World: r4wp

I got the red-core interpreter running here btw. That was easy. But 
I miss a HELP function in there.

And I see a lot of functions, so it seems to have come quite a way, 
but no DO of scripts?

Gregg is working on HELP and WHAT, but it seems to have stalled

I/O is not in Red, only in my extensions. DO is the internal interpreter, 
so it doesn't know about my I/O. It's a good point, I should try 
to override DO

You can start a script when you give its name on the command line, 
even a URL

I think, it would be a lot easier for e.g. Gregg to create mezzanines, 
if he could do a script with them, like cortex.w and rebol.w in World.

ok

Yes, I'll look into it

How are Red scripts named? .r or .red or what?

.red but it doesn't really matter

Note that, even if DO and LOAD currently don't work on files, you 
can still use:

DO READ %file

DO READ "url"

ok, good enough for now, I guess.

Red HELP func made some decent progress, but I stopped work on it 
because of some issues, and I didn't want to distract Doc until he's 
done with Android.

I looked at REBOL WHAT function, Kaj mentioned. I don't think, I've 
ever used it. Is it commonly used by you guys?

Almost never for me.

BTW, my Red HELP experiment is here, under %Red/mezz/. You can paste 
it into a Red console to test.

Ah, yes. One issue was that calling HELP with no arg crashes the 
interpreter.

I might have stopped until we have errors in Red, because debugging 
by crashing is hard. ;-)

yeah :)

But also shows that you can still do a lot in Red, even without it. 
Most of the mezz code I did works.

WHAT is quite essential on Try REBOL for new users

It's never struck me as a great name. I just always use HELP. e.g. 
HELP function!

It's very introductory, like What, Why, When, Where. You need that 
before you know to do HELP function!

I found a bug in the interpreter that currently prevents me from 
overriding DO:

https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/issues/482

Except, we don't have WHY, WHEN, or WHERE. ;-)

World should have a WHY??? :)

I don't see how that devalues WHAT. :-) And R3 has WHY?

I don't remember which, but I think there are old computer systems 
that list available commands with WHAT

WHAT is to find out what stuff is attached under an object. I use 
(d) it a lot with VID, finding out which field was filled with what 
value to see how I could go about dynamically change the properties 
like captions and values and colors.

Arnold, isn't that what HELP (or the ? short) is used for? WHAT seems 
to "Prints a list of globally-defined functions.".

You are completely right, I stand corrected. Sorry, mixed them up, 
not using it as much lately.

Would it makes sense to add languages like Verilog as target / code 
backend to Red/System?

Probably the WHAT has served an important purpose during development 
of REBOL?

I couldn't say. I don't have any memory of WHAT, until it was mentioned 
here yesterday.

I used WHAT many times, and also  when showing/demonstrating rebol 
to other people, what is built in

If someone needs verilog, they can add it (or pay Doc to). I need 
I/O and some networking, and the core stuff like errors and objects.

Yeah, I was just thinking, if it makes sense at all to include a 
language like Verilog in the way, Red/System is made today. I haven't 
looked deeper into it. Maybe it makes more sense to create a cross-compiler 
from Red/System to Verilog and such, totally independent of the code 
backend found in Red/System?


Maybe Red/System could be the base for all different kind of hardware.

I would probably think to implement as a high level dialect in Red 
that compiles down.

Isn't that the other way around? I want to go from Red/System source 
to Verilog and other similar languages for different hardware. I 
don't want to start with a Verilog program and end up with what Red/System 
produces.

Doc wants to program FPGA CPUs dynamically one day, so there is a 
sensible route in there somewhere

What I mean is, I want to write the Verilog/VHDL dialect in Red, 
and have it compile down.

Gregg, you have a fine taste of useful tech ;-)

I guess this is a huge task. If you look at the Xilinx ISE Pack and 
the prices they are asking...

There is a free Web version but this one only supports the very small 
units with max. 24k LC, not enough todo usefull things.

But of course a Verilog/VHDL dialect would be more than cool. Meanwhile 
OpenCL/CUDA would be nice as well.

@Doc: found problem about console windows. I use the function _system() 
twice so I have two windows so it is my fault, sorry.

Doc, is your plan for Red PARSE to use R2 dialect, or R3's?

I am for R3 including enhancements, but Doc does not plan to support 
features like to [a | b | c]. Whereas I am almost refusing to use 
parser without it, Doc seem to be against stuff, which would eventually 
slow down the parser. And as the parser will be most probably implemented 
by Gabriele, we might get some compile rules or something like that. 
I am for R3 compatibility though ...

I agree that TO [a | b] is very important in a parser. I was surprised 
when I found that R2 doesn't do it

Isn't it just a nice thing to have? You write less, yes, but you 
could just parse for
	[to a | to b]


Some might even argue, that if you have a lot of alternate rules, 
it is more readable to have the keyword, TO, together with the alternates.

Geomol,
    [to a | to b]
is not equivalent (not even nearly) to
    to [a | b]