AltME groups: search

Anton. as far as using Google and removing the phrase, "probe system/" 
that's as simple as adding -"probe system/" to your search phrase 
BUT Google doesn't acknowledge "/" as being anything other than whitespace. 
 Still, the fact that I couldn't even find it with Google was an 
implication that WE can beat Google.

Yeah, you're right, actually. I think I tried that before and was 
disappointed.

You can download Grahams' ML archive application (or. at least you 
could until he started having trouble with 1and1's hosting).

Assuming it's still available, you get 70Meg of ML messages and it 
has a search that runs on your ow desktop.

just tested Grahams' ml program and still not working :(

well, I finally made contact with 1and1 tech support.  They said 
it was a billing issue and I have to contact accounts on Monday. 
 Now, what billing issue could there be with a 3 year free account 
that has 1 year to run ?

Sunanda,  I didn't try that.  I had assumed that search would use 
that index as a key.  Is there a way to search the topic index other 
than by clicking on a letter in the alphebetical list and relying 
on the browser's find functionality?

Download everything and grep in the folder

I can search for scripts using {in author "Volker"} and get what 
I'm looking for.  Perhaps adding a {in topic "blah"} capability to 
the ML search engine would be a good idea?

<< Is there a way to search the topic index other than by clicking 
on a letter>>
In theory:

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-topic-index.r?i=probe

takes you straight to the entry (if any) for 'probe.  But that looks 
broken right now....I'll look into it.


Other than that, no.  Only about 80% of the threads are indexed in 
the topic index. When we get closer to 100%. we'll enhance the existing 
search to take account of the topic index.....so results will include 
and be prioritised by the topic index. 

Well, you could try, in Google:
probe site:www.rebol.org inurl:topic

But that (as with any search anywhere) is dependent on Google having 
the page indexed.

Back in February (!), Anton wrote:

<<By the way, something that I never really liked is the short rebol 
description at the top of rebol.org.>>

OLD TEXT: <<It's a messaging language. 'rebel' not 'ree-ball'.

 code is data and data is code. CGI? Yes. 40+ platforms. only 250K-500K.

 console or GUI. Yes, just a single file. commercial versions = same 
 core + ODBC, SSL, and more -

 shallow learning curve, amazing depth. keep IT simple. if you liked 
 "The Matrix"...>>

We may be slow, but we get there:   http://www.rebol.org

The banner text has been updated to ready pretty much what Anton 
suggested.

Thanks Anton!

Now, a quick challenge.  I'd like several banner texts that we can 
rotate to help keep the thing fresh, and to help unveil other aspects 
of REBOL.

Can we all chip in, please?
Either --- a 75 word (or shorter) snapshot of what REBOL is

or --- some bullet points that we can join to others to help paint 
a picture.

Thanks!

Maybe one way is for each banner to highlight a feature or strength 
of Rebol.
eg

Dialects are Rebol's greatest power. Dialects allows one to focus 
on expressing the domain specific language.


something along that line..but preferably something that SHOWS the 
benefit and not just tells it.

The library list talks about a new project where there is a patched 
version of View that can make library calls.  I haven't downloaded 
it .. and hope that it doesn't violate RT's rights.

Banner...I will try my first one..
--
Do you know....

'Dialects' is Rebol's greatest power ; it allows one to focus on 
expressing and model the the domain in its natural language.

I think the "dll" is an external programm. He opens a port and does 
everything through read-io/write-io

http://mortimer.devcave.net/projects/rebcall, >100k all in all, and 
.cpp

Banner text:

The banner text at REBOL.org is now clickable, and leads to a page 
intended to justify the various claims we make about REBOL:
http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/expand-banner-text.r


Corrections and suggestions for added bullet points are most welcome.

Thank's -- that was fast proof-reading.

And thanks for spotting one of mor more awkwardly phrased phrases. 
It's fixed now.

Does anyone know if you can embed the binary of a .dll into a rebol 
script, and load it?  or does it need to be a file?

You can extract the dll to a file on first run and then link to it, 
but you can't link to an embedded dll directly.

Im just trying to hide the dll to keep things squeaky clean.. what 
i've done is embed the binary, and I'll write it to a file, when 
I'm finished, Ill just remove it.

Well there's clean, and then there's rubbed raw. Do you really need 
to be this spotless? Would an on-demand cleanup routine do?

so 'rubbed raw' is nice and shiny  ;)

Sunanda, Can it be a manually maintained xml file until it can be 
automated?  I am doing that for my internal blog until I add the 
automation code to blog. r (that I expect Carl already has on his 
version).  I have a trigger for when a blog article is added to use 
"editor ftp://...../rss.xml"to make whatever additions that I want 
to expose via RSS.  It's suboptimal but I don't have any complaints 
from the people that they have to visit the pages to see What's New. 
 And since they weren't visiting regularly to poll for What's New 
anyway, if the RSS feed it updated a few hours later it is still 
an improvement.

I fixed the ez-plot.r q-plot.r condense.r get-stock.r  script combo 
for View 1.3.2  (get-stock.r had broken) and I sync'ed it to Developer/Users/steve-shireman/ez-plot-updates 
  I tried on both IOS Link and View1.3.2, so hope it works on all 
the others.  Feel free to stick it in the Library.

Sunada has access.  I put it there since the 4 scripts work together, 
its a very simple way to have a known working (tested) directory 
shared with others.  I don't know how to do this on the Library, 
and not wanting to mess up what is there already (in case someone 
sees a problem), so I stuck them in a simple place for review.

Thanks....IOS/Developer is working finw for me, and I can see your 
changes.

IOS/Developer is a bit of a forgotten Community gem (responses in 
the IOS group, if it still exists

Graham in the All group asked:

<<Is it not true though that you are limited in what you can do with 
rebol.org ? >>
Yes and no.

It's a shared server with the usual sort of quote limits, so that 
stops some of the wilder plans.

On the other hand, the limits are fairly generous. Right now, we 
do these sorts of numbers:
* 150,000 CGI executions per month
* 2.5 gigabytes of data served per month

* 70 megabytes of hard disk used (mainly for the Mailing List archive)


Of course some sort of bandwidth quota would exist with a dedicated 
server too -- that one comes from the ISP, not the box.
---- 

We've had the same problem most of us have had with servers at one 
time or another: REBOL going feral and failing to close tasks. That 
brought down the server once, and got us suspended for about 30 minutes 
until I beseeched forgiveness. Of course, that could happen with 
a dedicated server (no one quite knows why it happens).


Similarly, we get some leak-through from what are supposed to be 
the chinese walls; and that has caused the odd problem: mainly file 
permissions going askew.
---

As Peter said, the main limitation is manpower. There are several 
things under development at rebol.org right now; there is room for 
many other improvement projects too.

Regarding Carl's blog about hiding rebol scripts in web pages, I've 
always wanted a way to directly execute a rebol script from the library 
from my rebol console.  I used this trick of embedding a rebol script 
between [ .. ] in my offline mail reader, and wonder if it can be 
used in the library as well.

Check out the front page of REBOL.org:
-- it tells you the latest message on the ML: when and what.

-- the RSS feed tells you all the latest action, including new/updated 
threads on the ML.

Sunanda, same number of mouse clicks: Yes. Same distance: No, you're 
a whole page away from what you're looking for. And if you don't 
know or don't remember that, you'll have to find the search before 
searching (pun intended ;-)

Convert the radio boxes into buttons and you've saved a mouse click. 
;)

Yes, I already get rebol.org updates by mail. 
And if the ml is subscribed, too we would get:
- some traffic on the mailing list
- more people know about rebol.org

- during those quiet times where _nothing at all_ happens on rebol.com/net, 
we show that at least _something_ is happening in rebol world.

Ingo, what's needed is some sort of REBOLbot that trawls the main 
REBOL websites, takes all REBOL-related RSS feeds (and perhaps chats 
to RIXBot), and produces a regular (hourly?) summary of what's new.....That 
way people can easily go where the action is.


If someone writes such a bot, then its summaries could be published 
anywhere. REBOL.org is one possibility; though REBOLCentral was announced 
to do that sort of publicising.


But first, someone needs to write the automated REBOL newshound. 
 Any offers?

Sunanda, I agree with Allen. The main reason I go to rebol.org is 
to search for scripts. May I also repeat that I think it's great 
that you're maintaining this website and that the search function 
is there to start with.

Anton, you could set 
http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/script-index.r

as your bookmarked page: then you'll always see first a summary of 
new scripts and have an on screen script search box.

Suggestion for the library: add 'rebcode to Library header / Type 
- as beta VM exists, docs exists, and rebcode scripts exists.

Thanks for helping. Posting a dot as the first post in the group 
(and sometimes even multiple posts w/ a single dot) is actually, 
quite an embarrassing experience, but at the moment it's the only 
way for me to sync to some of the groups.

and make them searchable.

Graham -- nice idea, but I can see two problems:

[1] [web-public] is not a fine enough flag to control whether a whole 
group should be published publicly.

web-public needs a start date [or ranges of dates] to indicate which 
messages were posted while the group was not private.

Without that, we'd be republishing messages from a "secure and private 
world" (Altme's own description) without explicit permission from 
all the contributers.

Either that, or the publisher will need a list of which forums are 
public, and the date range(s) for which messages can be published.
That initial list would need to be constructed manually.

Thereafter, they could keep it up to date by watching for "[web-public]" 
to appear or disappear in group titles.

As a result, it would be pretty tricky to index the archive.


The ideal would be for "useful threads" to be selected, tagged and 
archived. I can't see anybody being able to automate that at the 
moment.

What could possibly work is if there was an AltME feature that allowed 
any user to mark a few entries, give them a title and post them to 
the ML as an email.

I once tried to create a threading extension to the 'link chat. You 
had to click on a message, and then your message was tagged as an 
answer to the original.

And nothing is *ever* going to help to make public the nuggets in 
the original REBOL world and its successor REBOL2.

That's a great pity -- all that wisdom and enthusiasm hidden on the 
local hard drives of the people who happened to be members of those 
Altme world.

REBOLCentral is now nearly five months old as a project, and it was 
initiated partially to break the REBOL community's addiction to the 
"dark net"

I guess they have some exciting stuff about to emerge to address 
these issues. Yes?

REBOLCentral is now nearly five months old as a project,

  it would be best to not connect the date someone begins talking about 
  something with when the "project began."


Separate than this specific example, I notice this comes up a lot. 
 I guess phrases like "Bob has been talking about fixing that for 
years now" just seem very odd to me.  Unless Bob himself set the 
end date….or start date.


Anyway…funny enough, we were just talking this week about what off 
the shelf tools we plan to use for RebolCentral.  Over the past 5 
months, we built a non-profit wonderfully successful website for 
another cause that has generated great usage and created a sense 
of community.  Now that it is pretty stable, we will be moving on 
to RC.

Ryan Cole had done hex-edit.r  found on my hard drive...wasn't in 
Library when I searched on hex and editor

Was this a problem with makedoc?  Or does the library convert < and 
> entities automatically?

It's a glitch between REBOL.org's escaping of codes and makedoc's 
escping of codes.

Someone has to do it to prevent XSS attacks via contributed documentation, 
but not both of uss.

Part of the problem  is that almost all Dialect==>HTML converters 
assume they are there to produce browser-ready HTML. In tne real 
world that isn't always true: they are a step in a pipeline.
I'll sort it out soon. Thanks for reporting the problem.

Yeah, we are still fixing a bunch of these type of errors with our 
MakeDoc and QML to HTML converter.  It is very funny to make self 
referencing system.

It'd fidddly too as REBOL.org post-processes the output from Makedocpro, 
Makedoc2, eText, NicomDoc and a couple of other D2H converters.
And they all have different quirks.

And not all codes need to be escaped -- those within <pre> tags for 
example; though you can't always be sure you've isolated them if 
the generated HTML is not well formed.
And so on.
I'm surprised at times that there are so few glitches.

The news box is there, it's the news that's missing...the current 
box includes Rebol 3.0 Roadmap and Debian release.

It's on the front page.

well, why not to discuss it here - I found curious Carl's request 
to follow reboltak.com. It is interesting aspect - with various products, 
I am really used to on-line phorums (most of them require registration 
anyway). I am less and less willing to subscribe to some kind of 
MLs. OTOH, the interface is slow. Currently we've got ajax as a cure 
.... to get back where AltME is for few years already ....

I would welcome more open AltME design - it is a good app. But maybe 
on rebol.org we could list on-line rebol related worlds, and provide 
free accounts, and maybe later on we can come up with mechanism, 
how to feed some info into db .... to be searchable

And we have stopped new members.  New members are still joining.

Just stopped anonymous users from entering and possibly destroying 
data.

Sunanda - OK, maybe rebol.org could add another button - IM community 
... and link to info about AltME, and also to rebol.net altme chat 
....

Looking at the code for the scripts you link to there, it looks like 
they could use a little cleaning up and optimising. Still, nice!

Formatting problem on this page ?

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

;;  To download and install the files in the package you need to
;;  run a installation program.  

;;  If you are running View (1.3 or later):

    do http://www.rebol.org/library/public/repack.r

;;  If you are running Core:
 

    do http://www.rebol.org/library/public/repack-core.rhalt
         ; <------ space missing

What version is FTPGadget expecting? ran main.r and got
** Script Error: away needs a value
** Where: context
** Near: move: offset: over: away:

There is a bug in Repack script.


Each time I use it and I try to set the target directory, then clicking 
OK in the selection window terminate the script !!
ANNOYING !!!

Thanks.
That looks like a different problem to DideC's.

Your problem seems to be a traditional REBOL annoyance with paths 
that contain spaces....

qml-ed.r is tripping up over those spaces in "Dokumente und Einstellungen 
"
---

Could you try it in a folder whose path and name do not contain spaces 
to test that assumption?  Thanks!

That's true -- and it may recreate some cross-platform issues on 
platforms that don't allow + in a file name.
But we should be able to deal with it.
Thanks for the help in isolating the problem.

A bigger errormessage would be good, and some hint on upload.

Volker's problem fixed: both repack and repack-core not correctly 
handle files with "+" in their names.


DideC's problem remains: could you check the version of REBOL you 
are using and let me know? Thanks,

View 1.3.2.3.1 on WinXP.
%user.r only contains set-net line.
%rebol.r contains nothing but the header.


I have tried it too from the WWR ( rebol.com / Public / library / 
scripts / type / package / calendar-install.r  cause qml-ed is not 
there for the moment).

Just click the [ ... ] button to choose a different folder, then 
clicked [ OK ] and it quits !!

the image and css files where not done by me, and although i had 
some suspects while uploading them to rebol.org i didn't want to 
change everything just for that :) i can add a zip file to the package 
if you need me to.

ah, once again mixture of script code and html - unusable unless 
uploaded and tested in production environment ... I will have to 
read further, as they promissed complete separation of work of app-programmer 
and designer ...

we have looked at it and at the same time looked at phpsavant 
 http://phpsavant.com/yawiki/index.php?page=StartExample


for us, our key concerns is maintenance from the developer point 
of view. We want the team to stick to one language (or markup)... 
there will be times in a project, that you may not have the luxury 
of a designer...so the developer still end up working on the apps 
GUI (or look-n-feel).

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/charset.html#h-5.2.2
and the ever useful --
http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/

yeksoon - you pov is right. I will start with my simple version of 
templating. I looked at various techniques, but I really don't like 
mixture of rebol and html code, as in: http://www.rebol.net/cookbook/recipes/0006.html

html is hardcoded into it and it is not good ....

And last but not least - Temple - system I liked most, although not 
finished, not documented. It was/is done by Gabriele and allows for 
complete separation of web designer and coder. Don't get me wrong, 
but I think that such system is better than typical templating aproach. 
If you will loose your GFX man, you will still be able to use it. 
OTOH without the intervention of programmer, GFX man can't change 
look with typical templating system ... my GFX guy made it clear 
to me - "I will not learn rebol, nor php, anything" - he is willing 
to understand modules and eventually to configure them ....

have you seen http://www.nvu.com/? Gecko based. They aim for something 
like Dreamwaver. IIRC, with dreamwaver, if you have e.g. some module, 
you can provide "plug-in", simply that web designer will parametrise 
you module using GUI and the rest is done under-the-hood ....

otoh most template system I looked into don't go Gabriele's route. 
They even do some kind of #include, so when you have e.g. footer 
of your page the same thru whole web, it is not necessary to be par 
t of each template page, but you can have it in separate page and 
only "include it".

. we have good results using  ADOdb and ION accelerator ( http://www.php-accelerator.co.uk/
)

but its fully recursive and persistent... and you can mix simple 
data replacement with full-fledged custom programable tags...

you can basically have the artist doing the pics and layout, and 
 a developper doing the code part...

Well, there are plenty of web site building tools .. and sometimes 
a huge learning curve to get what the demos show.

well anyone wanting to pull up his sleeves a little and who doesn't 
mind getting started by chatting over the course of a week, to figure 
out things is welcome to try it out.   Remark is my most finished 
tool of all.  It has been release level for a long time...

that's the "chat and ask questions part"....

I send a zip and can give guidelines, then after a little while you 
come back with a few questions and maybe someone can document the 
stuff...

ok then... let me create a group for Remark and maybe that can be 
used as a common chat room.  then whoever feels enclined to do so 
can just compile the stuff in whatever means he like and we can start 
some collaborative work on the beast...

I'll zip it, post it on my steel site, and I'll actually give out 
the steel web site as an example to work from... note that it has 
VERY advanced capabilites within its retags, but I guess its a good 
way to show how scalable the engine really is....

post info tomorrow.  (its already 1h00 AM here, so I've got to log 
off, and work a bit on liquid before I get some shut eye)

DideC:  Heres some sample CSS that creates  a box midstream and provides 
scrollbars automatically....
	.T3area3
	{
		padding-right: 10px;
		padding-left: 10px;
		left: 160px;
		padding-bottom: 10px;
		margin: 0px;
		vertical-align: top;
		overflow: auto;
		width: 642px;
		padding-top: 10px;
		position: absolute;
		top: 0px;
		height: 490px;
	}

We have a template based dynamic site here at work,  we use a base 
page to define the common logic, we use CSS "templates" to define 
the areas of different pages... the above code is Template 3 area 
3, which is the body area for a page that has a header, left navigation, 
body, and footer area.

Usually F5 works  a hard refresh in Opera.

Otherwise check your setting for tools/preferences/history and cache/check 
documents/always  (precise path may vary according to version of 
Opera)

Keyboards leave a lot to be desired. I would like to see the often-used 
technique of copy and paste to be given more prominence on the keyboard 
(and supporting OS).

BTW, funny these keyboard ideas poured in today...like Terry's * 
circle key idea...I was just trying to select-all and copy ... is 
there a key shortcut for this?

and all I want from kb is one that doesn't come with the number pad 
on the right. It makes the mouse 'sits so far away'.

I don't understand why kb manufacturere wants to include that in. 
How many of us use the number pad more often than the main alphabet 
part?


just remove it.... cuts down material cost and can still sell at 
same price.

Become left-handed and it's solved :-))

In fact - I never found use for additional keyboard buttons as handling 
sound, player, custom apps launch, sleep and I don't touch mouse 
if I don't have to .... there must be something strange with me ...

I even have special keys for cut, copy and paste, but I am used to 
old way ctrl + particular-button ....

The problem with special keys and its usage is, that I don't want 
to use such special keys - I do use many PCs actively, notebooks, 
and once some PC does not have such keys, it slows my process of 
work ...

a Korean contact of mine has tried to penetrate the US market with 
Tablets for nearly 8 years...and it is still not a winner.

that means their manufacturing cost is between five and $15.00 -- 
so very few companies are motivated to innovate on keyboard design

by a normally use a $60.00 keyboard that has an ergonomic split and 
is also wireless but the company , logitek has stopped making it 
-- unfortunately

Pekr, you can take a look at IBM Thinkpad's keyboard. They have manage 
to make it balanced with the arrow keys and stuffs.


A lot of the other laptops manufacturers don't get it, even Apple. 
(and I use Macs as well)