP?

R3 is that lib

However, it still fails to be as easy to integrate as for example 
a 0MQ library

I've been out of the loop here the last few months but it seems like 
R3 is stalled again. And I do not see any signs of Carl. What's the 
overall status here?

there has been a lot of work going on with a few R3 projects.  a 
few extensions, the gui, etc.

there has also been quite a bit of work done on Red.

Any HAM-Radio guys here? Maybe this is the best channel to get in 
contact with Carl.

:D

My brother did it in the past, but sold the equipment. I really wonder, 
what are Carl's thoughts, as even my dog understands, that REBOL 
situation is in deep .... :-)

I notice ++ and --, which was discussed here:
http://www.rebol.net/cgi-bin/r3blog.r?view=0057#comments

Would it be ok to let NEXT and BACK do the job, like this:

next: func [series] [
	either word? series [
		set series system/contexts/lib/next get series
	][
		system/contexts/lib/next series
	]
]

Examples of use:

>> blk: [a b c]
== [a b c]
>> next blk
== [b c]
>> blk
== [a b c]
>> next 'blk
== [b c]
>> blk
== [b c]

it would break a lot of code, and in fact, I prefer it like it is. 
  


this being said, if we have ++/--, then I expect *these* to work 
as you just depicted

WIll it break code? Hmm, what kind of code?

all of my code  ;-)

I don't see how. Notice, NEXT in my example works just like today 
with all arguments beside words, which gives an error today.

The first part of my examples above use the new NEXT just like the 
old NEXT, we have today.

ahhh.. I just re-read your code... and was bitten by the lit-word 
evaluation again.

I didn't realize that:

either word? series [

triggers when you give a lit-word.

in this case, you are right.


except in implementation.   words carry their binding, you don't 
need (in fact shoudn't) acess it via system   

set word next get word

should be enough.

If just using NEXT instead of full path, R3 will create a stack overflow. 
The function is called NEXT, you know! ;)

But anyway, this should be changed in the native.

I guess, the reason for the stack overflow is that function body 
is rebound to local context.

ok... I just hit myself on the head a few times.  clearly, I'm not 
sharp right now.  :-)

Winblows mess with your mind! Save yourself! :)

yeah, I guess that's it.  my brain is getting fried by the sun going 
through the windows (our first full week of sun in months).

Geomol, the return values of ++ and -- are different than those of 
NEXT and BACK, which is why we have the seperate functions.

NEXT and BACK are also non-modifying (except for ports), which is 
another valuable difference.

Are you sure, that's why we have separate functions? What benefit 
is there from the return values of ++?

By "valuable difference" I don't mean that one or the other behavior 
is preferable all of the time and so we should choose one, I mean 
that both patterns of behavior are valuable in different circumstances 
and so we need to support both. Both sets of functions are needed 
in mezzanine code, as they are now.

Yes, I am sure. The different pattern of behavior was why Carl added 
++ and --, since he needed something like this for mezzzanine code.

My viewpoint is, that ++ isn't the speedy native, many people would 
expect. When using ++ on a series, a new series is created. So ++ 
take one series and produce two, one is the original, which is incremented, 
the other is the return value, which is the old series position. 
This isn't very effective from a performance perspective.


If my NEXT function was implemented in the current NEXT native, it 
didn't have to produce another series, if called with a word. This 
will mean good performance.

++ doesn't create a new series, it just increments the index of the 
reference to the same series.

Same could be done with many other natives, if they were improved 
to also take words as arguments.

It does create a new series:

>> b: [a b c]
== [a b c]
>> same? ++ b b
== false


(I know, it's the same area of memory, but we have two set of series 
variables to work on that memory.)

A series reference fits into a value slot, so returning a reference 
to the same position doesn't take any more space than returning a 
reference to a different position. This means that there is nothing 
to be gained by losing the information.

Are you saying, e.g. an integer value take up the same amount of 
memory as a series ref.? Doesn't sound very effective, but you could 
be correct. :)

(Remember a series need info about the area, the head, tail, position.)

++ and -- return a reference to the previous position in order to 
lower the need for local temporary variables to save the previous 
position when you need to. Returning it means that information is 
not lost. Technically, since ++ and -- are modifying functions they 
don't need to return anything at all. The only reason they return 
that information is because it's valuable.