AltME groups: search

mmm, i use hibernate under windows, and i don't remember any view 
crashes.

Same here. I use hibernate every day and it never causes View to 
crash on my machine.

I have submitted a feedback to 'AltMe'... and doing a search on RAMBO 
to see if there is an entry for this as well.

IMO View OS wrapper should be strenghtened in general. It would not 
hurt to properly detect two monitors or TV output, if possible. I 
can see that MANY apps get it incorrectly, e.g. they simply call 
center-screen or such a function, and half of the dialog box is on 
one string, the other half is on second one :-)

Is anyone else using 1.2.9 and seeing their Send mode (enter or ctrl+s) 
stuck, so you can't change it? I can click the button, but it won't 
chagne the setting.

altme 1.1.29 linux crashes during startup when the linux sound-daemon 
is already occupied by another application and altme uses sound..occeured 
using the oss sound daemon..

addon: and altme is backgrouned by starting like this "altme &"

I suspected that... Anyway thanks to Tomc and Graham.

Ah well, that's what I was expecting. Sticking with altme in VMWare 
and the Viewtop on Linux for now.

and in your prefs, you can set it to auto-return to last visited 
world in your user setup.

Janeks, do you know that you can right click on groups...and then 
make it private, then select people that are part of teh word?

load must make sure that the date is correct, because it must convert 
it to the internal format. 29-Feb-2006 simply cannot be converted 
and thus cannot be loaded.

That would cause rather strange bugs. Quite often, you wouldn't notice 
that you had made a syntax error. How would you know whether a string 
was an incorrectly written date or just some other string ? eg:  
How could you tell whether   "jan 12"  was intended to be a date! 
or not ? Maybe it's somebody's name and age in a string.

I am completely happy with the way load works in this regard. A given 
date string must comply with the rebol syntax and have valid sub-values 
otherwise I don't want it. If messy data is coming in, just catch 
errors loading it from a string. Simple.

Petr, 29-Feb-2006 is always an invalid date. You can't say "Under 
some condition it could be even valid date (leap year)" because the 
year 2006 is specified in that date, and 2006 is not a leap year.


Data types have syntactic forms and semantic constraints. In order 
for the loader to recognize the data type, the syntactic form must 
be followed. In order for the resulting data to be valid, the semantic 
constraints must be obeyed. One such constraint is that date! values 
must correspond to a date on the calendar. Semantic violations are 
the bugs that all of that nasty exploit code does its job.

Well, I checked with my paper-based calendar, and it isn't able to 
hancle 2006-02-29 either.So it may be OK that way ;-)

I will play with what was requested (sending an image) and I will 
see how can I handle it ...

I don't think encryption changes the file-length, so you could just 
choose a large chunk size and encrypt those separately.

Graham, there are two good reasons for that: Security and portability. 
Some platforms have one environment, some have per-process, some 
have global and per-user (like Windows) - which environment do you 
want to set? As for security, if you set any variable other than 
per-process it can affect the behavior of other programs, an ability 
that should be restricted in a sandboxed environment.


You should check out command line apps that you can call to set the 
various environments on your platform. If the REBOL process doesn't 
have call because of security restrictions, it shouldn't be able 
to set environment variables anyways.

run is available in ios. Somewhere i read in windows one can type 
a filename in shell, like text.txt, and windows launches the accosiated 
application. If that works, maybe with 'call too?

No, it doesn't.  It appears to .. but as soon as you quit the rebol 
session and see if the env variable is still set, it's not.

I guess that's why we have get-env and not set-env

I have a few command line apps that do the job, but the best one 
I've found I got from a web site that isn't there any more. If you 
want it PM me and I will email it to you. Otherwise, try setx.exe 
from the Windows Resource Kit - it can do all sorts of stuff.

There are 4 environments on Windows (aside from the per-process ones), 
the system, user, default user and volatile environments. The setenv.exe 
I found can set any of these 4, the setx.exe in the Resource Kit 
can set the system and user environments.

Or do you mean the REBOL process' environment that is inherited by 
the subprocesses started by CALL (assuming that CALL internally passes 
along the current environment to its subprocesses)? Or do you mean 
the environment of the parent process?


Every started process is passed an environment, usually a copy of 
the parent environment (sometimes with some modifications). On Windows 
(NT kernel, not 9x), the initial environment is a combination of 
variables associated with the system (or machine), the user and volatile 
values, in that order. The initial values of these variables are 
constructed from data in the registry. Once these variables are constructed 
and compiled into an environment, this environment is passed to a 
process. Changes to the environment of that process (with getenv 
and setenv) don't affect the environment of the parent processes, 
and certainly don't affect the global values.


To change the initial environment variables, you need to change them 
in their original registry entries. You can either do that directly 
or through using external applications. Keep in mind that changes 
to these initial values won't affect your current environment, or 
those of any running processes, as those environments are already 
set and can only be changed internally.

Do you need to support Win9x, or just WinNT derivatives like 2000, 
XP and 2003?

and Win64

Then it's registry values you need to change. Give me a moment and 
I'll figure out which ones.

You can check in regedit for your current values. Remember to use 
REG_EXPAND_SZ values if you want references to other environment 
variables to be expanded, but keep in mind that these are evaluated 
in one pass for each category, and that local machine is evaluated 
before current user. A value can't make references to other variables 
in its own category, just references to values in other categories 
that are evaluated earlier.

and else where :(

So, use rebol to read your mail first and then try sending.

Ok, I'll try that and get back with the results.

;To make the following work with a USB printer, do the following:

; 1. share the printer, noting the name given to the shared printer.

; 2. from the command line type: net use lpt1 \\laturk-ws-2\EPSONSty 
/persistent:yes

; 3. put said command line in autoexec.nt so you don't have to type 
it each time.

printer: func [
    "Sends text to printer on //prn."
    [catch]
    Text [string!]    "The text to be printed."
    /Page    "Append Carriage Return (CR) and Page Feed."
    ][
    throw-on-error [
        secure [
            %//prn [allow write]
        ]
        write %//prn Text
        if Page [write/binary %//prn "^(0D)^(page)"]
        Text
   ]
]

and the instructions above it are from me :)

If I have a table of say 4 x 3 and another table of say 3 x 10 .. 
is there a way to merge them so I end up with a table of 7 x 10 where 
the missing cells are either empty or none?

I was trying to print a table from two different sources, and trying 
to wrap the data inside the cells at the same time.  But I got it 
worked out now.  But was thinking that some type of sql join on tables 
would be good.

Is there some easy conversion of numbers to binary? And I mean numbers 
bigger than 255...

this is a way how to convert something to binary too: http://www.compkarori.com/vanilla/display/peek_and_poke.r

maybe with plug-in mechanism, you can write external component to 
handle it, so good old poor pekr can include it and use it :-)

the pwerpack idea was a good one: one central point for crucial mezzanines 
and their documentation, perhaps as easily included as 
  do %powerpack.r 
  powerpack/install 'all
in user.r

it would make it a lot easier to create error handling, if you are 
running some code and might expect a large number of different errors 
that need to be translated into a different language

that's one thing. another thing is to make it meaningful to the users. 
it's part of explaining what caused, say a TCP error 550 and help 
the user to act on it, rather than just saying "TCP error 550 blabla". 
The same error may be meaning different things in different contexts.

sorry, I was misreading something and the things I wanted are actually 
in the manual

how to substract two date values easily? I simply have file date 
(get in info? filename 'date), and I want now - such filedate to 
return time difference including days .....

simple 'now simply returns complete date and time, so why rounding 
to days?

and btw - what if you would refer to past tail - in current version 
it is error, in R3 it is supposed to return none ....

so my understanding is, that according to you it is not OK and you 
would suggest to disallow series as starting and ending value

yes, but my suggestion says nothing - it is natural to think in that 
way, because of how I am used to 'for from another languages - otoh 
- Rebol is dynamic and allows many things, which other languages 
don't, so I just don't know. But if you would not mention it is possible, 
I would probably never used it that way ....

Ladislav made a small typo, getting a digit wrong in the number, 
the first time, and the second time he missed the variable (i).

I my opinion, "repeat i 2'147'483'647 []" should repeat exactly 2'147'483'647. 
Not more, not lessm, not forever. If I want an infinite loop, I would 
use the "Forever" function instead.


I assume that "loop" acts the same to 2'147'483'647, as "repeat" 
does. Am I right? How about "for":

for i 2'147'483'646 2'147'483'647 1 [ print i ] 


this is not infinite loop, it prints 2'147'483'646 and 2'147'483'647. 
So I assume that for loop is never infinite.


for i 1 2'147'483'647 1 [ print i ] ; this is not infinite loop, 
I assume.

However, 
for i 1 2'147'483'647 1 [ ] ; not infinite 
 
should be kind of equivalent to
i: 1 loop 2'147'483'647 [i: i + 1 ] ; infinite

This cannot be good. I am confused.

These kinds of issues/bugs are expectable when using fixed byte-length 
numbers, as rebol does. If you avoid the maximum integer then you 
should be ok. So I don't think it is as bad as all that. I am not 
saying the errors are good and fine, but you can "expect trouble", 
when going that high.

Also, each function (LOOP, REPEAT etc) may use a different test ( 
< ,  <=  etc) and so exhibit different behaviour.

Anton, I disagree with the statement  "you can expect trouble, when 
going that high." The condition ilustrated is clearly an error if 
the iteration forms have and issue with certain values they should 
not degrade into an infinite loop, but into an error.

If such behavior is left uncheck, it will be easy to create race 
conditions in rebol code and an attacker will have ways to create 
security exploits.

I may have been more precise.. this appens after running  (uniserve 
;-)and after a week of high traffic.. I'm thinking of parsed stuff, 
redefined words, ecc or maybe a rebol bug, async?.. Hoped some guru 
could provide some tip on how to track that down, I'm having a hard 
time! thx

If I do
>>save/all %dump rebol ;or system?

and load the dump in a fresh console, is it correct that I should 
have the same behaviour?

It may be worth to do save a dump of the system at these times:
1) after loading uniserve
2) after running for a while without error
3) after getting the error

Then compare and find differences between the second and third dump 
files.
(And if nothing is found there compare 1 & 2)

Anton, do you have a preferred tool when comparing such huge files? 
do you do text comparison or you have a rebol tool? Is that correct 
that after reloading the dump in a fresh console I should have the 
same behaviour, and if not is it a sign of rebol bug?  thank you 
8)

Will, I just use a text editor and flick between files using Ctrl-Tab, 
scrolling down using Page-down when I don't see anything different. 
Raw, and it works pretty well, but it's probably worthwhile looking 
for a comparison tool out there.

Gabriele that is a very good hint!

Is there a simple rebol script that I could run and test for this 
precise case?

Is there a  unix command to check for number of file-id consumed 
by process?

Althought "read %/" returned error, probe info? %/ was still working, 
can this help?

Here you can find 3 process samples, I've done when the bug appeared 
and the CPU was at 100%, like if the process was waiting for something? 
a released file-id? Because the error appear in a crescendo, cpu 
100%, than ok for some time, cpu 100%, then work ...than stop working 
at all sometimes with cpu 100% sometimes CPU normal%, here the samples:
http://reboot.ch/sample1.txt
http://reboot.ch/sample2.txt
http://reboot.ch/sample3.txt

Thanks to all for bringing some light, it seams actually the problem 
IS related to file handle limit.
Checked with (suggested by Jaime):
sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys <process id>|grep 'open\|close'
and the number of open and close correspond.
Peter suggested "fstat -p <process id>", fortunately fstat isn't

there in 10.4 Tiger, so I was looking for a similar tool and found
lsof

 for which I did not find the flag to filter for only uniserve process

and there I saw something else was actually consuming file handles..
Sorry Carl to have thought about a rebol error ;-))
Uniserve is rock solid and blazing fast btw.

Will, can you say more about what you used uniserve for and how it 
helped you.  ... in the uniserve group?  I've been waiting for Doc 
to give the presentation "Uniserve for the slow class".

Anybody knows, why there is such a difference between result of 'stats 
and the memory usage shown in tools like 'top or 'taks-manager? For 
example I found, that if I run a script under rebol/base in linux 
and do stats I get something like 1.7MB but in the 'top I see memory 
usage more than 5MB. The same it is under windows - pure rebol/base 
has les ten 1MB but almost 4MB in the task-manager. Strange is, that 
rebol/base shows me more memory usage in 'top, then rebol/core, but 
rebol/core more if I use 'stats.

Hi Oldes, I'm not sure, but I guess, that they are measuring different 
things, e.g. if I use process explorer (from sysinternalts.com) I 
can show 3 different sizes: 

private bytes, virtual size and working set, which differ like this 
...
15.724,           50,832,              8.824
(this is view on windows).

And the difference between stats and values in top is because in 
top there are counted linked libraries as well:-)

And if I use pmap command I can see that there is one bigger memory 
block which will be probably the preallocated space - then if I create 
in Rebol for example some string, the memory usage in pmap is not 
changed although stats increase.

I've been using the following approach for using a series like a 
stack, and I was wondering if there was a better way I'd missed:

	insert my-list item ;; "pop"
	item: my-list/first ;; "push" part 1
	remove/part my-list 1 ;; "push" part 2


I know it's working on the beginning of the series rather than the 
end, but I had trouble remembering if there is a '"pop" (remove  
last item from series and return item to caller) sort of function 
for Rebol.

Sorry, switch the 'pop' and 'push' comments in my sample. I'm still 
waking up

(my TFUNC does this "more comfortably" and for REBOL3 a change in 
that direction is planned)

The problem is, that there is some "inaccuracy" involved and the 
inaccuracy is so high, that the molded maximum is higher than the 
IEEE754 maximum, i.e. it causes overflow

Ok, I suppose you asked this poll question because you are looking 
for a way for the highest decimal! to be load moldable and it looks 
difficult / problematic.

Maybe MOLD can be more accurate, and FORM can be less accurate ?

The trouble is, that the 16-th and 17-th digits are a bit "nonsensical", 
but they are needed for this purpose

(and this exceptional behaviour can be only for this exceptional 
datatype ?)

Another idea is that both MOLD and FORM give 17 digits, and it is 
left to another function (perhaps a FORMAT mezz) to cut off the nonsensical 
digits.

Ladislav you are hitting the Serialization/Marshalling barrier. Having 
a language where there is no difference between serialized (molded 
in rebol terms) types and source code types is big plus of Rebol. 
But on the other hand it limits you when you want to marshall the 
data becuase of the assymetry introduce to maintain accuracy for 
some types like decimal.

IMO non-loadable things should not be moldable. So in this case make 
limits on mold, so that the mold fails with such values. Reason: 
IMO under no circumstances should a save destroy values (at least 
not from the inbuild side). Better throw the last changes away with 
a "cant save, internal error" than overwrite valid data with broken 
one. Specially if rebol is a "public" format like xml, where everyone 
can send data and trigger a broken save.

LAdislav: Fix the console. Or at least a check 'reloadable? , which 
as meazzine molds, loads and checks for equality, and without to 
much overhead.

Good question. First thought was: report error. Second thought an 
option to mold, mold/always, and console uses that.

If rebol used unicode for source code the problem with deci! could 
be address in the same way that plt-scheme does. That is they just 
have exact and inexact numbers. Exact numbers print all digits up 
to the precision in a normal way. Inexact values print the number 
and the last digit has a dash on top. Operations of exact with inexact 
yield inexact. If the programer wants to warrant exactness he converst 
from inexact to exact, which just means removing a flag and assumming 
the number is exact to the number of digits given.

sorry, bad cut and paste, forget about it

eg..  add-relation [...]   <-- what's in the block.
And what's the result supposed to be ?

I'm rewriting my relations engine, if you remember that one.


I need to traverse rel-obj via paths, so I store the path as words 
in a block. This is in order to maintain the current position in 
a deep object.


The input can be any arbitrary path of words and values. If the values 
or words don't exist, they will be created on the fly. That's what 
I use 'p for.

yes. an example could be if rel-obj was empty:

add-relation [users male "Joe"]
add-relation [users female "Jenny"]

later on, when you look it up, it's supposed to look like:

get-relation [users]
== [male female]
get-relation [users male]
== ["Joe"]

You can go deep:

add-relation [users male "Joe" age-group "Senior"]

And you can do reverse relations:

add-relation [age-group "Senior" users "Joe"]

the rules and structure is completely arbitrary, which is one of 
the stronger points of the relations engine.

however the current version forces you to use a path block structure 
of [word value word value word value...] which forces you to choose 
a value that will not be used for branches where only one path should 
exist. that's why I'm doing a rewrite.

No, I mean extending objects and keeping the same object.

a path with one element is useless indeed. you cannot create it normally; 
it's like words with a space, or issues with a space, and so on. 
they exist, but they are not "valid" in a strict sense.

OBJ seems not to have been changed by doing the code.

Gabriele has seen that a set-path! with only one element doesn't 
work, but you can use a set-word! instead, because they're conceptually 
the same, and they look the same:
>> to-set-path path
== obj:
>> to-set-word path/1
== obj:

BTW you can manipulate a path like a block. And it may help to use 
'in.

the first element of a path! must be a word! (i'm not aware of any 
other ways to build a path, except for using make path! directly), 
and there must be a second element.

I'm trying to log into an FTP server with \ in the user name. Is 
that legal to use? I've tried a few different clients and only Total 
Commander will accept it. Rebol will not accept it as a valid URL, 
unless the \ is removed.


The problem is that the webhost Talkactive apparently use \ in all 
their usernames...

well, at least it worked for merging @ and # in ....

I have patched my user.r and never care once again

I prefer out-of the box functionality, and not a strick adhering 
to standards, if the usage is pretty common ...

That's a problem with FTP in general. There are some servers which 
break the standard (which is also open to interpretation in some 
areas). RT's url parser is doing the correct thing, but supporting 
FTP in the real-world means also dealing with "rogue" standard-breaking 
servers. You could argue that if RT includes FTP in the language 
they should go the whole way with it to prevent dashed expectations. 
On the other hand, you can see rebol is more about breaking with 
the past and coming up with new, more modern (and hopefully more 
reliable) protocols. (Of course, it is possible to have both.)

I would suggest an FTP powerpack then with as many bells and whistles 
as possible.

is it faster to load a string to see if it is a date, or try make 
date! and catch the error to peform the alternate action ?

are 'to and 'make the same words?

I'm goingt to stick to my to-date and error trap it ... :)

Graham: as I need the date conversion again, I found that to make 
it useful, you have to add the error check anyway so it's:

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [all [not error? try [d: load "sss"] 
date? d]] now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.031

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [all [not error? try [d: load "1-1-2007"] 
date? d]] now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.047

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [error? try [to-date "1-1-2007"]] 
now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.047

I would not use loading. to-date is more clear, shorter and with 
same speed.