World: r4wp

I actually had to do something like that once, a configuration file 
contained a bunch of strings in english and they needed them in spanish 
but weren't willing to actually get someone to translate them. So.. 
I used Google Translate.

Did they actually use the result? :-)

Of course!

Legal told them they needed Spanish, but metrics told them no one 
used the Spanish site. So it just had to be sorta right.

And that was maybe 5 years ago, so I'm sure Google Translate is better 
than it was. A context free dictionary conversion from one word to 
another in a different language would probably not give the desired 
result.

Our crown prince got himself in trouble at a speech in Mexico, for 
the only reason that our crown princess, and probably by extension 
his translators, are Argentinian and a certain Spanish word meant 
something else in Mexico than it does in Argentina :-)

(Unless you just mean keywords, with predictable meanings.)

Ah yes, I learned some Spanish from an Argentinian friend, the results 
when speaking to Mexican or Puerto Ricans were.. embarassing.

:-)

Spanish dialects are a bit more intense than English ones it seems. 
English dialets tend to be unintelligable, very few words mean something 
offensive to others.

Hm, there are several words that change to embarassing between English 
and Dutch

English is closer to Dutch than say German, but had been seperated 
for so long that I can imagine the drift meaning, not just pronunciation, 
is significant.

Afrikaans is an offshoot of Dutch and they seem to have incorporated 
a lot of interesting slang.

Yes, there are also such cases between Dutch and German :-)

Question about Red, as I understand it, the Parser and Compiler are 
written in REBOL, but the Runtime is written in Red?

Just going from the source code I can see on GitHub

Really nice website (red-lang.org) by the way.

Kaj: your two new issues have been fixed, let me know if it works 
fine with your code now.

I just saw it happening. :-) Thanks!

Anthony, the current runtime is written in Red/System, to be precise

The parser and compiler will be rewritten in Red once it's ready

And Red/System is a subset/simplification of Red?

I think Red is built on top of Red/System, which is meant to have 
C-like performance. Red/System can also be inlined in Red code.

Hi Henrik, BrianH requested you (or your automated system) invite 
me, I don't know if we've actually spoken before.

That makes Red/System sound like a VM

We probably haven't. :-)

I better let someone more experienced with Red answer that one, before 
I screw something up. :-)

I just ask a lot of questions. Especially right now, since I'm fumbling 
along building my first programming language.

ACook: you can see Red/System as a human-friendly VM if you want. 
;-) But it's more than that, because it allows you to access very 
low-level system or hardware features directly.

Does it do platform abstraction for those low level features, or 
are they platform dependent?

It does abstract everything that can be abstracted, currently, IIRC, 
only FPU options (system/fpu/* properties) are platform-specific.

One thing I'm torn on when it comes to VMs is if I need to write 
my own at all. I know I will have to write a Bootstrapping language 
as an intermediary, but I'm thinking it might be a waste of time 
when LLVM has such aggressive optimization for compilation and also 
supports JIT - both of which I'd have to write myself otherwise.

LLVM is a good choice if you really want a VM (Red/System is more 
a standalone language than a VM).

Of course.

Yes Jerry wants that.

for making Chinese Alias

Doc, aliases are used in R3 internally to implement case-insensitive 
words. Explicit use of the ALIAS function is rare and unsafe though, 
so it's been recommended that the function be removed.

How much of an overhead is there from using this mechanism over alias:

  my-alias-of-print: :print

No overhead, but it's not equivalent to an alias.

Brian: I think that was the case for R2 too? I used the same trick 
in r-sharp, so ALIAS was coming almost for free.

Isn't Red/System more the runtime environtment for Red? Like for 
Smalltalk or Oberon systems?

No, I don't think so. The Red runtime is written in Red/System. Red/System 
compiles to machine code.

I suspect that the Red runtime will be linked into Red executables 
rather than exist as a separate file.

Doc, aliases weren't used that way in R2. R2 stores the word strings 
using the case that the word was first loaded in. When you load subsequent 
words of the same name, they display with the case that the first 
one had. In R3 words are case-preserving, displaying with the case 
they had when they were loaded, even if other words with the same 
name have different cases. I prefer the R3 method, it's a good system, 
though it does lead to some confusion from people used to R2. For 
instance, they compare like strings:
>> 'a = 'A
== true
>> 'a == 'A
== false
>> 'a =? 'A
== false

Peter: exactly.

Brian, that was REBOL 1. REBOL 2 is case preserving.

>> [a A ab Ab aB AB]
== [a A ab Ab aB AB]

Well, IMO than it's not really so clearly stated. Taking a look at 
chart 10, confuses me.  Maybe it's the wording. Doc, I would simplify 
all this to more commone terms to make it as simple as possible for 
new users.

So, Red Compiler is like the first C++ compilers that emitted C code, 
but emits Red System language?

A reduced dialect?

Yes, except that Red/System is designed to fit Red, and Red will 
pass code to Red/System efficiently in loaded block form, instead 
of text form that the C compilers had to parse again