AltME groups: search

I've got a reply. Moving this conversation to emit rss group.

i should clarify my point..   Community is just that.. community. 
 By telling someone what they can and can't talk about would be like 
telling your staff "If you want to talk about the weather, do it 
on your own time."  If you did this in the workplace, you would find 
yourself void of employees quick smart.  If it's inappropriate in 
the workplace, where you PAY people to work, how more inappropriate 
is it here?


If this world was limited to just Rebol discussions, I would probably 
only read it once every few months, or if I had a problem.  But over 
the years, I've come to know some of you very well, and appreciate 
your opinons and discussions.. not only regarding the MAIN topic.. 
Rebol.. but on various other topics as well.


I'm well aware that some of the folks here consider my opinions, 
discussions etc. 'out of place' and verbose, to say the least, however, 
as I've said before, feel free to ignore them.  If you can't, well, 
I guess you can try censorship, but that will not help the community.. 
not at all.

From a QoS (Quality of Service) viewpoint then keeping things on 
topic is important.   There are official moderators on most community 
channels that have to do with a commercial product and although none 
of REBOL's community channels have any moderators for some reason 
you feel you must complain when someone tells you that you posted 
a message to the wrong group?

I didn't change the subject.  I'm just wondering what hurt you feelings 
about being told that you were in the wrong group is all.  A bit 
embarrassing I guess, I'll leave you too blush in peace...

And if they're in a non english language .. who's going to know??

I beleive Gregg is just trying to have some manners, not set rules. 
 It is a given that when someone welcomes you, you should not overstay 
your welcome or you won't be welcome any more.  So rather than trying 
to set any rules or restrict anyone's conversations, I believe Gregg 
was just say, "Let's not overstay our welcome."

I have yet to see anyone here "overstaying their welcome".  And if 
no one is doing that, then why make the point?  Could it be a personal 
issue perhaps?  An "I'd rather not try to filter out stuff im not 
interested in, so stifle it." ?

Q: I have yet to see anyone here "overstaying their welcome". 

A: Let us focus on signal to noise, which seems to be the focus of 
Gregg's post.


Q:  And if no one is doing that, then why make the point?  Could 
it be a personal issue perhaps?  An "I'd rather not try to filter 
out stuff im not interested in, so stifle it." ?


A: Do you feel you have an axe to grind?  Is there something your 
reading into the cordial request to all to "please remember to stay 
on topic in groups." ?


I must have missed something, how did you jump from the sentence 
above, and the sentence "If you don't want to be bothered with a 
particular group, feel free to remove yourself from it. "  which 
seams educational (people do forget they can change the channel in 
censorship terms to "So if I'm "not welcomed""?


Reading your posts here leads me to believe you have taken what was 
written as if it was written to and for you, yet it seems to be written 
as general web etiquette but as it applies to Rebol3.

Just a week or so ago I seem to remember starting a group called 
"Hitler" (which someone renamed Quagmire…I think Hitler is still 
a better name).


The whole reasons being that anyone with a strong enjoyment of debate, 
that has am opinion will eventually pull a thread off topic.  It 
is natural.


I simply wanted to offer a method in our community here to push people 
to take it "out of the room" so to speak.


In our office we have a large plastic pig we call the tangent pig. 
 If during a meeting anyone deems the conversation to have strayed 
off topic, we had them the plastic pig, since in order to be on a 
tangent, you must have the pig in your hand.  It works the other 
way also, if you want to pull a tangent, jump for the pig.  It works. 
 Tangents are quick.

1. ) It IS much easier to accidentally post into the wrong group 
with Altme, than say, a BB.  That's beyond debate.

2.) As I mentioned, it's not the "stay on topic" point.. it's the 
'all topics should be Rebol related' point.. of which Graham above 
understood with the response... "well, if all the topics should be 
rebol related, we're in trouble."  My comment, as both you AND Ammon 
have 'missed', has nothing to do with either posting in the wrong 
group, OR staying on topic within a particular subject.

You know Terry, I find your writings rather sanctimonious.


I didn't "miss" anything, I simply agree with Gregg.  Groups should 
really be Rebol related.  This world is provided by and for Rebol. 
 Or Cleary marked so you know they are not, and offered in a way 
to not be part of them, as in Private.

It already is.  You may notice on the Health group a number of Rebols 
have opted out.

just wondering why ann-reply is also a private group

we lack a history of changes

non dokuwiki format to enhance work abality and reability we decided 
to open a dokuwiki widly open to anyone

REBOL is a true killing app for all those kind of little conversion 
script little but very powerfull

Nice work, guys!

It's a trail-blazing project that I hope inspires others to follow.

There's a problem with my RebXML format, now that I wanna use a slash 
to make an empty element. The problem arise, when having string content 
after the slash, because it'll then be seen as an attribute. I'm 
working on it...

I don't think, the problem can be solved, so I have to go back to 
using an empty string to define an empty element. The problem is, 
that:
{<doc><element att="value" />some text</doc>}
is a valid XML string. The RebXML version is:
[doc [element att "value" / "some text"]]
and that will be converted back to:
{<doc><element att="value" /="some text">}

because the slash is seen as a word by the parse command, and then 
it's recognized as an attribute, because attributes are defined as 
a word! and a string!.


I'll think about it a little longer and give you guys the option 
to point me to a solution. Else I'll just change it back.

Yes, that's a good suggestion. Will it be too weird to define an 
empty element with a #? hmm

Geomol, can't you just make an exception for words beginning with 
a slash ?

I haven't found a way to do that within a parse rule. It's like parsing 
words and stop with a certain word.


parse [word1 word2 word3 X word4 word5] [any ['X (stop parsing!!!) 
| word!]]

How do I stop?

And then start the parse again from that point. Hmmm, a possbility! 
:-)

And I consider myself a programmer. ;-)

if you are going to restart parse at that point maybe a skip  or 
'X here: (here: next :here) :here

Looks good Ashley.....A nice piece of work.

One tiny thing.  It needs a 'needs in the REBOL header  -- otherwise 
it looks like it'll run on the current live release of REBOL/View 
(it almost does, but the info button fails as stats is not valid)

MDViewer is really cute and speedy !!! A piece of art work  Ashley 
once again I have so mutch to learn from you  !!

Just a comment regarding Gregg's last announcement... your point 
is much clearer, thank you... however, I tend to disagree.. and here's 
why.. 

Since the beginning of February, 94 different Rebols (which some 
call Rebolers) have visited this world.  I would say that the 80/20 
rule would be fairly accurate, where 80% of the posts are made by 
20% of the community.  I'm not exactly sure what the exact percentages 
would be, but I would say that well over half rarely, if ever, say 
a word.   I would like to hear from a few more of these folks .. 
about anything.. who are they?.. what do they do?  And if some Rebol 
chat comes from that.. all the better.  I'd like to see an eagerness 
to participate at whatever level.   


People are drawn here because of a common  interest.. Rebol.  But 
what keeps them coming back?  Is it the pure Rebol conversations? 
 I don't think so.  If that were the case, then where is the Rebol-view 
world?  That used to be the main hang out? I for one, stopped going 
there because it became dry, old, boring and censored.  I preferred 
this world because it DIDN'T have the rules.. the conversations were 
much more free and engaging.. both Rebol and non-Rebol.   I've found 
the business / marketing discussions particularily interesting.  
The 'debates' on evolution vs. creation have been stimulating TO 
ME... maybe not to you.


Rebol needs all the community it can get.  I would make few f any 
'rules', (other than the obvious).  If you want pure Rebol, then 
fire-up Rebol-view and have at it.. But if "this is not our world", 
then what the hell am I doing here?


My online community is where I touch base to see whether I'm on the 
right track, where I get support and advice, and where I learn and 
teach. In the eyes of its many users, online communication is a powerful 
medium for like-minded individuals to form virtual communities that 
provide mutual support, advice and identity.

Communications networks 
offer the prospect of greater opportunities for seeking advice, challenging 
orthodoxy, meeting new minds and constructing one's own sense of 
self. Entirely new notions of social action, based not upon proximity 
and shared physical experience but rather on remote networks of common 
perceptions, may begin to emerge and challenge existing social structures 
(Loader, 1998).

The spirit of community is essential to the vitality of virtual communities. 
What holds a virtual community intact is the subjective criterion 
of togetherness, a feeling of connectedness that confers a sense 
of belonging. Virtual communities require much more than the mere 
act of connection itself (Foster, 1996).

I read this posts. They're interessants. I like them. But, as a reader, 
I don't post to tell that. So, if I follow the rules, Terry don't 
post anymore, because he post more than 2 post on the same subject... 
Sad. very sad. I like reading terry's posts, IA, natural language, 
and so on... But I didn't post.

RebXML

The way by using a slash to define an empty element doesn't seem 
to work with the official release of REBOL/View version 1.2.1. I 
use rvdraw57e.exe, and here it works.

Quick comment in support of Gregg's last announcement: I've tried 
introducing a number of folks to REBOL/AltME, and they were deterred 
from using it because of the high amount of noise and the feeling 
that they were "intruding" on a series of private conversations. 
So my feeling on the matter is that wide ranging discussions are 
all well and fine for folks who are *already* here but could deter 
some folks who come to the REBOL world thinking it might be a purely 
technical / support forum.

a nowhere threat

Perhaps we could create a group with a list of the off topic groups, 
their respective descriptions and moderators.  If someone is interested 
in an off topic group then they can apply for membership to the moderator 
of the group.

I am on GPRS at work, slower than dial-up actually, and never found 
a problem with Altme ;-)

Any conversation in the world in my opinion is a good thing.  It 
keeps me coming back knowing that the regulars are around throughout 
the day.  Sometimes there is a gem, sometimes off topic chat.  But 
I know someone is here.  If I have a question, I know people will 
see it if placed in the proper group.

a static world is death .. like an unchanging website

For instance, two questions today for Ammon re: his drop-down.r - 
both answered within minutes.  Other Rebol related questions go no 
longer than a day if it is general enough.  That is VALUE.

It likely is from the RT perspective - but I know where I am going 
to go to get my questions answered if I need a timely response.

Ashley: your wellcome for your consern but in fact integrating your 
new engine from MDViewer only takes my 2-3 hours ( in fact i spent 
more time like 10 hours to try to mixe both method has it wasn't 
has performant has your rendering full engine I cleared the mixed 
one and retake as it MD-Viewer engine then I adpat it to MDP standars 
) Now MDP-GUI has a super fast rendering engine like MDViewer (Ineed 
to enhance the speed of the toc window rendering that the only slowing 
remaining step). Another time what a work you made as  I trully knows 
it intimely (because of the work needed to integrate it to MDP-GUI) 
I can say that in front the previous rendering method you made really 
a ART WORK it's clear it's tiny it's easy to understand :)

one of the diffrence with "normal" MDP doc is that the toc is shown 
into a sépareted window. By click on entries into this window you 
scroll the preview panel content to the related section

So this is very simple encoding. ASCII85 encoding is a bit more difficult, 
but will take up less space.

It seems to work without the newlines, but then the ps file become 
difficult to enter with e.g. vim. That part is fast, I think. It 
only put in a newline for every 80 chars.

it does not, I tried a local file. 12 seconds.

You say, you tried a local file, but did you change the load-image 
in postscript.r?

Ok, I'll see, if I can make a faster insert...

tried a much bigger image. no problems at all.

To do anything about it, we need to be able to reproduce that error, 
and see if we can figure out, that might solve it. A way to test 
different things is to edit the ps-files by hand.

what I do to cause the error is make a ps file with postscript.r 
and then feed it directly to the printer. In windows I print directly 
to LPT1: to produce it. Under Linux I print it via LPR.

a simple check: does a PS example from the internet end the same 
way as a postscript.r generated file?

Output from TextEdit printed to a PS file has this in the end:

%%Trailer
%%Pages: 1
%%EOF
^D


The last char (ctrl-D) is hex 04. I think, the comment lines are 
according to "PostScript Language Document Structuring Conventions 
Specification". You can find this document on the net at Adobe. So 
there is a difference in how %%Pages comments are handled. And postscript.r 
doesn't put hex 04 in the end. You could try some of these changes, 
when you have the problem.

I'll give it a shot when I get access to the testing equipment.

Has anyone tried the transformations? There might be an unwanted 
restriction in the implementation. I can't get transformations to 
work for a whole page, only for one path at a time.

Yes, but it only worked with integer! text-size. I've added decimal! 
option, and this seems to work too. (sub-unit precision)
I have a new version ready soon.

anyone been working on a postscript table generator for the dialet?

Geomol. have you been looking at vertically centered text? It could 
be added as a y parameter to 'text, where we already use an x parameter 
for the string box size.

I think I have a crude way to do it for one line.

I'm working on displaying Qwikis (Wikis) on Cell phones.


It is a connected problem, viewing something intended for one medium 
on another.  

My basic plan is:


- Images - make a thumbnail, then let them click on it to see a larger 
or a list of sizes of their choice


- Tables - Show the name of the table, and then a bias, column or 
row, and offer a search.  Then drill down.


When printing big tables to paper you have to decide what to do if 
the table is simply too big for a single piece of paper.

Put the table at the end on multiple pages?

Put a small version of the table (perhaps unreadable), and say "See 
table on Exhibit X"?
Put the table on multiple pages inline?

Convert the table to something else, for example more like a query 
result, where each row is a chunk of data in a new format?

the width of the text yes, not the height. and I may not know the 
font at rendering time as that may be set in a completely different 
part of the program.

not sure about that .. but you can set a postscript variable to hold 
the latest fontsize and reference that

The ``charpath'' operator extracts the graphic shapes of its string 
operand and appends them to the current path in the graphic state. 
These shapes can then be processed by other PostScript operators. 
To get the actual size of the area touched by a character a simple 
approach is

	gsave
	newpath
	0 0 moveto
	(X) false charpath flattenpath pathbbox
	grestore


This code places four numbers on the stack, representing the coordinates 
of the lower left and upper right corners of the bounding box enclosing 
the character ``X'' rendered with the current point at (0,0). Leaving 
the flattenpath out will cause it to be less accurate, but it will 
take up less memory and be faster.

I get a postscript error.

The changes are:


- Stores the font size inside PS every time a new font is selected. 
This is not used however, but perhaps is useful in the future.

- Added bottom, middle and top alignment for TEXT. Similarly to how 
you specify a size for LEFT, CENTER and RIGHT, you can enter a size 
for TOP, MIDDLE and BOTTOM:

Some text
 center 400 middle 200

Both sets are optional. The default alignment is LEFT and BOTTOM.

My changes are marked HMK in the source. I hope it is of use.

I use it only for X. The Y component is not a height, but something 
else.

I'll take a look at your changes...

so if the bounding box does that for a single word, we need to use 
all chars in the alphabet to calculate the height correctly for any 
char combination. it does not do that right now

If vertical position should be in the dialect, I think, it should 
be based on a real postscript feature. If such a thing isn't found 
in postscript, it should be implemented on a higher level, shouldn't 
it?

The problem is to get the height accurately for all glyphs for a 
font (I just got that now). Some fonts have very high tops and very 
low bottoms and you want that to work for any font and letter combination 
we throw at it. it would be harder to get that information inside 
REBOL than inside postscript.

I got it rendered now so that the vertical position is at least consistent 
now, but the font is offset a few points too far down. I don't know 
why yet, but it's probably the baseline again.

In Adobe documentation, they operate with "character origin", which 
is the baseline, I think. If you do:
40 50 moveto (ABC) show
, the origin of the A letter is at coordinate (40, 50).

A vertical positioning would be a simple calculation. Say, you want 
the baseline to be positioned at the middle of a 300 point high box 
starting at pos (100, 100). You then start by putting text at coord 
(100, 250).

If you wanna build a table, you calculate the position of each line 
like this, and send the precise coords to the postscript dialect. 
It would probably be best to build a new dialect on top of the postscript 
one, and in that dialect handle the calculations.

the table is a different matter :-) it's already done, not yet as 
a dialect though. I will build one later.

The baseline problem is the one I'm hunting a solution for. About 
the font metrics, the bbox for the whole font is stored in FontBBox 
in the font dictionary.

If your goal is, that the text is completely centered vertically, 
then you have a problem. Because how do you know, what characters 
to be written? If there is no 'g' in the word, you need to position 
it a bit lower, than if you had 'g' in the text, for it to be completely 
middle aligned.

Ok, I'm a bit lost. I'm not completely sure, what you're trying to 
achieve.

then I used Graham's method and it does practically the same thing 
(I forgot to test for letters like "g"), but you can successfully 
calculate the bbox for a text string this way, if you need it.

The bbox information for the entire font is stored in each font metric 
file as a [llx, lly, urx, ury] coordinate set, so I shouldn't need 
to calculate it. This information is crucial in order to get one 
line of vertically centered text. I already got everything in place 
except that particular number. :-)

Yes, that's what I think, you should do. Build a dialect with keywords 
as top, middle, bottom etc. and make that dialect know the size of 
the paper and correctly calculate the positions. That's the way to 
do it, I think. I would do it like that.

as mentioned before, that won't work, because the font information 
is not obtainable from inside REBOL. it has to be done inside postscript. 
I've already tried that method a year ago and it failed. :-)

Do you have the psrefman.pdf document for PS second edition? Seciton 
5.4 has a drawing of font positioning.

Because if you want that, then it'll look strange, because each line 
in the table will have text jumping up and down, depending on whether 
you have letters like 'g' and 't' or you just have letters like 'a'. 
And that will look less nice to me.

:) In REBOL/View, there is things like offsets to position text within 
field and so. Couldn't you go with something like that? Just subtract 
a little from each vertical position to get the text a little down, 
if you want?

Sorry, that I find it hard to understand, what you mean from time 
to time, my fault. I get you now. I would put things like margins, 
linespace, vertical position within tables, etc. in a dialect above 
the postscript dialect level. Doing it that way, the same postscript 
dialect can be used for all sorts of layout engines, because it has 
little restriction.

the baseline is a typographical tool. it is the place where your 
letters are "resting" against, just like when you were learning to 
write in school, you had a guide line to write characters on. but 
the baseline itself is completely useless for vertical centering 
of text.

but I do wish that each char in a font had a center point that indicates 
the absolute center of a character both horizontally and vertically. 
horizontally, that would be individual for each char, but vertically 
it has to be identical for all chars, like the baseline is.

I can see, that text in tables in html is centered more like you 
want it, at least in Safari. Actually the text is much lower in Safari, 
so there is more space above the text than below, if you use words 
with 'g'. I can't judge, if they do a simple calculation or use the 
font box.

it depends on the chars you use. if you use a word like "judge", 
the word might appear offset downward, because there are no really 
tall letters in that word. if you use a word like "Greg", the word 
might appear more centered. If you say "GGG", the word might appear 
offset upward, because "G" is a tall character in Helvetica or Times. 
But overall, if you write a long sentence like that, the words should 
appear centered.

And when I say the letter is tall in Helvetica or Times, that means 
it may not be so in other fonts. I don't believe a font like Verdana 
does this. This is why when getting the absolute center for a font, 
you must calculate it using all glyphs in the font.

I gave in, and have begun using ghostscript for printing postscript. 
There are many printer specific bugs that require a windows printer 
driver to make postscript printing work properly, so I now use the 
mswinpr2 driver. However it eats about 40 MB RAM printing one page. 
Anyone got ideas on how to reduce that?

I had problems with feeding postscript files generated by postscript.r 
directly to an HP Laserjet 1200. It would stop printing after the 
first job. Feeding it through Ghostscript or the adobe postscript 
printer driver solved the problem, but now the printer is replaced 
with a different one with different issues.

I read about the HP Laserjet 1200 and it has such a bug in its postscript 
implementation that is easiest worked around in the driver.

I've also seen a Laserjet 4500 lock completely up, when you feed 
it a specific postscript or PDF file.

No, ghostscript generates a bitmap for printing on any printer, which 
is what I have to use now. I used the adobe driver for the HP 1200.

I call gswin32c.exe and feed it parameters to use the win32pr driver, 
which sends a bitmap to the printer given as a parameter in the same 
call.

will have a look at gsprint...

the point of using gsview is as a debugging tool

I don't think it's the postscript itself that's buggy, but the transmission 
of the code to the printer. Perhaps they are screwing around with 
port settings inside the driver which we don't know about. So it 
may be a lower level problem.

Is it a shared printer?

I got some notes somewhere that async printing to a postscript printer 
caused me problems.