World: r3wp

and many functions use callbacks too.  some just to implement "I'm 
done" type async stuff.

so this means we can be as accomplished as vb.net ?

as long as we can map the entire .net spec (probably through mono), 
in theory yes.

Graham - no, not complicated. It is about what reboltutorial suggests 
- how can REBOL be successful, if it can't integrate to business 
systems? Scala is becoming popular. I would like to use REBOL at 
my work. So - how do I query Active Directory, to get me listing 
of users? Bzzz ... you can't easily do such stuff with REBOL. REBOL 
is cool, but a bit in an isolation.

Me too .. I'd like to use a lot of stuff that I simply can't

again, SWIG might be the solution here... this whole topic needs 
a lot of research.

IIRC e.g. Robert is using comlib to access MS Excel API. Without 
it, he could not use REBOL at all for the task given. He does NOT 
code in .NET, he uses its API to get access to systems, apps, and 
their data ...

swig??

a tool which scans entire repositories of C/C++ code and builds bindings 
for various interpreted language... its one of the reasons python 
gets everything first... its totally integrated into SWIG... for 
example, SWIG was used to build the python OpenGL binding.  its just 
a question of getting the .h or the sources.  and then saying... 
I want to use it in [select language].

how big SWIG is? How do you work using it?

http://www.swig.org/

so building an R3 extension output module for it means OTHERS, non 
rebolers could provide the tools for us for free as part of their 
distros.

its not a simple system AFAICT, but a lot of people are using it, 
and its code parser is VERY complete and is used for VERY LARGE projects.

I guess you would build extensions per DLL. one for openGL, one for 
SQLite, one for audio, etc. no crisscrossing?

exactly... in fact, OpenGL provides the .lib files directly, so you 
in fact compile your own OpenGL DLL directly... no need to double 
reference the DLL  :-)

which is what SWIG basically does directly.  once a C library (.lib 
.so or .dll) is mapped to SWIG you can export it into any output 
module you want... since MANY libs have already been setup for SWIG, 
providing an output module for R3 extensions means we'd have access 
to many libraries right away.  no need to do the complicated work, 
just a one-line command saying basically, give me access to that 
for rebol .

The essence would be to make this work as painlessly as possible 
for developers. If it takes to download a single DLL and load it 
with one line of code to make R3 magically do extra stuff, that's 
the way it should be.

1. REBOL 3
2. SQLite
3. Profit!

Sounds like this should be a high priority for the team at Sassenranch 
...

yep. I'm pretty sure SQLite provides the .lib as part of its dev 
distro.. so we could either:

   -build the Rebol-SQLite wrapper as an extension using the static 
   lib so it contains both SQLite itself and the wrapper... 

   -Load the DLL dynamically.  but then if the DLL doesn't match your 
   extension's expected version, it won't load.

welcome to DLL hell  ;-)


this being said if DLL is registered properly, you can ask for a 
specific version and it will be returned since Windows can have multiple 
versions of any DLL installed concurrently.

with callbacks (devices?), there is no need to keep bugging Carl 
about A LOT of things people keep complaining about.  :-)

SQLite ... I am trying my first steps with C language, and I would 
really like to prefer DLL in DLL wrapper. While it might seem as 
being complicated, Ashley's driver uses something like 6-10 functions 
from the whole library? Having wrapped DLL in such a way has a huge 
advantage - each new version of SQLite does not require you to rebuild 
your Extension numbers the platforms you are porting to. And SQLite 
frequent releases are happening quite often ...

we should move to Extensions group ...

ARM announced DualCore 2 GHz A9-Cortex core CPUs, which consume 250mW 
under full load. Impressive. Apple is rumoured to use those CPUs 
in their upcoming tablet device:


http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1533877/dual-core-arm-chips-apple-tablets

Finally devices with battery lasting for several days, not several 
hours, possible? We'll see ... good times ahead :-)

the gfx card is responsible for a lot of the watts being consumed... 
more than any recent cpu in any case.

we can build fanless high-performance CPUs but high-performance fanless 
GPU are still not really a reality afaik

Maxim - you are wrong - nVidia's Tegra based device is claimed to 
offer devices lasting 25 days on battery. We will see :-)

are they shipping yet?

and are they "high-performance"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p69T3cWHBs

looks pretty good.  :-)

holy shit!!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MnHb0UNsEs&NR=1

real time tracking in 3d space, real-time color-keying.... simultaneously!

finally someone giving the iphone a bit to think about innovation 
 :-)

Google puts forward a new language: Noop:
http://code.google.com/p/noop/

I saw that one - but not all on Google Code is from Google :)

Forget what I said - apparently this one is.

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

This is interesting.

Yeah .. let us know if it works

taking over the web  one browser at a time ;-)

WinCE 6.0 R3 released, with a new UI based on Silverlight with a 
native code backend instead of .NET:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/Microsoft-Brings-Silverlight-Windows-7-Connectivity-to-Windows-Embedded-CE-275855/

Interesting - where are they heading with WinCE? Really interesting 
...

Well, it's the foundation for their phone platform, and so they have 
to pull out all of the stops due to the competition.

Microsoft releases code for "multikernel" research OS - Barrelfish 
- 


http://www.osnews.com/story/22241/Microsoft_Releases_Code_for_Multikernel_Research_OS_Barrelfish_


Most of us are probably aware of Singularity, a research operating 
system out of Microsoft Research which explored a number of new ideas, 
which is available as open source software. Singularity isn't the 
only research OS out of Microsoft; they recently released the first 
snapshot of a new operating system, called Barrelfish. It introduces 
the concept of the multikernel, which treats a multicore system as 
a network of independent cores, using ideas from distributed systems.

Credit: News taken from OSNews.com

Another MS Research OS - Helios ... sounds like a distributed REBOL 
:-)


Helios is an operating system designed to simplify the task of writing, 
deploying, and tuning applications for heterogeneous platforms. Helios 
introduces satellite kernels, which export a single, uniform set 
of OS abstractions across CPUs of disparate architectures and performance 
characteristics. Access to I/O services such as file systems are 
made transparent via remote message passing, which extends a standard 
microkernel message-passing abstraction to a satellite kernel infrastructure. 
Helios retargets applications to available ISAs by compiling from 
an intermediate language.


http://www.osnews.com/story/22251/Another_Microsoft_Research_Operating_System_Helios

Was not something called Helios connected to the Transputer chips 
theye were working on for use with the Amiga way back when...

Don't remember anything Helios and Amiga name related. The chip which 
was supposed to replace AAA chipset (even AAA was never released, 
but if it would, it would save Amiga for another 5 years) was called 
Hombre, and it was done by Dr. Ed Hepler. It allowed to interconnect 
more chips. Interesting thing is, that if was CPU + GPU in one chip. 
Simply put - once again Amiga 10 or more years ahead of the competitors, 
as nowadays it is being regarded very modern to provide unified chipsets 
like that :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset

http://jwz.livejournal.com/1096401.html


Experience with developing and distributing an app for the Palm Pre.

There was another side project using transputer chips (not sure if 
it was Commador project) that allowed multiple transputers to multi-process. 
THe first board contained four transputers but theoretically there 
was no limit to the number of transputers and the gain in process 
power was linear and did not level off as regular processors do (or 
did back then). I think Helios had something to do with it...