World: r3wp

When you consider that all of the platform-specific code is in the 
host, it's obvious.

No, I have always planned on the basis of a shared library, which 
is standard practice and was promised

I' ve been trying to do the very same thing defending REBOL in all 
those years, for example in the Syllable project. It's very hard

If it turns out that more broken promises make R3 unusable for me, 
my only saviour will be Boron

I will have been made to wait for half a decade for nothing

We'll see. I didn't know that Syllable was open-source only - I was 
keeping it in mind as a platform to be supported. By hybrid-source 
builds, but still a planned target platform. I'm sure having Boron 
as a R3 kernel replacement would be possible, as long as it is license 
compatible.

Syllable is an open source project and was always clearly presented 
as such. We do that for one overriding reason only: to never get 
in the Atari/Amiga/RiscOS/BeOS situation again, where commercial 
entities destroy your platform

Kaj, do you realize that the entire host and kernel combination could 
be a shared library? That would solve your startup problems without 
the performance hit. Or you could split your host into platform-abstraction 
and platform-integration portions and then dynamically link between 
those parts. It's just putting the split between the host code and 
the kernel that doesn't make sense.

I know that Syllable is itself an open source project, but I thought 
that you would allow close-source applications to run on it. Especially 
freely distributable ones.

Yes, applications. By considering closed system components I am treading 
a very fine line. We can never make the base system dependent on 
closed components, for the very reasons we are discussing now

I always presented REBOL as our cross-platform strategy. As such, 
I have defended part of it being closed

The host-as-plugin-for-other-app is one of the models that R3 was 
designed for. That means dynamic linking.

Then why do you say there will be no dynamic library?

I say that there will be no dynamic split between the host and kernel, 
for practical reasons (performance drops like a stone). I don't say 
that you can't make a statically linked host and kernel into a dynamic 
library that other things can link to.

There is no problem with replacing the closed portions of R3 with 
open source clones, afaik. Except license incompatibility of course.

kaj, the main reason for the close source is to prevent as much of 
linux-like split as possible to the *Language*.

the platform is a totally independent aspect of REBOL.

It' s up to Carl to choose a license that will either unify or divide 
efforts

But we'll find out for sure soon, don't worry.

I know the philosophical underpinnings of REBOL, but we also know 
where they have gotten us so far

In Syllable, we are building a unified system out of open source 
components

afaik, Carl wishes the core to be linked in any situation.  There 
are still a few things I'd like in the core to migrate to host, but 
as I know Carl, factual experimentation has more weight than theoretical 
ideas.

Kaj, there are certain licenses that can't be chosen because of things 
like this. *GPL is one of these. Parts of R3 will be closed source, 
so licenses that reject that won't be compatible. If you have a problem 
with that, ask Karl to relicense Boron as Classpath.

so once we have the host and Carl realized that he'd waste less time 
giving us a bit more control, there is a chance for a bit more core->host 
migration still.

Maxim, yes, it would be a great surprise to me if Carl would put 
a bomb under the linking abilities

he just want to protect the language so that we don't end up with 
things like a version of REBOL with commas everywhere... ;-)

... the horror :( ...

I thought that' s called a dialect? :-)

hehe... a dialect still has to obey the syntax rules... commas are 
specifically designed *out* of the language.

Not if you do string parsing

but that is not a dialect.  its not valid rebol.

But that' s a different subject, that touches on my CMS

anyhow.... Boron is interesting, I hope there will be a way to bridge 
it and R3 at some point.

Yes

Concerning the license, there' s no need to be alarmist. If contributors 
work under BSD, both R3 and Boron can use it

The boron.exe is tiny at 7.5kb ... do you have some examples of what 
you are using it for?

the boron.dll is 93 kb

This is the fisrt open source REBOL interpreter with working downloadable 
Windows binaries that I've seen.  I can't believe that I never found 
those download links before.  I think that this should be promoted 
more!

Nice!

Boron

)> t: now loop 10000000 [a: div mul sub add 11 2 3 4 5] print ["time:" 
sub now t]
time: 0:00:04.797

R2

>> t: now/precise loop 10000000 [a: divide multiply subtract add 
11 2 3 4 5] print ["time:" difference  now/precise t]
time: 0:00:07.594

R3

>> t: now/precise loop 10000000 [a: divide multiply subtract add 
11 2 3 4 5] print ["time:" difference  now/precise t]
time: 0:00:07.563

Well, that is just one example. But guys - unless anyone shows me 
a complete working clone, not just some subset, it has to be regarded 
being a crap :-)

Such projects might be a good testbed for some new or different ideas, 
but I am carefull in becoming too excited about them. What is the 
purpose of "clone", e.g. Orca, which has something like 50% of natives 
available only? Other thing is the project potential - dunno why 
- maybe because we trusted in RT, or because our community was too 
small, there was not much of a progress with any clone we ever heard 
about. Unless that changes, I want finished R3, because that is right 
now the shortest path to having "new powerfull REBOL" ....

Sure, we all want that, but that's quite different from anything 
else being crap if it doesn't match R3 to the last bit

Nick, I think R# and ORCA also had Windows binaries many years ago

Graham, I'm not using Boron yet, but as you know, some of the Syllable 
system tools are written in ORCA. I'll port them to Boron when I 
get to it

Kaj, do you have a Windows binary of Orca available?

I'm sure there would be an an enormous learning curve for me, but 
I'm really tempted to spend some time digging into this source...

There was also a REBOL clone on .NET that some french group started, 
don't remember the name.

Just wondering what you can do with a clone that has no ports ... 
can it read and write files?  Do cgi ?

Graham - you are requesting too advanced functionality? :-)

Why? You're in luck: Boron just got ports

Nick, there's not much point in digging into the ORCA source. It's 
superceded by Boron