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But - one thing worries me anyway - R3 http scheme is out for how 
long - 2 years? And we don't even have proxy for it. Not to mention 
other protocols. So if we (community) can't find some time to do 
other schemes, where's our help then? The thing is, that schemes 
stuff is really difficult. I can imagine myself doing some easy styles, 
but surely not complex thing as network protocols :-(

Pekr, this example with proxy, we see things differently. As I read 
your words, you're complaining, we don't have proxy for the http 
scheme (after maybe 2 years). I can only talk for myself, but the 
reason, why I don't look into things like that, is because it's way 
down on Carl's list (maybe third or fourth priority). I would like 
to see the first levels bug-free and stable, before I move on. (And 
you don't hear me complain about proxy. :-) )

Geomol - new http 1.1 scheme was done by Gabriele. And the only reason 
I mentioned it is, that it is an example of open-sourced stuff, where 
community could help, yet nothing like that is happening. Now what 
does it have to do with how deep is such stuff on Carl's list? - 
it is open sourced. And once again - see your arguments. So you DON'T 
know there are any networking related bugs, yet you claim you are 
not willing to work on it, as you suppose there are some "first levels" 
related bugs :-)

I wish, people wont see my words as complains. I'm not complaining. 
I'm just stating the facts and how I see the future of the R3 project. 
I would love to be proven wrong. In the meanwhile, I will have to 
figure out, what to do with some of my developments. I love R2, and 
will continue to use it daily, because there's nothing better out 
there for many things. But not all things.

shadwolf! :-) I love that! And I'm also a person, that like to live 
my life dangerous. But I'm also practical in many ways.

I used it as many others. I and others found problems on lower levels, 
reported them, but some are still not solved.


Take money! as example. At some point, it became impossible to specify 
currency with the money! datatype. When did that happen? Why wasn't 
it noticed (maybe it was, I really don't know)? Why hasn't it been 
fixed? Other bugs depends on this datatype. I won't do the detective 
work to figure this out. Proper testing sessions would have found 
it, as soon as it emerged.

So it's not known, if it's intentional. Did Carl write anything about 
money and currency? If not, then there's nothing to discuss. It's 
an emerging bug, as I see it.

Gabriele - I am not sure it is about stuff being open sourced. Even 
open-sourced development needs some organisation. Carl is organising 
few ppl around him, who are willing to work on some things. Protocols 
are open-sourced, RebGUI is open sourced, yet such stuff waits for 
real gurus to work on them - both to improve and to fix them.

Money! datatype is required for business apps that need exact counting. 
Just try to write an application doing simple maths operations on 
dollars or euros and you'll  see that decimal! is not an option.

Sure - it is a known thing, but I would not call it being a show 
stopper. We haven't had this feature for 13 years, so why should 
it be important right now? And if there is a bug, just claim your 
interest and it might get fixed.

For me is R3's show-stopper missing hash! and still buggy map! which 
is supposed to replace hash! So I agree with Geomol, that the core 
bugs should be fixed before playing with the high level or new functionalities 
(like threads). But I'm not so pessimistic, the things move on. And 
I don't need R3 so much now. I can do what I do in R2.

John, some comments:

- Bug #60 is an error formatting bug, not a divide-by-zero bug. Low 
priority.

- Bug #115 is waiting for a decision. All waiting bugs are either 
waiting for a decision or for some other bug to get fxed. This particular 
bug is low-priority, because we have more important, lower-level 
things to worry about than another display bug.

- Bugs #250 and 576: The money! datatype has been completely rewritten, 
and currency hasn't been added to the new type yet. It is intended 
to have currency put back in it eventually, afaik. The math parts 
work though.

- Where's the CureCode ticket for that insert into issue! bug? This 
is the first I've heard of it. Submit a ticket if you think it's 
important.

- We haven't decided whether issue! will be a string type or a symbol 
type (I'm betting string), and it seems to have a few Unicode issues 
like the string! type does. The issue! type is low-priority compared 
to some other, more useful types, for now.

- I agree that bug #698 is high priority. Good catch - keep 'em coming.

You complain about building the building when the foundation hasn't 
been fixed yet, but the foundation is what we are working on now. 
We aren't working on money!, issue! and vector! yet because they 
aren't important yet. They will be later, though.

For the last few releases we have been working on stuff that is even 
more core than datatypes: Getting modules, LOAD, DO and codecs to 
work right. These are so low-level that even Unicode bugs are lower 
priority right now.

map! is just an optimized merge between blocks and objects, not so 
urgent to me.

But if you don't have vectors, some programs can't be done because 
of the memory overhead of other series in Rebol

Steeve, we are not at the stage of writing programs - we are still 
writing infrastructure. The infrastructure will need vectors, but 
right now it needs modules and codecs, security and such, which is 
what we are working on now.

The vector! and money! types are going tro be important soon, but 
they have been put on hold for now while we work on lower-level stuff. 
I don't know if the issue! type will ever be important, but it will 
get fixed too (after the other string types).

Oldes, #397 is high priority, and you need to add a ticket for the 
binary key bug.

The money!, function!, op!, word! and string! types are brand new 
too. No old code in them.

And the only thing more important to code organization than modules 
is a good developer communications infrastructure. It has been a 
real boon to have the new chat and DevBase.

And in case it isn't clear, I use R2 every day at work. And I find 
bugs in it pretty often too, and find its limitations frustrating. 
This is why I started the R2-Forward project - so I can write R2 
code with the new R3 functions.

Added a bug for the insert string! into issue! problem Geomol mentioned 
- it hadn't been reported. It is another Unicode display / MOLD bug 
- the data is fine and FORM and PICK work fine. Probably related 
to bug #640.

BrianH: thanks for doing fantastic work here - on every front - real 
developments, testing, prioritising, and explaining here ... Now 
it is even more clear to me, that ppl complaining about lack of development 
are not well informed about the project structure, but it is everybody's 
responsibility to try to be informed - it just needs log-in to Chat 
system, watching blogs, etc. I can understand, that ppl are busy 
with some other things, but then I really suggest to sit and wait, 
as those ppl that contribute, can't work any faster. As can be seen 
even from this single discussion - each developer has his own priorities 
for things to be fixed/finished first, but anyway - R3 is progressing 
well from Alpha to first beta being here in 2009, even if some things 
might be postponed for 3.1 ....

PEkr if there is lack of inforation around developement and who does 
what maybe we have to blame the man in the cave :P

if the information is easy to get and then people complain then you 
can say they are not  right to complain

but saying they have no right to complain because the information 
exists somewhere and you have to dig half an hour to get it that 
not fair

gee - what are you talking about now? Yes, there is Chat, which is 
more a unified replacement of some altme worlds and DevBase CVS, 
but - by info I also mean blogs, bugbase, detailed release notes, 
new docs with changelog, whole rebol.com R3 section, detailed month 
plan focus. I don't want to participate into this discussion anymore, 
as it is really rudiculous ....

whoever asks here, gets info from those informed, most importantly 
from BrianH. Now tell me, with other technologies - do you ever get 
so close to the core dev team? And please don't try open source crap 
on me. Python is open-sourced, yet 3.x effort was done by concentrated 
team.

it's like if every tv channels on a day would split the whole news 
and only give 2 information by channel to get the whole thing you 
have to watch them all

yeah that's why ppl ask and maybe get it wrong then on the explanation 
they can get a better idea on what's going on

I will go so far, that I even think that some part of the community 
became so ignorant, that making R3 fully open sourced would not change 
a bit of this situation. Some real work is needed, and ppl here complain 
that they don't have time to even scan sources of available info. 
Now tell me, how the same ppl are supposed to do any quality code 
for R3, even if it would be open-sourced? Once again - GUI is open-sourced, 
protocols are open-sourced, yet ppl don't even care to test or give 
a feedback.

Pekr easy to say we are bad since the code is closed and only teh 
elected ones can put a hand on it

My friend moved to Python (while still using REBOL), claiming it 
is open-sourced. He found some bug, but he was not able nor willing 
to fix it himself. Having sources available was no difference for 
him. He even did not know, where to post bug precisely and he got 
only vague response. Have you ever reported Mozilla or SQLite or 
any other bug? I did. With mozilla it sitted there unfixed for one 
or two years. So please don't tell me, that fully open-sourcing R3 
would make any difference nowadays, when the product is still under 
heavy design and development. Noone claims it is even beta. If RT 
does not release, we complain, if they do release, we complain. Maybe 
Gabriele and Henrik were right in the past - with such public treatment, 
maybe RT should not release until some beta or RC ....

pekr when teh source is wide open and the people are just lazy then 
you can blame them for being loosers but saying they are loosers 
since they can't get hand on the source code is unfair don't you 
think

plus you have to take in note motivation is it affortable to spend 
time in a no one cares and use language ? on extrem thinking you 
can go there too ...

No, I really don't think. I stated it clearly - I have enough experience 
with management to understand current situation and I can tell you 
- having full sources available nowadays would make NO difference 
to speed or quality of R3 development. When product is stable, I 
can imagine how sources do really help ppl to track potential problems, 
provide fixes. But many parts of R3 are simply missing, not yet done. 
Now how many of us here are able to produce the C code quality Carl 
would accept into REBOL anyway? Sooner or later we are going to get 
plug-in interfaces - then we can experiment with some C code extensions 
...

Pekr you are talking about having hte source of an unfinished still 
at work thing. And most of us said that once it's official it's better 
to have the source open to not have to wait 1 year to get bug fixes 
or new things

and more the time pass worst is the situation the bugs piles up to 
the sky and you never see the end of fixing them

It's like when carl opens RAMBO some years ago the goal was to get 
some tickets time to time to do some bug fie time to time but as 
teh community worked alot on tracking bugs and doing suggestion the 
number of tickets was massive do you think that's the same thing 
being alone to solve 10  bugs than being alone to solve 4000+ bugs 
?

and i can reply how do you now and since it's not open then we won't 
ever know and as a matter of fact when a project is open source you 
have lot of dinamism in it  yeah some things even open-sourced never 
progress but some other widely extends

and submiting a bug with aving a hand on the source code is improvement 
of the information even if in the end that only CArl who solve the 
bug saying him  this doesn't work properly we expect that and in 
the source code we can see that issue and we propose to solve it 
like that what do you think that's in my opinion a better way to 
get dynamism in the community and even ppl skills enhancement  than 
only getting a black box where you can just say when i do that i 
expect that and that doesn't work

but we are not talking about that I was talking about getting inforamtion 
on the on work in progress if i don't go to 10  different infomation 
spots than I can't get a wide view about who does what when and how 
and the only thing left is to complain "that thing doesn't work" 
on altme  ^^

it reminds me when carl was silent during last summer and many of 
us were pending ofr information (and most of the new source of information 
we get today were created because of the past lack on ths matter

but still then instead of having a resume source of information we 
have a deeply detailed and separated source of information and the 
 wiki tends to resume the work but not getting anough large in the 
resume.

I read this whole discussion. I understand what Geomol is complaining 
about building and making it stable from bottom to top. That is a 
probably good eigeneering practice, but this is a little different. 
IMHO Carl and others don't just have to *code up* the R3 but they 
have to *design* the R3  (it's concrete implementation, it's core 
API, 1000s details) and there are a tons of small decisions to make 
all the time and you have to see and work on it from many angles 
so whole thing will come together well. IMHO

It's like making games.. if you are cloning another then you have 
a model that you just need to do as efectively and good as you can 
and add a few features and twists here and there. If you are developing 
an unique gameplay, you don't code it up.. you prototype .. work 
here and there because you learn what to do next as you do things

but then if you make dificult for your clients the way to know what 
you do and when you do  to you think your clients are taking you 
serriously starting from the begining

Imagine a client giving a taste to a programer and the programmer 
flee away don't get any news dor month and then comes back with oups 
sorry here is your program dear client ?  Do you think the client 
 will take that attitude as a serious matter ?

This aproach surely isn't good for clients that want the product.. 
to me R3 is a research project for now.. R2 is the product.  


But it should be good for community, because you mean you have some 
insight of development process, you can affect it with opinions and 
participating. Wasn't REBOLs biggest complaint always that is't so 
closed. Now you can see all in the open how it's to make it. :)

And as BrianH and others showed, if you want you can actively participate

Ok so now I think this point is been integrated by Carl but he started 
to build lot of information source broker for all teh needs of the 
current task  but as an outsider (yes unfortunatly I'm not in god's 
Secrets...)  it's hard to retrieve relevant information and knows 
what's going on .. that's not to be hard with anyone that's just 
a matter of fact and to have discussed that matter a countless time 
with many ppl in the community (lame outsiders as Pekr would say) 
I'm not the only one feeling that way

Janko the thing is teh people working on R2 are the same as the ones 
working on R3 so it comes to why fixing R2 since it's already dead 
and we are cooking a better thing it's better to focus on R3 since 
we are only a couple of guys passionnate with it

I understand you, I am not frustrated about R3 because I don't wait 
for it ... R2 is the product for me , I at this time only care for 
what I can with some certanty use in production and R2 has tons of 
libs, examples, cheyenne .. and as a language it's also more interesting 
and hides more stuff that I can comprehend so exploring what can 
be done with R2 is still exciting to me.

If I had more free time I would probably also be more active in R3 
(at least bitching about it :) but I am at the stage where I need 
to produce stuff .. and I am happy I can use rebol for this

on teh r3 project we really feel that's is like a river the flow 
goes and you never see from where it commes and where it goes

yes, I understand that... I was waiting for R3 for years ( I just 
used rebol for smaller stuff here and there at that time ) and frankly 
I was sure R3 is vaporware.. it's a 1 man design process with benefits 
of it and also limitations

and you see some things not advancing for long time like unicode 
support (i'm not even sure that will be a profit to r3 well as i'm 
an idiot i'm certainly wrong on this point)

MS would do it other way.. but they would still need one guy with 
some crazy ideas that actually work and produce something special.. 
and even as big as they are they don't have it.. C# is a copy of 
Java, F# is a copy of OCaml ..

denefits would be since there is only one guy with the vision of 
what he wants and how he wants it the creation process will go smoothly 
but the thing is that since the past years the R3 is started many 
 ideas in R3 have been changed a lot of time (like VID)  abd bothing 
ensure us that in the month comming another idea will pop and so 
one making R3 a never ended project

that's how creative processes go.. you have to throw away stuff and 
go with the flow .. if he wouldn't I am sure rebol would be another 
python/ruby ...

My theory is that thats why MS can't create great langs .. because 
the sole designer can design it and they have the resources to make 
the thing that was designed quickly ... but upfront design doesn't 
work.. itterative inline design works IMHO

jano no MS vision is rather simplier than that and it's resumed by 
the vision of Bill Gates :"Poor artists invents great artists copies" 
why to invent things when you can simply make billion in inspiring 
from the open source community

janko yes it's in alpha stage and alpha stage is not to be stayed 
for ever stage  ^_^

Look , I understand you.. nobody can give any guarantees when will 
R3 be "done" and if you wait , it can become desperate .. but there 
is progress being made 7 version in 9 days of april, new docs, blogposts 
from carl discussing his thoughts.. etc

So if that's to have 60 R3 alpha than Carl anounce that R3  is being 
too complicated and need to evolve deeply into R4 ...

...

does anyone know.. can R3 http protocol code or info about this be 
seen anywhere .. upthere it was said that it's up to community to 
make new protocols, I can't be sure that I will be able to make any 
but I am interested in this stuff and maybe eventually something 
comes up
...

bye .. even if R3 were done today I couldn't use it.. I need cheyenne, 
I need SQLITE, PDF... :)  .. I watched the guido van rossum (python 
maker) keynote on pycon09 last week and he spent 20 minutes ranting 
that people should start using python 3000 slowly (the new - bigger 
changes version) .. in rebol at least community is anctious to start 
with R3 :)

just give a nick and a pass

I created a user and logined now.. it says it's fetching messages

I will come by in the evening and try again.. otherwise in next days

I think ports have not changed for over a year, so examples and docs 
should be up to date.

Henrik. Try re-starting Rebol and then use chat. I have found that 
chat only segfaults once a certain amount of memory has been used.

Leopard and it usually segfaults right after starting R3.

that's what happends when you test something once and get borred 
by its usage

shadwolf: <ok so hash! is gone perfect no one used it anyway>

A quick search on REBOL.org shows 25 scripts using hash! and/or to-hash

That's not many. But it is not zero. And it is not perfect for those 
with applications that depend on those scripts.

Clearlt, retaining hash! is not a priority for RT, and that argument 
has been and gone.

It is not a decision I am happy with .... which indicates my priorities 
are not completely aligned with RT's. That puts me in the same position 
as most REBOL developers :-(

I mean rebol exists since 10 years now and having only 25 scripts 
using hash! just proove that's not used

what you want a farewell party for hash! with champaign and etc.. 
?

but my understanding is that hash functions different than hashtables 
or dictionaries in other languages? and map will work that way.. 
or did you need the specific way how hash worked? If I used hash 
I used in as a hashtable (because I wasn't aware of the difference) 
and I could have gotten nasty errors because of it

I used hash! to build a long list of de-duplicated words. It was 
by far the fastest way in R2.


I was pleasantly surprised when I found that using map! and storing 
every associated value as #[none] was quicker in R3 than hash! in 
R2. It just seems wrong to be wasting all that memory storing all 
those unnecessary ones.

hmm... here's a fun one: decompress read http://www.rebol.com/r3/chat.r

Gobbles up memory and just hangs.

Pekr, I remember Carl mentioning this a long time ago: DECOMPRESS 
reads first how long the item to decompress is, then allocates memory 
and then attempts decompression, so it's a deliberate design choice 
for memory limited embedded devices.

And some refinements to the redesign here:
http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0137.html

you want me to continue puttinf  dot on i and bars on T  sunanda 
or you got why hash! is meaningless ?

and since doing some change in an incomplete things is worst than 
redoing it from scratch then it's better to forget about it and create 
map!

A map is an name-to-value associative array. It uses hashing for 
high performance. Sometimes this kind of association is also referred 
to as a dictionary. 


The map datatype replaces the R2 hash datatype. The motivation for 
this replacement was that some people in the user community felt 
the design of the older hash datatype was confusing, since it hashed 
both keys and their data. The new map datatype just hashes keys. 
Data is not hashed.

hash! being redisigned and enhanced how could i get that as a lame 
thing that great I don't know personally if it will benefits me  
but it's cool to have this for the one needing it

but in R2 hash! keys can't be indice and all is key so i never get 
to get a hash table based system

Pekr r3 doesn't exist ... I know i'm a stubborn moron  ^^ that's 
my way to be 1st it's on R2 complete and full wrokking then i will 
adapt it to rebGUI then i will do REBOL IDE then in that time R3 
will be official released and i will do the port

since work is in progess and unstable it's hard to get serriously 
depending on it...

pekr font ugly problem have been solved in a way and if font ugly 
issues are not of my consern you want to blame someone blame CArl 
since the time we say him that there is still bug in R2 and he doesn't 
 want to fix them ... in that matter you can see R3 as a way for 
carl to escape the pain of fixing  R2 countless bugs

font-fixed seems to not exists on MacOS X ... and since the whole 
positioning system is base on fixed-font that means no area-tc for 
mac OSX

You should be able to find a fixed-width font on Mac somewhere and 
specify that using  font/name: "your-fixed-font"

the actual situation is a pain R2 doesn't evolve and R3 is not stable 
and evolve so much that it's hard to base any serious developement 
on it yet .Where is the point if you have to restart your project 
from scratch every weeks because all changed

Shadwolf - I am not blaming anyone. Font ugliness has something in 
common with font hinting. Cyphre told me, that such code in AGG is 
licensed (or patented?), and that we will have to find some other 
way around. But you would have to ask Cyphre, I don't remember exactly 
what was the reason ...

as for rich-text - you don't have to use VID at all, just gobs. Besides 
that, VID 3.4 (Carl's VID, Gab's was VID 3.3) is the official one, 
and although we expect some further additions/changes, basic principles 
are in there and they will not imo change much ...

but having a VID 3.4 means we got a VID 3.0  a VID 3.2 a VID 3.3 
and those free where abandonned how can i be sure in the 6 month 
to come carl won't change again his mind

and since text editing is related to UTF-8  better to get all the 
things ended to not have to constantly have to redo part of the job

all previous VID's were Gabriele's implementations of Carl's/Cyphre's/Gabriele's 
discussions/specs. But for some reason Carl was not satisfied and 
decided to go with other design. And as it is Carl himself we are 
talking here, I would bet that the design will stay :-)

Pekr > you said we need to find a better way to handle fonts in AGG 
cause part of it was pattented (or OSE related) and i sugested GTK+ 
 with is os independent and GPL 2.0 (pango is a heavy but really 
complete way to handly richt text rendering )

btw - once we have plug-ins/dll back (integration methods being stronger 
hopefully), I wonder if anything prevents us from not using View 
at all, and linking Core to stuff like SDL, Qt?