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PeterWood,

Hows the quality of the binding? Would it be better to buy the pdf 
version and have it printed and bound locally? I would not mind having 
access to the pdf too.
and..

There is nothing worse than a cheap bound where the pages start falling 
out...

I had a quick look at the previous chapters I bought. THe PDF's are 
also black and white. Shame!

Get the pdf ... and you can bind it as many times as you like.  See 
Ladislav's notes on REBOL bindology.

It might be worth looking at the economics of a pdf printed and bound 
locally versus a Lulu.com printed book and shipping charges.


The only difference is that the pdf does not include the cover. (This 
is due to the production process).

I saw a German distributor who could make hardbacks from PDF files 
and even give them ISBN codes (perhaps Lulu does that too). I'll 
see if I can find some details on this soon.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2309872444_844f7663cd.jpg?v=0

Hey Reichart, a little bit of photoshop and you'll become our new 
Santa claus ;-)

Now I know what I will look like in about 10 years.


The guy on "my" left is Aubrey de Grey.  He is one of only several 
people who "get it" on this planet.  So he truly is one in about 
1 billion. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey

The guy on my right is my friend Todd Huffman


He is a computation biologist, and we are both co founders of www.BILConference.com

One of his papers http://tinyurl.com/awq9tq


I of course am now Santa.  Of note, 12 hours after that photo was 
taken, I shaved my beard off completely on stage...


Since people felt sorry for me, they went out and bout a bunch of 
beards, and everyone started wearing them... http://flickr.com/photos/quinn/2340803599/sizes/l/

4 Media services will be broadcasting BIL.

James, Michael, don't worry, just come on down and find me, tell 
them I told you to come.

Pekr, yup, deep, that is why we need more of the 6 billion people 
on this planet to help : )

http://bilconference.pbwiki.com/


We have a bunch of cool speakers, and a bunch of TED speakers of 
walking from TED (where it is $6K) over to BIL to give talks LOL

Oldes, about ImageMagick interface, nice to know. I looked quickly 
at the code and I advise not to make structs inside the address? 
function etc. because it's quite slow compared to reusing an existing 
struct. (I tested this a few years ago when I was making fmod interface 
and needed speed.)

I finally took a few minutes to look at it Oldes, but it can't load 
the DLL here. What version of REBOL and IM did you test under?

yep... all done, simple but gives an initial idea.  I am just finishing 
the module download requestors part and it will be online in very 
short time. (under an hour)

the demo is very simple for now... but I will make an extension for 
it within the day, which shows just how linear an application can 
grow, and how little backwards maintenance is needed when adding 
new features.

this is a very small example... the point is to show how to use it. 
 its nothing graphical. you'll see.  there are probably about 20 
nodes allocated which interconnect a gui, with fields labels and 
buttons.  the nice thing is that data is bound to type and range, 
and all interconnections obey the data.

I have grown elixir to 6000 nodes.  and it was still reacting in 
real time with less than 100 of ram useage... most of which is gfx 
data from the AGG gui.

and to speed up the refresh... the real solution is to make the window 
smaller  :-(   which is great to show off liquid, but examplifies 
slow R2 gfx engine

and I even have a new version with 3 added labels, which are linked 
to the abilities displaying the dice modifier of the ability.


Its all linked up dynamically with the rest, without a single line 
of code edited, only NEW lines of code.  and only a few of them at 
that

3:49 am completion time in Montreal.  I guess the kids kept you busy 
during the day, and you got on a roll during the night.  Good stuff 
Max.

Thx.

And Henrik used the right group to answer :-)

amacleod, thanks for telling me about typo .. I fixed it 

about RSP error , I will look at it and fix it , thanks, it seems 
I broke it with the last bigger update!

bots wake up and look for tasks every 2-3 minutes now

Anton.. thanks, I fixed that .. and also same mistake on 6 other 
places

Great article, Ladislav. Just tweaked the grammar and added a link 
to tthe Parse Project at the end - Peta wrote a lot about Parse there.

thanks, mhinson and Brian

I can't wait to read it as I already said like your articles a lot 
and parse vs re interests me a lot.. I just nee to find some peacefull 
time to zone it

PeterWood, that string encoding doc and functions look very useful. 
Nice work.

Do you not think that it is more a case of either "debugging the 
ad-hoc script" or "debugging the input to the standard method"?  
In the sense of debugging either a shell script to compile and link 
a C program or a makefile.

Isn't  the real question is can you sensibly compare the pros and 
cons of elements of ad-hoc methods (DO, LOAD)  with complete standardised 
methods (PREBOL, INCLUDE)?


Perhaps the better comparison would be to compare ad-hoc inclusion 
against standard methods?

Just an idea about ad hoc versus standard debugging: "standard" actually 
means a specialized dialect optimized for the purpose at hand (so, 
easy to debug by definition). Ad hoc script means a general purpose 
language using more than just DO and LOAD, since they do not suffice 
on their own.

...and the winner is... Carl!

(that is what Carl considered and I guess he even asked that on some 
forum)

...and, what syntax would you assign to the keyword datatype, then? 
- it may be a thing Carl is considering

I've seen _word used, and I've made use of =word myself.

I avoid strange syntaxes as much as possible.

But from the list on the wiki, I like *include* the most (and in 
fact, I would discourage any of the others, which look like typos).

If it is changed to use word! values, I ask only that the naming 
convention used is carefully considered, with the thought that it 
may be used elsewhere, or other conventions may be used as well. 
For example, I use leading and trailing = on words as a convention 
for parse vars and rules.


The example that looks most natural to me, at a glance, is:  .include.

The question of whether to change issue! to be something like a word 
type without binding wasn't resolved, it was put on hold. As was 
the entire inclusion methods discussion a couple months ago, to work 
on plugins and bug fixing. We'll get back to it.

#words still are the nicest one for me....
$word would probably come in close second.

please no ending symbols...

$word$  the ending $ is useless,  and harder to read.

Let me ask this. In a perfect world--forgetting any pre-existing 
designs--what kind of system would you want? Is a pre-processor model 
the best way to go? Should things like #INCLUDE be "commands" or 
just location markers (i.e. anchors)? And if they are the latter, 
what other uses would there be for such things?

And don't forget how # is used in URLs.

1) - it was Carl who said (in the above discussion), that modules 
are "Not usable for building distributions using INCLUDE method." 
The INCLUDE method is comfortable and sufficient for the tasks it 
is meant to solve, in my opinion.

2) In my opinion preprocessor directives are more like "commands" 
than like location markers

Modules are good for code organization and their headers can be taken 
into account by a preprocessor like prebol.

and since we can build modules dynamically, I guess that we could 
do like slim and embed the dynamic version of the module within the 
source code directly.

Would using urls be any better than issues?  You can dedicate a whole 
name space to them, use path notation, still are neutral and parseable 
values:

	sdk:include
	sdk:include/check
	sdk:do

brian that would be a great idea... as long as all of the current 
functionality remains... convertions and allowed symbols  :-)

Ladislav, your INCLUDE already looks very settled, so I'm late with 
the following suggestions. I really like the function and used it 
a lot, but always found the wording a bit unrebolish.


I'm wondering why it's INCLUDE/CHECK or #INCLUDE-CHECK for the "ordinary 
call", as you'd put it above.  Wouldn't it be more convenient to 
have INCLUDE work like the /CHECK-refined call and use INCLUDE/AGAIN 
to again include files already included before?


Also, having INCLUDE/PATH returning the path as a block, wouldn't 
it be easy to APPEND INLCUDE/PATH %ANOTHER without having a seperate 
INCLUDE-PATH next to INCLUDE. It may even be called IMPORT/FROM.

INCLUDE/CHECK   ->  INCLUDE
INCLUDE         ->  INCLUDE/AGAIN
INCLUDE-PATH    ->  INCLUDE/PATH or INCLUDE/FROM


Carl is always picky with names and wording, so having that sorted 
out would probably make it easier to convince Carl to include INCLUDE 
in R3. Which is what I'd really like to see happen, functionality-wise.

dump prebol and make include module-aware.

I think just about every reboler out there agrees that include should 
replace prebol and let it adapt to R3, instead of prebol.

carl won't have to maintain that aspect anymore, and as a result, 
R3 will move ahead faster.  ladislav is VERY thorough in the tools 
he writes... Carl even admited that ladislav is more thorough than 
he  ;-)

and I'm sure Ladislav is more than willing to improve/modify/extend 
include as to make it compatible with Carl's ideals.

I prefer an issue! keyword dialect, the changing the issue! type 
to be word-like withot the binding. I don't like INCULDE as a function 
name because that would preclude its use as a set operation the opposite 
of EXCLUDE (but that's just me) - using #include and such as issue 
keywords is fine.


An extended prebol dialect like Ladislav's include would work, if 
renamed and made module-aware. When you have modules most of the 
keyword directives go away in practice, since the module scripts 
can be converted to MODULE calls.

Just a block of file! and url! paths for now. The file paths of the 
original files can be used at preprocessor time, but would be unnecessary 
at runtime since MODULE doesn't use them. Once the module is loaded 
its load path is irrelevant, and doesn't even have to exist anymore.

Yes, want I wanted to say that I prefered the old INCLUDE/PATH over 
INCLUDE-PATH because it's one word less to "pollute" the global namespace 
(is there such a notion in R3? I'm not so sure now) and it's one 
word less to remember - the refinement will always be easy to learn 
about with HELP INCLUDE.

PREBOL set aside, I really think IMPORT/CHECK is the common case 
and one of the main advantages over a simple DO - preventing circular 
imports and such. I would be deeply surprised if Carl opts for INCLUDE 
(or #INCLUDE or whatever it will be) not having that check functionality 
in the standard case, switched off by a refinement. But that's just 
me and I certainly don't have any extensive build scripts ...

include should be /check by default   and we should add an  /ALWAYS 
refinement to force reload.

Yes. We've made many such changes in R3, removing some functionality 
to replace it with better functionality. It wouldn't have to be as 
bad as you might think - we could change it to copy-on-modify and 
most uses of issue! would still be viable. Keep in mind that use 
of issue! for binary conversions will be going away anyways, replaced 
by better methods. We have strings and tuples for most of the rest. 
The only real difference is just a datatype and/or syntax difference.

Gregg and amacleod : Thanks :)

I'm building it using REBOL (writing code in old but still my favourite 
Crimson editor). Which means I'm producing AS2 bytecode and also 
modify (resize, join...) various swf files with graphic ( on bit-level 
:) I'm using various caching so for example don't have to republish 
the graphic all the time when I just need to change simple logic 
in my code.

you should try and market your engine as an alternative to the other 
flash game building tools.

BrianH and Anton has known for a couple of months. No one else. I 
only told Carl last week who wanted me to go public with it.

Yes, he has. However I wanted to stay simple with this and after 
a long time of messing around, I found a good angle to extending 
VID without having to resort to a complete rewrite or nasty hacks.

I just tried resizing the style browser and the face in the middle 
doesn't return to the same place it started from.

Initially it's centred in the panel .. but shrink it down to minimum 
and then resize it, it falls to the bottom

and a SVN

It's much the same resize code as Brian and I showed two years ago.

but, this holds a possible replacement, one that is much better designed 
and way smaller.

I see. Yours is quite advanced. My first try would be a simpler one, 
and we would have to see where we could go from there.

The thing I miss are drop and drag calendars, and an editable grid

It's hard to say. I don't want to steal any thunder from Ashley's 
work, as it's tremendously well done and obviously works in bigger 
scenarios. I guess it's a matter of trying the other if you don't 
like the first one you tried.

I've been thinking about generic drag and drop methods, but haven't 
reached a conclusion yet. If it is to be done, it should be done 
generally, so it's simple to apply to any style.

Just reading your announce and it seems you have concentrated more 
on the fundamentals with focus control, keyboard use

and data entry

save all the flags and just reset them?

I will be realistic - have not studied the styles yet, but from the 
style browser, I am very disappointed by the look :-( It really looks 
like Amiga 1.3, 25 yars old. Or some very old Unix. Who uses such 
plain buttons and field, with so basic borders? Or is there any skin 
system attached?


As for completness, still the most complete add-on kit for R2 VID 
is some 6 years or more old Romano Paolo Tenca's one - tabbing, grid, 
etc. supported ...

Romano's kit was GPL ... had drag and drop between styles but no 
one could use it with that license.

I proposed to speed-up REBOL developments by bounty system, like 
Amiga or other communities had. I think this might be a great idea 
.... simply put - I would like to have LDAP protocol? OK, maybe community 
gathers enough money, so that e.g. Softinnov can pick-it up, and 
does not need to work for free necessarily ...

If you do this, do it in (or with) other language sites....REBOL 
is also sadly elitist......a little blending, and being “part of 
the crowd” would be nice too....

Should work on blocks and objects too.

	>> load-webform "name.first=Chris&name.last=RG"
	== [name [first "Chris" last "RG"]]

It wasn't so much a rewrite as following on from code I'd written 
prior.  Whether it's better, I don't know - I was going for cleaner, 
and the /flat option.

amacleod - your C.A.P.T.A.I.N. app is quite impressive...  congrats, 
its fun to see what people are doing with REBOL and to know that 
all the help going around here leads to amazing stuff !

Thanks Maxim,

Waiting for your GLass/Liquid stuff to be completed...I would love 
to get a better inface on my app...right now I feel its full of hacks 
to get R2 view to do what I need it to do...


I looked at GLayout (and REBGUI) but I thought pure VID would be 
easier for me to make any needed workarounds to missing needed compoments. 


Once I get a solid version 1 out I will look into porting to R3 (If 
new VID is ready) or your stuff again if you release a new version...

Ups.. should respond here.. power-mezz seems really awesome collections 
of stuff? I should take a week off and study all it offers!

Is this part qtask libraries? I saw qtask in the license now.

collect seems an awesome idea :) .. what are macros about and that 
custom func ?

also, patches are always welcome. just clone the HG repository from 
the sourceforge page. you are also welcome to publish your derived 
repositories, and i will just pull the things i like.

I don't think he is monitoring R3 .. I've just been in communication 
with him recently

He's still scheming, and you can see what he is doing from his Linkedin 
profile

But the modern IDE style folows the Delphi model. Especially the 
MS tools, since they licensed the patents (and poached Borland's 
employees).

And also the Sun and Oracle tools, since the component model of Java 
was designed by Borland. And Eclipse, since it emulated the MS tools.

Developers did buy NeXT boxes to cross-develop for other platforms. 
And some apps got ported to Windows later (I miss Lotus Improv).

And I think NeXTSTEP preceded Delphi by several years, in fact. Of 
course, OSX's present-day interface builder app is a direct NeXTSTEP 
heritage. But we're way off-topic now, I guess :)

VB came before Delphi, and I think Interface Builder beat them both.

NeXT (85) came WAY before VB (91) and Delphi (93)

I still have my BW and Colour NeXT, I have my original copies of 
Windows 1, and VB, and Delphi...

It's really interesting the different approaches taken around that 
time. I was studying and writing UI frameworks in the early '90s, 
starting before VB and Delphi came out. It would have been cool to 
see a NeXT machine in more than magazine articles. The IB model is 
gaining acendancy with the newest platforms now: OS X, WPF, Glade 
(don't know about the Qt stuff). Most of the corporate-backed Java 
tools still follow the Delphi model though. Flash still seems to 
follow (an advanced version of) the VB model, but Flex probably doesn't.

It has been an interesting story indeed. VB/Win came before VB/DOS, 
Turbo Pascal begat Delphi, and Turbo BASIC became Power BASIC...and 
is still sold, supported, and updated by the original author (Bob 
Zale) who got the rights back from Borland. 


VB/DOS had a very short life. Only one release as I recall. The problem 
was that it was up against established libraries from Crescent and 
Microhelp, which were mostly coded in ASM, and for which you got 
all the source.

in Quebec, they are slowly convrerting the whole civil system into 
using Electronic records.  There are a few recorded cases where patients 
have been greviously harmed (or died) because hospitals do not share 
records.


here the records are the property of the hospitals and these are 
worth money.  Even if the medical system is public, each hospital 
and region is managed independently.  the Govt is having a hard time 
getting all the medical infrastructure to cooperate.

One possible reason is that its very easy to uncover ineffeciencies 
once you can do queries and compare hospitals and individuals.

and by infrastructe, I include institutions and people... not just 
software and networks.

ITPRO doesn't use a spelling checker!   "IT PRO recieved an updated 
statement from the DoH which said: "This project has been introduced 
over five years and has never been rushed."

Cyphre - thanks for posting this. In this days of silence towards 
R3 development, this is really encouraging. I am glad that I was 
at least usefull to chearlead you to post this news, and come-up 
with the name, which I really like - JITTeR :-)

Rober: will you publish some examples and or tutorials?

Robert, are you using an IDE for working with D or just an editor? 
I've taken a look at D-IDE and it sort of works, but seems kind of 
flaky. Going to check out the VisualD add-on for Visual Studio next. 
Also tried Sublime Text - it's a pretty nice text editor with Python 
scripting and it has partial TM bundle support (snippets, language 
defs for syntax coloring, themes).