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Hmm. I'll look into that, but we won't have any fixes for a while. 
Sorry.

how about a group for that? there are a few things I'd like to see.

Well, as for plug-in, it is a pity, as last release has few things 
broken, fixing which would allow others to proceed ...

I need the plugin badly for some commercial projects and they can't 
go anywhere without a production ready plugin. But we all know that 
REBOL development tends to go in the "ohh... shiny" direction. :-)

it would just work a lot better if there were more people assigned 
to easier tasks and something that would be officially recognized. 
does RT themselves have to maintain docs and site? why do I have 
to wait 2 months to see a typo in a document fixed when I could do 
this myself?

we are for example still lacking proper documentation for VID. there 
are still many secrets in it. A knowledgable person could write it, 
some one else could proof read it and make suggestions about documentation 
flow and Carl could comment on it and have the final say. But if 
I know Carl right, he's very hands-on, wants to do it himself. :-)

joshM, it's not your fault. you are doing a heck of a job.

The Win2k issue is serious...I didn't realize it was completely broken. 
We'll take a look at that. The only thing is that Carl is in France 
and I can't release w/o him, so it will probably have to wait untill 
he gets back in 3 weeks.

that's ok for me. I don't need it tomorrow, but it would be nice 
to develop my concepts for demoing in a few months time.

In the meantime, if you have any other crucial breaking bugs, please 
post them. (also, regarding stability: please try the plugin on a 
fresh, clean system first, because old plugin versions can sometimes 
mess things up).

I am not sure Orca will deliver, as Rebol lost momentum already, 
and unless Orca attracts new developers (which is imo unlikely), 
it is a tough problem. I wonder Kaj bets on Orca for Syllable.

Until there is a change in RT in rebol polices rebol is going to 
lose market and mind share, and it risk being completely isolated, 
like it happen to Apple before to OSX, or scheme before PLT, or Smalltalk 
before seaside, or Ruby before rails. We need a push for real.

Jaime - so what is your environment of choice for the future being? 
Is that a Python?

Pekr, Ruby and stand alone yes. But packaging is not as easy as PLT-Scheme, 
which just gives you a single binary like rebol.

(That ends my ranting, Orca still has a chance if anyone time please 
feel welcome to contribute, I sign-off from this channel now)

well... that won't be a while on account of the delay

for security: Until the plugin is fixed, could it show an own page 
first where it ask "do you really want to run this script?". then 
it would be still easy to show a demo to friends, but not for others 
to sneak scripts in.

Sorry, but we are not.  Our plan has not changed in a long time. 
 But, what you see are pieces of the plan in development in parallel. 
 To explain...

A number of us have projects based upon statements made about the 
plugin.

So, what is important now is to build a list of shortcomings (e.g. 
security comes to mind), and prioritize.

So, how much effort would it be to complete the plugin?  A day, week, 
month?

The current status is that all the demos on rebol.net don't work 
... this is not a good advert.

We need a short list of "items" that define "complete". Once we have 
that, we can work toward making that happen.

Certainly, I would like to see a non-beta of the R2.

So, a short list of the outstanding critical problems .. see if they're 
fixable in your time frame , if so - commit to a final release?

It is also likely, and I should be clear, that some behaviors related 
to the browser handling of things like events may be somewhat different 
than in REBOL itself.  This is related to the fact that explorer 
is handling the events and sending them to us via a type of "relay" 
(we call it a window proxy).

complete is when it cant be exploited without some basic agreement 
IMHO. Which for me is some kind of "run this script really" before 
loading the real thing. In a way that stop normal people from using 
it, except they get personal motivation by trusted persons.

(since that can be done in a day ;)

Hi Volker... can you clarify that a bit (e.g. in what context)?

e.g do you mean run the script before installing or before running 
a demo, or ?

if the pluin shows a big url and a warning: this script could be 
used to install malware, do youreally want.." and i tell them "thats 
my url" it would work

while a completesave sandbox is still far away i guess.

needs infrastructure. a month later i guess.

For me, if a user must worry about malware by running any REBOL script, 
then that is a problem --- a show stopper.

Yes, but IMHO it is complete if users have a good way to allow/deny 
it.

Graham, yes, signing.  Take a look at the updater script... we are 
already employing script signing, so it is possible to make that 
work.

G: that is a good question.

Carl, I hope, you have a good vacation! Paris is nice. I were there 
last week.

In my mind, and as I've stated, I think we must consider a 2.6.3 
release as well -- for some bugs that are critical.

Yes, Paris is a very nice town.

2.6.* is still a good language :)

Sorry, although 3.0 is highest priority, we are "multiplexing-in" 
a few other tasks.

Just so you know for sure: we do plan to make a 2.6.3 (1.3.3) update 
to fix various R2 bugs, including a range of OSX related issues.

Gabriele is the main contact regarding the R2 priorities.  So, you 
must talk to him if there is a critical bug that you need scheduled 
for fixing.

Rebol has a chance now that paradigms are shifting into general acceptance.

Plugin "completion" project: As Carl said, we are going to take the 
steps necessary to make a R2 "complete" plugin.

Josh, I believe the Proxy support is really needed and obviously 
that could be used in REBOL3 for universal use.  I hope you implement 
both kerberos and NT LM Authentication.  I know that Doc Kimbell 
already has a tested Proxy implementation using the NT LM Authentication 
on his website.

If I recall the Kerberos is the default authentication on newer MS 
operating systems and NTLM is the older legacy authentication method 
that should be incorporated to support a more diverse environment 
where Win9x  and NT 3.5-40 machines might be in use.

Proxy: I've broken this sub-project down into two areas:

 1. Detection (auto-proxy, manual proxy, etc.) -- obtaining the correct 
 proxy server address for a given URL.

 2. Authentication (NTLM, Kerberos, etc.) -- authenticating with the 
 proxy server

Are there other areas you see related to proxy support?

not known to me .... but I know only a little about it ....

Am I correct in assuming that the majority of these proxy scenarios 
are just downloading HTTP/FTP files? Is there a case where you need 
upload support through proxy as well?

I need to run this by Carl, but my thinking is along the lines of 
a new option to 'read and 'write that says "use win32 HTTP/FTP API". 
If you choose that option, you get full proxy support in Windows....

You would have only the capability of HTTP and FTP requests via Proxy, 
we're not talking about proxy-enabling the whole network stack. I'm 
not sure that makes sense anyway (i.e. if the cache server serves 
you a cached page, you're not going to communicate with the actual 
server anyway).....

Actually, I realize that there is no problem with get-net-info with 
manual-config proxy servers. So, scratch (1) off the list above. 
The question is very simple now: Do you want a solution along the 
lines of what I proposed in #2 above?

To clarify: I made a mistake above. There is nothing in get-net-info 
that needs fixing. The single question is: do you want a Win32-specific 
refinement that changes the read or write to use the Win32 HTTP/FTP 
API, and consequently enables full proxy support?

JoshM as long as the big picture includes the ability to authenticate 
by MS Proxy then I'm good.  This can allow me to make a plugin that 
can reach our printers via the network using their web interfaces.

Paul, you are OK with this support only on a Win32 client, and just 
in read/write?

Eg a company could run the plugin internally, allow only own scripts. 
Then proxy is a showstopper and stability can be worked around by 
the scripters.

That is the right order. I had some free time today and was investigating 
the issues involved with the proxy project, hence the discussion. 
(we may develop this slightly out of order anyway, because Carl is 
in France for a few more weeks)

WinInet.dll offers a Win32 API for http, https, and ftp downloads 
combined with other API for caching and parsing.  It\u2019s a very 
popular binary, and in addition to being part of the IE platform, 
is widely used in Windows client applications for its Networking 
services.

But no promises that would be available in a free version of the 
plugin -- need to check with Carl on that.

Josh: I guess this could be plugin-only and either replace read-thru 
etc. with a native or provide new port schemes (probably the former 
is much easier). if for some reason it's not possible to make the 
native read-thru compatible with the old mezzanine one then there 
would need to be a new name I guess, but I'm not sure Carl would 
like that (no more cross-platform, although the plugin is already 
single platform rigth now so maybe this is not a big problem for 
r2 and can be solved in r3)

Gabriele, yes you're right, it's not a cross-platform solution. However, 
this is a Win32 problem by definition....to explain: We are talking 
about providing a solution for clients that use an auto-config proxy 
server with Internet Explorer. By definition, these are Win32 clients 
that only need a Win32 solution.

Stability: Has anyone found bugs with a clean install of the plugin, 
besides the Win2k bug?

Josh: the point is not what this solves, the point is that the same 
script will not work across platforms if we end up using a different 
function for each platform to do the same thing. now, since read-thru 
already does something similar, it looks like a good target to me. 
i'm not sure about a refinement to read, since in that case i guess 
it would be a hack or you'd rather need a new port scheme.

file-requester works in a similar way, by having a native function 
and a cross-platform wrapper. and read-thru does caching, maybe read 
is a better place.

Gabriele, you're right. If we do this at all, whatever function we 
choose should have a fallback implementation on other platforms.

would like that a lot! but time-machine broken :(

printf locale

.  German, but short example about using setlocale(): http://www.galileo-press.de/openbook/c_von_a_bis_z/c_022_004.htm

I've installed the Rebol plugin (hand installed by copying the *.dll 
files to the rebol directory) for Firefox and it is listed in the 
"about:plugis" page and shows that it is enabled but I'm still not 
showing a red-blue image on the .../web-plugin-install.html page. 
  I've restarted the computer (W2K-SP4).  Any suggestions?  Do I 
need to install an ActiveX plugin for Firefox as well?

There's a problem with Win2K.

Is the problem with the plugin in Win2K, or is there a problem with 
Firefox in Win2K ?

Cyphre: I will research that. Seems like a locale problem.

Graham: Have you been able to get this to reproduce consistently, 
or was this just a one-time occurance?

that is a good idea Pekr,  a day or two of public delay in exchange 
for working demos.

can we expect a solution IE proxy exception on rebol plugin ????? 
  :-(

Does the plugin work yet? Does is have security holes? Does it only 
have a problem under win2k?

we all wait for RT to bring more info ... when Carl left for vacation 
in France, Josh told us, that he was redirected to do another things. 
No further info yet, just Carl noting somewhere here, that they worked 
on plug-in security issues or what, which was found as a necessity 
...

I have a program waiting to be used with the plugin. Have you noticed 
that waiting is hard sometimes?  :>)

of course, as for rebol itself, you can prepare your app ahead - 
it is still standard View 1.3.2 imo, just in form of a dll, being 
called via plug-in dll API

or post it on a reb site ?

i put rebol.exe and a small launch-script in a zip and tell "install 
rebol, click *.r" some people got it.

It cannot be appreciated without the appropriate data. If you will 
each send me a picture of yourself (jpeg file), then I will see what 
I can do. Can the files be sent via AltME file sharing? I've never 
used it and would like to put it to a test.

Oh, and along with your photo please send a wav file telling who 
you are, what you do, and why you like programming in rebol. Limit 
the length to 1 ot 3 minutes. No porno pics or bad language, please. 
Not I think any of you would ever do anything like that.  :>)

This will be a rebol promotional.

(That took me a while... I don't have ActiveX controls enabled in 
Firefox, so I had to install the plugin manually from the zip provided 
for Opera.)

I get the following error message:

** Syntax Error: Script is missing a REBOL header
** Where: do-thru
** Near: do/args url arg
>>

but there is a valid rebol header. What could be causing this?

Whoops! a few repeats there; I pasted too many times.

But that "What? Continue?" doesn't look right to me :)

Try 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost and see if that makes a difference.

Right, well, it looks like it is not a plugin issue, but a url or 
webserver issue.

Have you tried opening that url in a browser ?

Yes, that is when I get the error message. First the web page displays 
with a box containing the message REBOL/Plugin 2.6.6.3.1, then a 
REBOL/ViewDLL window pops up with the error message.

No I mean directly opening that url in a browser, eg:

browse http://localhost/slideshow/test.r

You should look into Cheyenne's options regarding Rebol Server Pages 
and see it there's a way to disable it for certain scripts.

Anton said: 

No I mean directly opening that url in a browser, eg:

browse http://localhost/slideshow/test.r


OK, that works! Would you believe it? I was doing the same thing 
wrong that I did earlier.  I misunderstood the reason behind it. 
Anyway this does not appear to have been caused by Cheyenne, but 
merely by my ignorance. Anton, thanks again for your help!

Ok, I put the data into the script as a block of blocks, but now 
the plugin cannot load the image files.


Am I at a deadend here? or is there still a way to make this work?

If I use to-binary to convert an image to a binary string that can 
be stored in the View script, how can I then display it? 

image to-image binary-string 

doesn't work.

I remember seeing a script that did this once, but I don't remember 
which script it was. One of Carl's perhaps.

Sweet success!  It now works perfectly running under Cheyenne on 
my local machine. Now for testing on a remote server.

Since IE7 always opens a new window on browse/only, I wonder if I 
can use the plugin to setup a little server to control IE behaviour.