World: r3wp

another one - why do I need to explicitly state "do task"? Why there 
is extra set of brackets in make task! [[]] example?

in R3 it's called actor instead of handler, and the reason is that 
it is internally very different from r2 handlers.

ok, thanks for the actors explanation :-)

make has been changed so that it does no more take variable number 
of args

so if you want to provide a spec for the task you use a block inside 
the arg block

re tasks - it does not look natural to me ... you don't start your 
rebol script by stating [REBOL [] code-here]

you don't?

no :-)

all my scripts start with a rebol header.... do won't execute them 
otherwise :)

I can 'do %script.r, which does not contain whole script enclosed 
in special brackets ... well, it loads it into block, so actually, 
yes, but :-)

it is imo confusing - not compatible with how we specify scripts 
... but maybe I confuse it with modules. Simply put, typical rebol 
code is REBOL [header] body, not REBOL [ header] [body]

task definition looks exactly like the latter ....

afair you can:


 t: make task! [some code here] ; no spec, not sure it's supported 
 but i think so

or:

  t: make task! [[header] some code here]

without the word REBOL , that is :-)

ah, ok then ....

or maybe carl made it like make function!

make function! [[spec] [body]]

(i'm going from memory... i think modules were described as i said 
above so tasks should be similar, but function-like makes sense too 
if the header is mandatory)

anyway these are the kind of things that are going to change during 
the alpha phase in june

ie. we let some developers play with it just so that we can make 
final decisions on this stuff.

hmm, at least 4 of my msgs lost ....

seems ok now ... well, I just said that the syntax looks ugly - too 
many brackets :-)

but what is definitely issue to me is that it is not imo consistent 
with how we construct scripts ...

well it's basically going from make task! spec body to make task! 
reduce [spec body]

and task for me is kind of higher level construct as script or modules 
are ... well, kind of "instance" of "environment"

so you just write a wrapper task: func [header body] [make task! 
reduce [header body]]

if you look at it this way... i'd actually want it to not support 
the above example at all.

ok, so then take my note for the discussions .... pekr did not like 
task syntax :-)

:)

btw - could scheme be seens as a "class" for port?

yes, i think carl described it exactly like that.

or is scheme different things? It seems to me it contains mostly 
definitions?

aha, ok .... at some point, Carl blogged about classes/objects in 
R3, but maybe I am confused? What happened to that concept? IIRC 
it was related to some low level stuff, to save memory or something 
like that ...

carl hasn't mentioned that at the devcon.

imho it's not really that important once you have user types.

was it that one? http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0035.html

we will have user types?

yes... carl said he had some issues while implementing them

implementing what? classes, or custom user types?

if we will have custom user types, isn't it what you wanted? :-)

I am sure you will not like following, but I would rename mutex - 
that is typical IT related term, which makes sense to programmers, 
but which has no particular meaning to me.  Why not 'lock? or anyting 
else?

Mutex is an ugly term. But it is precise. Lock could mean several 
things, including shared locks rather than exclusive locks.

custom user types (question above)

Semaphore? Longer, I know.

Semaphore sounds more logical .... it at least means something ....

and most amiga coders already know about what it means ;-)

which is probably about 95% of rebolers, I guess.

well, I used Amiga Basic once...

not exactly the pinnacle of programming :-)

the one by Microsoft, distributed with OS1.3? :)