World: r3wp

Small R3 update:


We can do modal popup windows now and fully borderless windows. This 
should help in building a real popup menu that isn't limited to the 
size of the main window, like in R2.

I'm building VID3 tests so we can find bugs in the layout engine.

Alpha 81 was released yesterday.

332 bug reports in the tracker.

Soft font shadows are cool. :-)

Just curious if anyone has any info on tables in vid3. They were 
pretty poor in R2 but I think they are a key element for many apps. 
I took a quick look at "turbogrid" mentioned in the Tech News forum 
and its crap. it's Ajax based.  A list-view based app in a plug in 
would blow it away.

there is a simple text list for emergency testing right now, but 
a new one will be written. I hope it will feature many of the features 
from LIST-VIEW, without taking up too much code. LIST-VIEW for R2 
is almost as big as the entire of VID3.

About plug-in...I need to change my mindset about it. I always avoided 
thinking: "Nobody wants t have to download a plug in o use your site. 
But I find myself needing to do it all the time and some of these 
new technologies like silverlight, require a download of some sort. 
 Rebol plugin downloads so fast it really is a minor annoyance. WE 
just need it on more platforms and browsers.

My take on graphical tables;  R2 had a beautiful base for this with 
list and supply.  Downside was that the documentation was so limited 
and late comming that no one could comes to grips and we all mostly 
ignored it.  We lost out on the ability to build on the shoulders 
of giants as using list and supply pretty much meant learning by 
expermentation, coding from first principles and not from tool kits 
and cookbooks.  Hopefully the power gems of R3 and VID3 will not 
suffer the same fate.

btiffin, I agree. Clear and complete documentation is essential. 
Few people will take the time to study source code. No matter how 
great a language is, it is useless unless people can easily use it 
to do what they need to do.  An inferior language that is documented 
well is very likely going to attract more users than a great language 
that no one can figure out how to use.  Core is fairly well documented 
I think, but I have never been able to get past problems in View. 
 I'm really hoping that the docs for REBOL3 will fully explain View 
and give lots of examples, especially showing how to interface view 
with databases, etc.  But writing good docs is very difficult, because 
the creators of the language know it so well that it is difficult 
for them to put themselves into a beginners shoes.  It is easy for 
them to assume that the beginner already understands things that 
, in fact, he doesn't understand at all. Anyway, I have high hopes 
for R3.  And I can do more with R2 than I ever dreamed possible, 
so I really can't complain at all.  That doesn't lower my hopes for 
better view docs though. That is the way we humans are: the more 
we get the more we want.  :>)  They call that being spoiled.

Gabrielle, I beg you if you solve the problem of 307 redirection 
wtih R3. Can you send me a link to download it ? thanks.

Rondon, we don't have SSL in R3 yet, so your script will *not* work 
with R3 yet. I will let you know once we get there.

do you have a little idea when we can download a version of R3bol 
?

probably some time early 2008. maybe earlier. :-)

Wasn't there some talk that r3 will have a new filesystem? Is this 
still going to happen?

uh, filesystem? IIRC RT was talking about RIF - rebol idexed files, 
so kind of file with header, for custom db and other purposes. That 
is all I remember ....

Davide: there is new trace mode which prints out a lot of informations.. 
for example:
>> trace on
<-- trace => unset!
>> print 1 + 2
 1: print : native! [value]
 2: 1
 3: + : op! [value1 value2]
 4: 2
<-- + => 3
3
<-- print => unset!
>>

RIF is not on the programme yet, AFAIK

Early 2008? Well, that royally messes up my planning

Judging by myself, I think a lot of REBOL projects are postponed 
waiting for stuff that doesn't come

Kaj, there is a lot of work being done. A lot needs to be finished 
before R3 can be useful for anything that R2 can't do outside benchmarking 
and a few demos. I wouldn't start planning thing until the first 
beta comes out.

Sure, I'm familiar with how it works in big projects. The point is 
that the only ones who can give try to give meaningful estimates 
are the ones doing the projects, and we all know what dates were 
promised over time

True. I've said before that those dates were completely unrealistic. 
One month from first alpha to first beta? No way. Not even if all 
of us worked 24/7.

This has been going on since time immemorial. Can you blame anyone 
but the foolhardiest fans for walking away?

Of course not. I think the problem is that people expect R3 to be 
done in a hurry, since we already have R2, so what's the big hold 
up? (and personally I think the beta date of 1st August caused more 
negative talk and damage than I think Carl expected.)

I don't need a perfect R3. I just need to make some forms and other 
simple things, but I don't want to have to redo them a few months 
later

I can say "when R3 comes out, everything will be good", but the reality 
is that there will probably be as much work after the first beta 
as has been before it.

Those expectations were entirely created

I don't need a perfect R3. I just need to make some forms... 

 <-- For that you need VID3 to be complete and the view system as 
 well. You need skins and you need a functioning event system. You 
 need keyboard input and a proper way to direct form text data to 
 objects or file storage. Furthermore since you don't want to change 
 it, we have to have the layout dialect in feature freeze, which it 
 isn't. It's currently undergoing design review, before we add more 
 features. Not simple. :-)

Than even a lot less was done so far than I thought until now. Why 
did we hear that implementing basic View would "take a day" after 
Core?

where did you hear that?

Gabriele said something to that effect when Carl opened development 
and the beta promises were still in effect

ok. that's not a good thing to say.

I understand that geeks tend to brag about their abilities, but this 
is a business that has been running for a decade, for heaven's sake

ok. I can only say, don't trust release dates until after beta is 
out. then we can talk more about it.

You're saying don't trust dates until they have become meaningless?

I'm sorry, but there is a breaking point for everyone

Kaj, I don't know what to say, other than a lot of work is being 
done. Please don't resort to planning around R3 yet. Use R2.

It's far too late for that. The promises started almost two years 
ago, as an extension of much earlier promises. You shouldn't be the 
one to field this criticism, but I am putting my reputation on the 
line for this in a number of places, and I hate to be pushed around

its seems like an issue of transparency

or lack of it

Exactly

I can understand your situation and it's an unfortunate thing. The 
only thing I can say that might help, is that there have been suggestions 
about a plan to extend the alpha to the users in this world, so experienced 
REBOLers can take a look at it and "kick the tires", so to speak.


The problem with doing that is that it creates talk. Lots of talk. 
"why is this there? why does this function do that? I don't like 
this!" We have had a TON of discussions over the design of VID3 on 
how to do this and that, and we're not done with that yet. It's very 
time consuming to do that, when one man (Gabriele) wants to sit quietly 
and work out the design on his own until it's ready. It's just faster 
that way in the long run. Every time a new guy comes in, 500 questions 
need to be answered and it's usually the same 500 questions as the 
last new guy. :-)


Ideally, no questions should be asked until after about a week of 
use and start testing it right away. If there is a problem or a bug, 
consult the bug tracker or the documentation database, look at the 
discussions and the design documents and keep out of particularly 
Carl's, Gabriele's and Cyphre's hair until they crawl out from their 
holes on their own.

Again, these demons were called up by the very people who wanted 
to avoid them

I'm in a big project myself, and there's no way you can ignore these 
issues. You have to deal with them as best you can. The world isn't 
perfect, and neither will R3 ever be

Nor its development process

RT is making it impossible to plan REBOL development. And if you 
can't plan it, you can't use it

I use R2 in all my products. Sure you can use it. I have no plan 
to move to R3 until a good time after R3.0 is done, perhaps for R3.1.

R2 is unusable in most of my designs. It might as well not exist 
for them

Well, then you will have to use something else. I also have products 
in the pipeline that are impossible to do in R2. They will be done 
in R3 in about a year.

So we just have to increase all given estimates by a year or so?

let's say 5 years, just to be sure.

You do realise this is placing REBOL outside any real market?

probably only the market that expects R3 to be done next week.