AltME groups: search

CREATED this group to comment 2.7.xx releases instead of jumping 
around core and view groups.

hmm.. why do the binaries for 2.7.0, 2.7.1 and 2.7.2 all take up 
the exact same size of 655360 bytes?

maybe Carl just likes oddities like this and makes them happen  ;-)

if I READ it first and then LOAD it, no problems

Also, in the editor window, hitting the  'home' key produces a null 
character, and 'end' does nothing.

Nice! I'll start doing some tests with View and OSX in the next days 
hopefully.

I think we started really strange route. Now we will have nice toy 
to play with, spend our time, introducing new bugs, whereas 3.0 slips 
further in the schedule, as RT has to correct bugs present with 2.7 
and its changes ...

and who is saying its delaying R3  ;-)  Carl is not alone working 
on it... maybe the ball is in someone else's hands ATM.

I think doing all these new builds is a good thing in at least one 
regard; if it gets RT into the habit of doing quick builds and releases, 
it will be much better when early R3 builds come out. That is, if 
it becomes habit, and the tools are there to make it easy to deploy 
new builds, we'll make much better progress testing R3.

I'm just afraid this behaviour will fade out just like every promising 
thing in the past (RT Q&A thursday and so on).

Do you guys see the same result in this script:
do http://www.fys.ku.dk/~niclasen/rebol/test/transform.r

if you try it on Mac, Windows and Linux (or any other View version 
supporting the DRAW dialect). The circle, line and triangle should 
be lined up.

ICarii, using what OS and what version of View?

and to have some fun, it's on us to find what changes as with 2.6.3. 
great...

so except fonts, we now have linux and os-x Views compatible already?

Pekr, yes Canvas RPaint works at least under OSX (and I think Linux 
too) except fonts and some bugs (mostly with DRAW dialect).

using 2.7 I get a not enough memory error and can't even start it.

:-)

Maxim and Henrik, I took screen-dragging out again, because it didn't 
work 100%. I think, the code is still in there commented out.

Maxim, if you have a proposition, please feel free to write me privately.

Yes, Gabriele is right. No big changes to DRAW at the moment. We 
wanted  to make sure the new compiler and string change doesn't break 
any actula feature of DRAW so the decission was no changes to AGG 
until we are sure it works the same like in 1.3.2.

Hmm, when comparing 1.3.2 and 2.7.4: The LINE-CAP round has no effect 
in 2.7.4?!? Looks like a bug.

Geomol, to explain it a bit:
LINE - draws single lines (eve if you specify multiple coords)

SPLINE - draws 'connected' lines but the 'head' and 'tail' is splitted 
(until you specify CLOSED keyword)
POLYGON - always draws 'connected' lines in form of closed shape

LINE - shape of 'head' and 'tail' is affected by LINE-CAP mode

SPLINE - shape of 'line joins' is affected by LINE-JOIN mode...if 
CLOSED is defined shape of 'head' and 'tail' is affected by LINE-CAP 
mode
POLYGON - shape of all 'line joins' is affected by LINE-JOIN mode

Yes, it looks like there is no difference betwwen LINE-CAP BUTT and 
LINE-CAP ROUND in the 2.7.4 release. Can anyone confirm it?

Cyphre, my goal is to get Canvan RPaint for version 1.0 and work 
the same on Win, OSX and Linux. Then REBOL/View is in a condition, 
I'll call good! :-)

Yes, that's good idea. Actually we have lot of DRAW tests but there 
is so much combinations so it is not easy to check all things quickly. 
So it is great you and other people from the comunity help testing 
DRAW.

Cyphre, so if you can do anything to get text support in DRAW (under 
OSX and Linux??) and also push Carl to have prober event handling 
(something I haven't reported yet with the new Mac version), I'll 
really appreciate it. Maybe the time is now, where his hands are 
on View for OSX.

Geomol: I have found what is the problem with LINE-CAP...it works 
with ROUNDED keyword instead of ROUND. I need to check with Carl 
why he decided to use ROUND for LINE-JOIN and ROUNDED for LINE-CAP....

ok, so I guess the ctrl and mac keys equate.  I'd like to able to 
handle the alt keys too

well, in a way they do. there is a ctrl, alt and cmd key. on PC keyboards, 
the ctrl key handles things that normally is assigned to the cmd 
key and the ctrl key. this makes it a bit confusing to copy (ctrl-c) 
things from a terminal on a PC keyboard, whereas the mac keyboard 
uses cmd-C to copy. in rebol this means that the ctrl functionality 
in windows should be mapped to cmd on the mac, but if this was to 
be done right, we'd need a /cmd refinement as well.

Under Windows, is it possible to detect both event/control and event/shift 
at the same time?

I'd really like if rebcode where included in 2.7 but had to be allowed 
within secure... so it would not be a security issue unless you want 
to use anything that you trust is ok.

all it would need is support for struct and arrays.

I feel like I  could really optimise a lot fo my code for it.

My thoughts are as follows - if we request some small fixes, which 
can be workarounded, then let's spend RT's development in R3 area. 
Fix hard crashes and that's it for 2.7 release ...

why 'switch change and all that discussion for 2.7? We waste valuable 
time. 2.6. was ok, it should be fixed, no new things tried ....

Well, that depends on the workload for Carl. If they have to test 
R3 stuff in R2.7, I'm fine with that. Besides I suspect that R2 won't 
be going away until at least a year from now. We simply don't know 
whether R3 will be stable enough in its first incarnation for production 
use. R2 is stable enough as long as you stay with smaller and simpler 
things that aren't graphics heavy. I tend to bend that rule a bit. 
:-)

I have very harsh (read as in harsh on rebol) graphics applications 
and it never crashes anymore.  I find it odd that you are still getting 
those!

elixir creates several thousand line AGG blocks and it just hammers 
away.

but the main limiting factor is still view refresh speed (view and 
AGG that is)

it depends... retask is a very graphics heavy app and it can run 
for days without being ended.

About crashes, I submitted 4267, 4238, 4167, 4137, all crashes, and 
I found them on my own. Besides I've bumped into recycle crashes, 
port crashes/hangs and also other crashes, that I can't put my finger 
on, when using Rugby with secure network transfers. I get a crash 
about 1-2 times a day.

I do have very small apps that can run for weeks and weeks and never 
make trouble, but as soon as the apps grow in size, the crashes get 
more frequent.

but something in view still is eating MB of ram when opening windows 
and grows.  :-(

humm  I'll be more observent with elixir, which is now at 400kb source 
when linked (without SDK sources) and about 25MB of ram when running.

4267, 4238, 4167 all seem reasonably easy to work around Henrik; 
not that I'm saying they aren't important, or shouldn't be fixed, 
but we don't know RT's internal development setup, so we can't really 
say what they should do. We all have different priorities. 


I would like to see a large set of public tests, to help RT nail 
bugs and catch them when they sneak in.

please guys keep in mind we can't fix all bugs at once. and we can't 
usually fix two "big" bugs at once (big means it takes a lot of time 
for Carl to figure it out). so we fix one big bug and many small 
ones (bugs that can be fixed in a couple minutes always have precedence 
because there's no point in making them stay for years on rambo).

Then again, it isn't always easy to lift the bug from  [long running 
 / large volumes of data / 1000s of lines of script] applications, 
and set it into a small example.

I once tried to produce a small script that relicated the block-manipulating 
logic of an app I have. I was hoping that running it over night would 
create a "should not happen" bug. It never did.

By way of compensation. I did find this one-liner that will crash 
(without warning) every version of REBOL I've tried it on:

     a: copy [] b: copy [] insert/only a b insert/only b a same? a b
(I think I reported that, but it was before RAMBO)

i'm not saying the crash bugs should not be fixed. i'm saying that 
in the current situation there are not enough resources to fix them 
unless there's a simple way to reproduce them. hopefully, after r3 
is out, there will be more time to give to r2 and we'll be able to 
fix those misterious bugs too.

Sunanda, IIRC that bug was in RAMBO and was fixed some time ago (maybe 
2.6.2 or something like that)

black console window and freeing library component were my two only 
tickets I screamed for :-)

Lots of apps no longer open with call and need call/show or call/shell

Indeed. 

This is really curious and problematic, as the process is running 
in the background without an open window.

Not sure, but maybe they're trying to get a console handle, and can't.

Ok, not going to affect anyone else except those of us in the New 
Zealand and neigbouring islands

>> rebol/version
== 2.7.6.3.1
>>  to-date "20/Mar/2008/10:16:56/++1300"
** Script Error: Invalid argument: 20/Mar/2008/10:16:56/++1300
** Where: to-date
** Near: to date! :value
>> to-date "20/Mar/2008/10:16:56/++1200"
== 20-Mar-2008/10:16:56+12:00

These were date strings being returned by an IMAP server in the rebelBB.cgi 
script.  And because parse-header-date barfed on this format, it 
kept returning today's date.

Graham I didn't know you were from New Zealand.  I always say to 
myself if this country (US) goes to crap (and it might if any of 
these democrats get elected) then I'm heading to New Zealand.  I 
don't know why I say that as I know very little about New Zealand? 
lol.

Yep, born and bred in NZ :)

I don't think we're immune from recession, but we do less trading 
these days with the USA and more with Asian countries

There's a page on differences between 2.6 and 2.5

REBOL's installer hasn't worked at all since the 2.7 series, and 
it never worked correctly before that, though the 1.3 series improved 
directory usage. Fixing the installer is on the list for the next 
version.

Little bit more playing around, to see if +s was taking ... doesn't 
seem so.
rebol []
probe system/script
change-dir %..
list-dir
ask "waiting"

c:\tools\rebol\appdata\rebview +s testing.r

...
    words: none
]
waiting

** Script Error: list-dir expected dir argument of type: file url 
unset
** Near: list-dir
ask "waiting"
>>

The ask is evaluated before the list-dir error     And if  list-dir 
%.  is used, it lists the dir, without a security box.

it's been going down every day. i have restarted it twice, but there 
seems to be something wrong with it, so i'll be waiting for carl 
to be back and have a look at it (since i have no idea how altserve 
works :)

Rebolers, again I reach out to you for some info and advice. I'm 
creating a DB in Access 2003 for a company (This is what they use 
so I'm stuck here) and I'd rather create a set of tools (for some 
work but not all, the majority of the tasks will be strictly access) 
that has Rebol talking to it rather than having to doing it in VB. 
I was under the impression that 2.7 had odbc built in, but alas it 
doesn't seem to. Am I stuck with having to get  /Command?

DocKimbel was working on one, but I think it's old and unfinished.

At the moment I have no access to that old pc and script. I takes 
a few days, but then you can get it.

At least someone was even using it on Linux, as Command does not 
provide ODBC access there.

Express 2008 came out last month, even the advanced versions. I have 
used the client-side tools and they are nice, and have read good 
things about the server-side improvements. The new report generation 
tool is purported to have its UI based on the Access 2007 style, 
though I haven't played with it yet.

Thanks and this project is pretty basic. It's more along the lines 
of a task management system. Right now they do it with some fairly 
bulky spreadsheets. Thanks for the tip.

Graham, you use the wrapper like this

do %odbc-lib.r
db: sql/open "DSN" "user" "pass"
sql/exec db "select * from your_table"
while [not empty? row:  sql/fetch db] [probe row]
sql/close   db


I used my own routines of calling the odbc.dll, because of some glitches 
with RT's implementation and some databases.

Interesting.  And this works on Linux as well?

I never tried it, but I sent it to someone and he wrote, that it 
was working. Of course you have to load .so instead of .dll.

Accessing ODBC data sources with Core and View

http://anton.wildit.net.au/rebol/doc/translated/AccessODBC/odbcsockserv_english.html

The original article should be fixed and the link changed.

Yes, sqlab and Graham, I haven't had the chance to start my testing. 
I have to wait for weekends and the last two have been swamped.

Sqlab, OK, I gave your odbc-lib a shot. So far so good. Thanks. I'll 
be doing some more testing over the weekend. If you know of any quirks, 
please let me know. I'm pretty much an "insert" and "Select" SQL 
guy so it should be fine. Thanks again.

You know I thought I saw that but this morning I went to the main 
site and that's pretty much the same as it always has been.
Thanks. I'll take a look.

You have to be a ltitle tricky to hide it James, because it wants 
to redraw when you release the mouse button. In the past, I've set 
up a central handler and states to control what is shown, then your 
action just sets the state you want and the button will be hidden 
on the next pass (timer event).

Has anyone ever seen the "Call" word not work? I've been trying to 
simply call %/c/rebol/view.exe and it shows up in task manager but 
I never see the application. It's not just that particular app either. 
The funny thing is I was successful doing that at my work computer.

The show option, and hiding the shell window by default, was a change 
in new releases.

Q: "Any idea why?" call/show

A: Most of the time call is used to run background processes, and 
REBOL <= 2.7.6 did not give you the option, always flashing that 
shell window. Starting with 2.7.7 the called app (and the shell window) 
is not shown by default.

See posts from the 21-Mar-2008 and we talk about call, call/show 
and call/shell

No, and work on it has barely started. We will have a public development 
release of the new R3 GUI first.

Hi,
For homework, I was asked about the random number generator in 
my favorite language ... did some experiments but answered 
closed source
 to what "algorithm does it use?" for this part, I got a zero.

So, could someone with access to rebol source or internal doc 

get me information on the algorithms for 'random and 'random/secure

they are probably some flavor of linear congruent generators 
(please don't say RANDU) but multiplictive?  or mixed?  
maybe a PMMLCG? shuffling? QCG? MRG? What constants are used? 
what is the period? how many streams? 


The easiest on you would be just send me the source and let me figure 
it out 

but is that is verboten as much detail as you may send to me (privately)
would be appreciated 

note: the information will only be seen in a distilled form by my 
professor
and not kept by me.

thanks Tom

Hello, I have big conceptual problems with REBOL objects.  They differ 
a lot from common OOP. Inheritance is done by copying, no accessors, 
function redefinitions needs binding,  the object is composed of 
multiple blocks and I don't know how REBOL compiler interprets them.

It only differs from class-based OOP. There are at least 3 standards 
for OOP, and only class-based OOP has inheritance.

BrianH, I have learnt OOP in Thinking in Java and VB.NET programming 
language.

I'll wait for the answer of other people to continue. The I'll start 
experimenting and asking questions. I stopped working using REBOL 
object lot of time ago when I found really difficult to have an unique 
template to build many object with different fuctions.

thanks BrianH and Ladislav  I found curecode and ticket 879  it will 
do nicely.

Giuseppe, in the context of REBOL as a messaging/data language, can 
you picture how it might work as a class-based model? And do you 
think a class-based model is more appropriate in distributed environments?

the feature that you can disarm error and turn it into object / data 
that you can store then is very good !

ok, probably more predictable and consistent behaviour ..

Gregg,  I do not want to criticize the REBOL object model but the 
lack of in-depth documentation leave me in the blindness.

I have no answer for you. My skill level is too low but I whish to 
increase it.

Now I have learnt that REBOL object are Prototype Based and I have 
read the Wikipedia article about this kind of object orientation. 
I know domething more.

Try to search using google: "rebol prototype based objects site:rebol.com"

You will find nothing apart "Core product information" and something 
on "Rebol/View" then only in the lower part of the page you will 
findd something in REBOL3 docs.

The transition from class-based OOP languages to non-class-based 
OOP is usually rough, because the makers of class-based OOP tend 
to teach that the only style of OOP is class-based, and that if there 
are no classes it's not OOP :(

But believe me there is a deep gap between what the standard documentation 
teaches and what should be written there to fully understand not 
only objects but the full ideology behind REBOL.

Most of the inner schemes used in Rebol are hidden. Carl never talked 
a lot about them and never officialy

Giuseppe, I didn't mean to sound critical of you either. I just meant 
to pose it as a thought problem. Something fun to think about. e.g., 
in a world where you can send objects around, what does it mean if 
you can send a standalone object, versus one that needs a class to 
instantiate itself from? And what does that mean with regards to 
execution and untrusted code?

In Rebol 2.7.6 is it possible to set an escaped forward curly brace 
comparable to the ^} for escaping a closing curly brace?  In 2.7.7 
?  Or am I missing something.  I am trying for readability when my 
string tokens include both double-quotes and curly-braces and often 
span multiple lines.

Here is the group for discussing R2 releases and plans.

1. I would like to release this week.
2. BrianH will set the priorities.

3. I can post any code needed to fix problems. But, if you make a 
change, be sure to test it really well. I do not have the time to 
test.
4. We can release again next month, and each month after that.

all path access is slow...but I woudn't have thought that using a 
series function and multiplying both values in the pair would be 
twice as fast!

ah, sorry, it is not AT, but AND, which should be used...

Went through the Parse Proposals list and tweaked the Priorities 
section to double as a status list. Unfortunately, some of the rejected 
proposals must have at some point been removed from the proposals 
page. We wanted to document them and why they were rejected, so they 
don't get proposed again. I may have to go the history and find the 
rejected proposals that were deleted and restore them to the page, 
so they can be rejected explicitly with explanations.

The main ones missing that need documented rejection are the alternatives 
to the USE and INTO proposals. The reasons they were rejected provide 
valuable information about the way PARSE works internally, information 
we don't want to lose.