AltME groups: search

Well, I am not sure how well RT did their homework? ;-) Users asked 
to coordinate PR activity, LNS announced, /Coop only planned, no 
real stuff to try and links on announcement page are broken, oh my 
;-)

Well, I am not sure how well RT did their homework? ;-) Users asked 
to coordinate PR activity, LNS announced, /Coop only planned, no 
real stuff to try and links on announcement page are broken, oh my 
;-)

posted in bold ... as I think about it, someone should try to call 
RT and notify them of broken links before Carl leaves on trip, or 
the announcement is not usable ...

24 kb of source code?  Wow - thats technically very impressive, but 
it doesnt help in marketing when you compare a .NET install of 1 
CD or Visual Studio .NET 3CDs and about 40 minutes of effort. Perhaps 
RT needs to pad it out to give it that weight of credibility.

At least coders are very easy to persuade. I created a graphical 
Windows CD menu for a coder in about 10 minutes using Rebol/View 
and Payload from scratch. Before that, he had no idea if he'd need 
to use Visual Studio for that and spend a week on it. An argument 
here: "It allows you to get your job done."

Hm, our Syllable convention was reported on a Danish site, and it 
immediately spawned what I called an ABS movement (Anything But Syllable) 
in which every imaginable operating system was mentioned as an alternative, 
instead of responding to the subject. There could easily be an Anything 
But REBOL movement, as well...

Rebol is about the technology. Success or failure in the market is 
about the marketing. Marketing is about perception. People who make 
buy decisions are not technically in the know, so its a percption 
game. Even if the facts fly in the face of what they espouse to be 
right, they will fall back to the idea that "the bigger the better". 
You have to counter that concept and still not have the technology 
written off as a "nice trick" or "toy technology".

guys, that is completly unrealistic as 1) RT's site simply sucks 
2) Announcement page contains broken links 3) It is still kind of 
vaporware announcement like Amiga Inc. did and bad habit of RT - 
announcing things BEFORE they are ready 4) if it would be ready, 
there should be some thought out code/service examples on-line, with 
real-life functionality exposed, so actually ppl could try something 
usefull 5) What is Scot doing as marketing manager if the position 
still exists? RT just can't mean it that way, right? Producing ultra 
cool sw will not help you, if not marketed properly, at least here 
in Europe

no, as Carl said he leaves for a trip and asked us to do so ;-)

And as I said - some real service example should be provided - as 
someone mentioned in other channel - why not to wrap just simple 
"Hello word"?

and language components - do you remember? It was there just to distract 
ppl from R# back at that time imo, it was even removed rom announcement 
page later ;-)

Agree totally Pekr. This altme world is about technical achievements 
and possibilities of Rebol. No debate about how good it can be, but 
there isn't any cohesive marketing going on. No blogging, no search 
engine strategies, no PR announcements to the right people, a dearth 
of both Rebol powered products and even the experts are crying out 
for some basic stuff to be fixed.  My guess is that even the rebol 
evangelists use it as "secret weapon" so that they don't get told 
to put their toys away and get back to real languages like C++ or 
Java. [off soapbox]

Pekr, what is proper marketing? Its a very difficult issue.. but 
you know that i assume.. I dont know what the difference is between 
europe and the rest of the world but I do know that it succes depends 
for 90% on "Accepted Vision of the product!" by the public (Public 
can be anything..) One thing is sure , Rebol is still its time ahead 
with many things and thats a disadvantage currently because of the 
mis-intepreted use of Rebol by the rest of the world. (thats what 
i think). Still i think the RT is overflowed by exciting and needed 
to publish towards the community "some" release. But i could be very 
wrong here as well because i only observe Rebol marketing from a 
birdview..

Rebolinth - all true. But release to the community should not apper 
on the website. TLA was not consulted. Carl could easily told us 
his choice and let us check. Now Ladislav posted link, which could 
make alredy announced TLA unusable ...

proper marketing

 - I too don't know what to do exactly, but I do know, that such things 
 do take time. I would start defining - WHAT I want to say, to WHO 
 I want to say it, and I woudl start with new website ...

For me in person? Then, RT is selling me a construction with vision 
and future. For the rest of the world i would not know.. But what 
i do know is that it could take 10 more years befor the Name "Rebol" 
pops up where it should. Thats not a marketing issue that an evolution.. 
how unfortunatly that might be..

Well thats good. So now you reverse that it determine what key words 
someone would search for so that Rebol websites would pop up. Some 
how I don't think you'd look for "vision" or "ahead of its time", 
but you would want to zero in on "rapid development multi or cross 
platform development internet protocols messaging " etc ... and start 
feeding the Search engines these sites linked to these words. If 
you go to rebol.com and do a "view source"  see how many hits you 
get on those words.

Sunanda - those a good points. So search the rebol web server log 
and see what the key words were that got hits from the SE. Start 
building pages that maximize those key words, have links back to 
your main Rebol sites and feed the SE with these links. Its an interative 
process that takes time and effort. At the moment all we see is time 
being spent.

That's the way I do it in other fields.

Plus think a bit wider -- there must be a market for people who want 
something better/differemt to Perl or PHP etc.  We don't have the 
appropriate comparison/conversion documents.  Not marketing rah-rah 
about REBOL, but some straight-forrward comparsions that show strengths 
and weaknesses.
Maybe we should swicth to Advocacy.....

But surely one of  its strength is in dealing with internet protocols 
and thats where most people look for solutions in this field.  What 
is the Core problem?

In my opinion the "core" are the conservatives... Those who stick 
with what they have and know and dont risk a change because its too 
expencive on their budget/knowledge...

I.e. the problem with introducing REBOL into a BIG software development 
compagny is that the developers are always willing to try a change! 
but the total package of moving from 1 development enviroment to 
the other is far to complicated and expensive to do it.. So they 
stick with what  "others" use  and do, without thinking through the 
whole picture.. Its a pitty but a fact though.. Still if a development 
compagny would start directly (or on a new project) with i.e. REBOL 
the change that it will have success if far greater. Well....getting 
to that stage is difficult because REBOL is unknown... Its like "air" 
to the people, so you have to put time into it.. (There is no time 
inside big compagnies..there is only time in technology enhanced 
compagny's that do research. So you miss a market...) Anyway a nice 
topic which keeps me sometimes thinking about "Who promoted the Wheel.. 
;-)" It was an evolution... And indeed Internet promotion is part 
of this evolution so please continue ;-)

words like "too incredible" and "spooky" (rough translation) pop 
up :-)

Its hard to keep the mouth shut when its exciting, but its easier 
on the nerves and its also easier to change the priorites as they 
evolve without getting too much negative feedback.

rebol is an integrated solution.  NO OTHER LANGUAGE is soo  integrated 
a part for java, and IMHO just because its much more mature.   Managing 
databases, GUI, Image processing, drawing, doing cgi scripting, out 
of the box), working on direct tcp port in 1-2 lines of code, mails, 
and all of this in ONE no-install 500k  file!

IMHO managers want solutions which solve their dept. needs.  but 
they don't really care about other depts. so what happens (in all 
companies I've worked at) is that you end up having upwards to 6-10 
different applications working in parralel with duplicated (and usually 
out of sync) data.

IOS helps, but the actuall applications aren't very powerfull or 
compelling yet.   and when dealing with large companies which focus 
on tool sets, they don't see the benefit of having all the data available 
as one pool of data.   So the IOS demo is a tough one IMHO.

The web still drives some major application development.  The company 
I work for has now switched to a ticketing system (for technical 
support) to a web based application.   The application is able to 
be access remotely via portal mobile devices.  However the application 
is very cumbersome and adds to the costs the customer must pay in 
the long run.

nice volker MDP-GUI needs find / highligt and replace/hightligt systeme 
 ;)

Ditto. I'll be replacing my office and home PC's with Mac minis once 
10.4 is out.

Working as field technical support we see and feel the process that 
drives platform choice.  Its all about Common Operating Environments 
and it takes more than just fancy features.  It takes a robust support 
framework designed around a productive platform to break the hold 
of companies like Microsoft Dell and Intel partnerships.

Microsoft dell and intel are hudge companies because they share the 
market. It's not the same for apple (witch was saved by microsoft 
in 1996 ...) . When Apple, sun, or amiga design a new system they 
design all the hardware and the OS and the developers tools (or they 
help another company to handle this task) as they are alone to make 
in line this new solution they will produce to a more expansive cost. 
This will dynamicly brings down the amount they can sell. That's 
not a new issue that strategy was thinked in the very begin of MS 
Windows OS. In front of MAchintosh how could MS  apport a more competive 
solution (hardware more cheep but having a more attractiv price than 
what was planned by Apple ...).

today you enter a secretary office there is windows XP  every where 
you enter a publisher/graphist maker you have apple every where? 
As there is less publisher than secretary  this explain as a short 
cut why there is sutch difference. When you enter a astronom office 
you have sun Sparc every where. As you get less astronom than plublisher 
you understand the difference betwin Apple and Sun :). Some people 
needs simplicity of use others need fiability of use. Then you have 
the rounding industry those building the sourrounded technologies 
in all cases they need to sell a lot this explain for example why 
a comon SONY MP3 sevice came with drivers to plug it to a PC equiped 
with windows and why they not giving apps and drvers to handle it 
under linux and unix.

for example here in france macs are pretty well implented in university 
because they are simple to manage in hight number. In hoght schools 
you get windows but you get lesser computer to manage (In my hight 
school in 1997 they was only 30 computers equiped with windows with 
a controled acces for the students you can use it only on certain 
days of the weeks durring a gived time. When I ingress to university 
they was 200 macs for every one  to use every time 100 windows pc 
to be used on restricted time and 20 Alphas/linux debian + 10 Sillicon 
graphics 02 with IRIX + 3 data severs (2 sun ultra 1 (X11 sharing) 
 + 1 dec 50 (NFS, mail, web ) + 40 Xteminal box for former computer 
ingeneer  ) MAc and PC was used for office application LINUX/UNIX 
computers was used to form computer ingeneer .This shows pretty well 
I think the world clivage in informatic :)

Kru and Christian -- Both excellent!

Now this is interesting ...

Email: [holger-:-rebol-:-com]

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For those on Firefox,

a RIX search plugin here:
http://neusteps.com/sw/rix.zip

1. Unzip
2. Move rix.src, rix.png to firefox searchplugin folder
3. Close and launch browser.

I use View for the frontend, and use rugby for the encrypted comms.

So Rugby runs as a server on its own port and I'd have to poke a 
hole in my firewall?

The only problem I have noted is that occasionally my application 
goes crazy memory wise, and cpu jumps to max .. which fortunately 
can only be 50% on a hyperthreaded pentium 4 cpu :) 

I think the problem may be with Rebol and ODBC, and will try to port 
to Postgresql and use Dockimbels driver instead of odbc.

Graham: I just tested some of my scripts with rebcmd2512531.exe and 
so far it seems, that  the problems with odbc and catch seems to 
be gone. I am really curious, if that would cure your problem too.

Ok, I have removed the view components from my server, and will now 
see if odbc works without going crazy.  Trouble is, it may take some 
weeks before this happens :(

Some weeks in real time or some weeks in  a test environment.

I log every action and message of my servers, so that I can play 
them again in a shorter time, but in the same sequence.

It's not released .. but ask politely, and you can get a copy

how many templating concepts do we have now? Let'S sum it up? I do 
remember shlik.org RSP, Magic! and Maxim planned something too, no?

ok, thanks - now my questions - Chayanee with RSP and Magic!  are 
two different products, right?

RSP and magic are completely different products, yes.  Same idea, 
but differente everything else.

not sure .... but I will know very soon now - finishing some databases 
for my friend, I will let designer do his work and produce some templates. 
Those templates have to be displayable without touching rebol ...

Hello, there is also FastMagic!, a refactoring of Magic! to work 
in FastCGI mode... It also add some usefeull tags like <rebol:include> 
<rebol:if>, <rebol:forall> and <rebol:make-doc-pro>. Rebol Directory 
is being developped with it and the code is available at d2740.servadmin.com/~francois/. 
You will find both fastmagic! code and the code of Rebol Directory 
as well...

And you can switch from FastCGI to CGI but modifying the flag mod-fastcgi 
in the file fmagic.r

The problem is I did not use such system in praxe, so maybe I develop 
it on my own (very simple first version) to actually better understand 
needs of the cooperation between me and our designer ... then I can 
eventually choose one which fits best ....

Maybe the designer could make own suggestions? Making a demo-page 
where he marks up in a way he would like. And we figure out how to 
translate that in a parsert.

you simply don't put ANY tags into your page ... you simply use advantage 
of 'class and 'id elements, where 'id is unique identifier, e.g. 
table number, and 'class is simply a class :-) - repetitive object 
of some kind (e.g. column)

maybe parsing could be done with a prefix-tag. 
 <fill-data><tabel> ... </table>

and the parser figures out where the next tag (the table here) ends.

and there is the main function temple-map-data, which in combination 
with above functions finds particular element (e.g. table) and in 
repetitive manner maps data into structure - it replaces those elements 
...

so - my deisnger e.g. does table, assigns it 'id or not, does e.g. 
two rows as an example of the design, and via temple-map-data you 
map it ....

no mixture of data and code, aproach, which should go into trashcan 
;-) It was imo developed by by php freaks, who do both - design and 
coding. Such stuff is not able to work unless you put it into production 
environment ...

Gabriele just admitted, it can be slow ... you simply has template.html 
- your designer is completly free to replace it not knowing single 
line of REBOL, then you have your engine - temple, and then your 
temple script (those map-data find-by-class etc. instructions)

often those things can be speedd upby caching/compiling. You parse 
the pagew, store this find-by-class data in a file and use that on 
request.

the thing I really don't like is - original html code structure (pretty 
formatting is lost), as html code is generated back from "DOM" (rebol 
blocks of blocks) ... I don't like it, but well, otherwise you would 
have to remember original position in original html template and 
things could become tricky ...

yes :-) I really found temple being kind of different of other templating 
systems and being really smart ....

ask Gabrile - he sent me one version one and a half year ago privately 
- dunno if there was any developement or not ....

I also wonder what is ReMark about, but it will be tagging too .... 
as I said - I will try similar aproach to Temple ... and the concept 
sounds really cool, maybe it would be worth to start it under the 
Ashley's wings :-), as RebDB and RebGUI - so documented from the 
beginning, etc :-)

and how is it done with other systems?

francois: Temple can match any tag. not just by id and class, but 
by name or any attribute.

what you'd do in your case is have a template with everything in, 
and the code selects what to show. from the point of view of the 
code, you just have abstract entities ("login form", "list of accounts", 
"list of messages" and so on) and you habdle that. how they are implemented 
in HTML is not something you need to worry about, except in some 
rare cases or when you are in a hurry and do QAD things ;)

Well, i see your ponts, but the application logic regarding security 
and authorisation will be linked to the template: suppose i have 
a page with different section: some section are visible by me and 
other by my colleague only and other by both, the template, through 
ids, classes, etc must tell the application what data must be retreived... 
So the web designer must know something about the logic, no?

And i feel this is not more complicated than playing with templates 
and exceptions on templates, but I may be wrong, as I never try template 
with such authorisation logic.

OK, and if your designer puts custome <rebol:if...> tag into his 
template, how is that reflected in his webtool? Does it distorts 
his display, or do those tools ignore such custom tags?

I am not agains customs tag - in fact, I thought about mixture of 
such tags and temple aproach. I simply require 1) designer not needing 
to know single line of rebol code 2) whatever he does, needs to be 
consistently visible without the upload to production environment 
...

DocKimbel once told me (or someone else, don't remember now :-), 
that DreamWeaver worked with such "code modules" like you would write 
for temple, and those were represented by config dialog in DreamWeaver. 
So, you can "customise" how your script will behave, it is put inside 
comment tags (or other special tags), so that display is not affected 
in DreamWeaver ...

Pekr, I agree with you with pure cgi. Coding like that is from old 
days. But I think that Magic! (and FastMagic!) is a kind of mix between 
tamplate and rebol code. You can achieve good interaction with your 
web designer: have a look at the code of Rebol Directory: All rhtml 
pages starts with rebol codes, and then come the html. In the html 
section , there is not a single piece of application logic, except 
those specific for presentation (<rebol:if...>, etc...) So the idea 
is: your web designer provides you with the html and you just add 
the pure rebol code, without polluting the html sections. The design 
might change, but not the content, therfore, you web designer can 
modifier the rhtml, and the rebol codeur has nothing to do.

And that's what we like - nothing to do :)

the HTML disigner *WILL* have to know what is going to be on the 
screen. of course, he don't need to know that exaclty - a table can 
have as many columns and rows as you need. that's still a table.

James Nak - FastMagic! is there www.rebolgique.net, as well as the 
code of the Web application Rebol Directory, which i think is kind 
of a good way to learn Magic! and FastMagic!

What is the difference between Magic! and FastMagic! ?

Kaj, it depends on how many FCgiServer you define. The more you define, 
the more concurrent requests you can serve. But be carrefull: many 
FCgiServer means many open db connections, which needs more resources. 
FastMagic! keeps in cache applications and db connection. Indeed, 
opening a connection is time consumming as well reading files on 
the drive...

With Cheyenne, I share a single db connection with all instances, 
and keep it open all the time.

This is interesting indeed, but this means you can serve one resquest 
at a time... But I guess it would be easy to manage a pool of connection. 
Where is cheyenne available? I would like to adapt FastMagic! on 
it with a DB pool and use it for the Rebol Directory

but - I just tried that with mySQL driver and it does not work :-( 
.... it works that way with /Command though ... it is a pity there 
is not multiple command ports available in Doc's driver?

quick question on Magic and FastMagic.

I understand that FastMagic supports FastCGI.


Is there any difference between the requirements? Does FastMagic 
requires /cmd  or just /core?

where can I find more info. on FastMagic

Given that, a REBOL language version of FastCGI would probably have 
to work differently, and FastMagic would then need a little recoding 
to work with it.

Kaj, FastMagic! does not require SQL database. But it does require 
Rebol/Command and Linux. Indeed, FastCGI in CGI compatibility mode 
needs a POSIX environment. Nevertheless, you can use FastMagic! in 
normal CGI mode, by setting the flag mod-fastcgi to false (in the 
fmagic.r file). Actually, i develop under windows in CGI mode and 
deply under Linux in FastCGI mode, and it workds well. I tried to 
be as much compatible as possible with the original Magic!. Again, 
the application code for Rebol Directory is definitly the best way 
to learn how to develop with (Fast)Magic! You can download it at 
www.rebolgique.org

Mozilla and XML standards support - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-ffox15.html?ca=dgr-lnxw07FirefoxXML

I want to use REBOL web server to take a tex file, and spit out pdf 
using pdflatex.  Anyone suggest a suitable server?  Cal's ? Others 
?

running locally? I like Cals, some peoples have post-problems with 
it. I have read about  one or two others with cgi (library?), and 
uniserve of course.

what about uniserve? It is not as much bigger and it proven, no?

And you have experience with it :)

the fastCGI was nicely coded and was public domain license

Well, depends on setup-effort, not code-size. And you can send send 
the tex thru email too :))

I just downloaded Serveit .. but it comes up with a gui :(  And if 
I try it in quiet mode, --quiet, it comes up with a license code 
request :(

zzazouminiwebserver is definitely overkill ... php and mysql support

Looks like Cal's webserv was too complicated for my purposes as well, 
and I've ended up using a variation on the micro web server at

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=webserver.r

So, to render PDF, I do this

write %/d/rebol/rebgui/www/referral.tex tmp
either zero? ret: call/wait "d:\rebol\rebgui\www\pdflatex.bat" [
            browse/only http://127.0.0.1:8001/referral.pdf
][

            alert join "Failed to print.  Batch file failed with return code 
            of " ret
]

and pdflatex.bat is just

copy referral.tex c:\texmf\
c:
cd \texmf\
pdflatex referral.tex -output-directory=d:\rebol\rebgui\www\

Because if I just browse to the pdf, Acrobat locks the file which 
prevents me from rewriting the file.  This way, I can rewrite, and 
Acrobat reloads it.  Also I avoid writing lots of temporary files 
if I were to change the file name to bypass Acrobat file locking.

Complicated. And: <satirical> Isnt circumventing a lock circumventing 
a copy-protection? I mean, a lock prevents you from copying to something.. 
</satirical>.

Yes, I guess this would be illegal in the UK and European Union.

This is my CRM application.  I am using LaTeX to write letters, and 
a microweb server to preview the PDFs.