AltME groups: search

No, wanted to push vanilla a bit. I think you are hit by bad experience.

This is a vanilla site heavily customised by Chris

http://www.ross-gill.com/

I think it needs a news section, a chat section, a download section, 
a place to vote and comment on software.

(btw in 3 days you can make a 1000days-party :)

Sharing user-accounts, maybe some way of cross-linking, maybe changing 
the dialects in a more rebol-way.

now, that was a news site ... blog etc... but after a 1000 days, 
not a single news entry except by myself.

so, I'm somewhat pessemistic about a community collaboration on such 
a project.

this is not a problem that can be solved by throwing a server at 
it .. as we already done that.

so, I'm somewhat pessemistic about a community collaboration on such 
a project.


Pessimism implies something can fail…what can fail here?  Centralized 
information does not exist.  Building a site that centralizes information 
instantly accomplished the goal, as long as it can be updated by 
the very creation of information.  If it was nothing but an RSS transponder 
it would already accomplish something.


The trick to all of this is simply opening everything up.  Which 
brings up another great example, you blog, and your blogs have 0 
comments.  I blog (to a more private forum not computer related), 
I get anywhere between 20 and 100 comments.  But it is because I'm 
linked off a centralized feed.


People need to be invited in, given places to go, and know that things 
are happening.

How about free hosting, like lycos or such? peoples build their homes 
there, add rebol-widgets to pages? To get a community running?

I think of an alternate explanation .. Altme/Rebol3 consumes all 
the chat resources available of the more prominent supporters.


This is my point!  We are all hidden in here.  It is elitist, and 
there isn't even a way for people to come in easily.  Sure we will 
have to deal with Trolls (don't we already?)  but we can see some 
new blood as well.

Volker, in fact that is sort of what I'm saying.   Except I'm not 
suggesting anyone needs to move their stuff to this site, quite the 
opposite.  The site is to centralize all the information about all 
the other sites and places.  It is mostly a giant voting engine.

The news is just the top stories.

The forum is just a place for people to ask questions, in fact the 
mirror of Rebol3 should be there.


The library would still be over on Rebol.org.  but the reviews would 
be on RebolCentral.com.

I did not mean host only rebol. Host daily stuff, blogs. Then the 
devs are wizards in a community.

Knowing the download is useful, but outright voting/ranking is needed.


Off the top of my head a script needs:

Category
Lines of code
Author(s)
Publisher
License
Requirements
One sentence description.
500 word description.
filesize
Date of last update 
Version

History (when it was updated, lines of code, version numbers, etc).
Screen shots (if applicable)
Average rating
Review formatted as Pro and Con.
Editor's rating & Review
Comments: (hangs off the forum)

As far as I can tell, the main constraint on developing Rebol.org 
is the lack of people prepared to get involved and give their time. 
From my knowledge, Sunanda has single-handely maintained and developed 
Rebol.org for the last two years. (All in his spare time as he does 
it on a voluntary basis). (I'm definitely more of a hindrance than 
a help:-)).


Reichart is right, Rebol.org looks drab when compared with something 
like Ruby Garden FAQs. It doesn't appear friendly. Rebol.org lacks 
features though many that it has aren't used much(member home pages, 
forums for individual scripts, articles).


If I remember correctly, Sunanda has asked on a number of occasions 
for suggestions and help with the design/layout of the website. He's 
put in place most of the suggestions received which has resulted 
in some improvement in the look over the last couple of years.


What Rebol.org probably lacks is the clear focus and direction that 
creates a sense of purpose which will encourage people to volunteer. 
The may be a great part to the "paternal" relationship with RT which 
not only "fathered" the library system but continues to finance the 
server.


A successful RebolCentral would probably give Rebol.org a renewed 
focus and probably won't divert any resources away from it.

Yeksoon, I don't think IOS is where topics should be had, but offering 
a public IOS system that does "something" could be cool to show off. 
 Sort of like a model house.  No?


Peter, I actually did not know who ran Rebol.org (see!  My point 
exactly about -centralizing information, :-)   )


I think we could work together though.  As far as I'm concerned, 
anything built for RebolCentral.org will be open and free for trade. 
 Perhaps we can build and lock down templates that get carried to 
the other sites to create unity.


I see no reason to replicate anything as well.  In other words, if 
possible, we build one database of all content (perhaps what is already 
on Rebol.org) and leave it there, simply build a review system that 
points to it.  Most download sites work this way.  They are just 
a clearing house to other sites.

IOS: I would not use it as a permanent server. Instead: When we did 
the bbs, carl fired up a fresh one. We had chat and file-syncing. 
I would prefer to use it in such short-term ways. Then backing project 
up to web.

rebol.org - afaik its hosted on some shared server. maybe we can 
host it on the dedicated too? Then Sunanda & team can play whit daemons. 
chat, auto-filesyncing etc.

rebol-org, layout. IMHO it looks like slashdot. :)) I see rebol.com 
and rebolcentral as the use-sites and rebol.net, rebol.org as the 
programmer-sites. central and .org could share some things, like 
list of projects. But some thingslike the ML-arhcive is better on 
.org, and a clear "nerds"-look may be a good signal.

Or would be if there was a 1.3.62 - right now the latest rebcode 
release is 1.3.61, based on the 1.3.1 codebase. 1.3.2 is actually 
more recent.

Happy New Year!
Let it be a good one! :-)

Windows executing anything is a good help.

Nice. MS has a patch. But instead of maybe disabling a rarely used 
feature they want the pcs to be infected instead?

I thought "no exploicts" means no viruses can find a way in?

A smart user uses two computers, and that should be done by os instead.

btw - has anyone solved calendaring functions? I am about to proceed 
with our toursist portal and part of it are various Events in the 
region. Of course there is a date when such even happen. But it may 
get more complicated and I don't know how much should I complicate 
it :-) E.g., you may have some event, which is happening each monday 
for two months, you have some event, which is happening the same 
term each year. I am thinking of introducing time-slots, so that 
you can e.g. set 9:00 - 11:00, 13:00 - 15:00 in one day. But dunno 
how to aproach calendar. E.g. in one app I needed to count working 
days - not so easy, especially when each country can have various 
holidays etc.

Petr: IIRC Chris RG had a good calendar reblet with a dialect for 
repeating events etc

Let me second what Peter Wood said. REBOL.org has a lot of potential 
and information that is not obvious, including a programmatic interface. 
The wealth of content and code at REBOL.org, and the valuable info 
in Sunanda's brain--if we can pick it, should be leveraged. At one 
time, we thought REBOL.org might be what you envision for RCentral, 
and it still could be. Anything that helps us organize all the information 
out there is a good thing. I still have a dream of a reb-ring of 
resources that is easy to share and aggregate, with both web and 
reb front ends (ala the original librarian).

The only limitation that I've noticed with rebol.org is a lack of 
skilled manpower.

Has anyone written a PHP to Rebol converter?

Reichart, they (PHP) have a huge amount of functions, you'd need 
to convert them too. OTOH, if you don't need that, the translation 
wouldn't be too hard.

Yeah, I took a quick look, and that seems to be the case.

hmmm... I was just browsing Stephen Hawking's website at http://www.hawking.co.uk
and noticed how well designed, simple and fast it is. Although lacking 
a search function, it's still very easy to get around.

I'm working again on ReViewer, I'm going to buy a SDK and would like 
to add a library to read/write JPEGs. Did anybody work with such 
a library before? Any help appreciated, thanks.

RV: http://www.ijg.org/files/may be a way to go

ReViewer will remain free. Just actually wondering how the conversion 
is done from a lib to an image datatype. Will I have to set each 
pixel value of my image according to a raw decoding? Or is there 
ways to go directly from the lib to the image datatype?

A CHAT WITH NAUGHTY DOG ABOUT NEXT-GEN!


We chatted with Stephen White, co-president and programming manager 
of Santa Monica, CA-based videogame developer Naughty Dog about creating 
games for the next-generation consoles … and he offered some suggestions 
for dealing with next-gen hurdles.


Q. Naughty Dog is known for the “Crash Bandicoot” and “Jak and Daxter” 
franchises which have sold over 35 million units combined. What have 
been the fundamental keys to the success of your titles and how do 
you plan to apply those to your next-generation game development?


A. One of the biggest factors in the making of a successful game 
is hiring very talented people who are motivated and can get the 
job done without the need for extensive management and finely detailed 
schedules.

We're shooting for a new rainfall record here in Vancouver, 29 consecutive 
days of rain.. only two more to go.

Didn't rain on Sunday, so Vancouver was one day short of a new record.. 
of course, it's pouring today, and probably the rest of the week 
at least.

Volker, you did a diff function at one time (takes two bodies of 
text, and highlights the delta).  can you send me a pointer to that?

Got a link to Grahams ERM?

Had to search my hd a bit, long not used. found it in a few places, 
uploaded one here: http://polly.rebol.it/test/test/museum/diff/gui/

It was not really a Qtask thing as mouch as a server thing.  We added 
a module to Apache.

Is there a group for rebol color syntax?

If not what would be a good name?

Jean-Francoi: I have a version 1.2.0   do you want ?

Alan - THanks, but I have the same version. I thought there was a 
more recent one.
	Title: "Slideshow Presenter"
	Author: "Carl Sassenrath"
	Version: 1.2.0
	Date: 14-Dec-2001

there are newer versions, but not published. the version of show 
for devcon 2005 was based on a newer version.

the one involving a (very) very big clock, I think is not a part 
of show.r :-)

Carl: "I would really like to have a DB built-into REBOL 3.0


The trick is, it cannot just be any DB... it has to align perfectly 
with REBOL. Specifically, we want the DB to be able to store all 
REBOL datatypes efficiently. But, we also want the DB code to be 
very small. I will not allow REBOL to bloat for it. And, finally, 
the code must be free, like SQLite is (at least, I think).


Note that the DB does not need to have every feature in the book. 
 I'm not asking for SQL (that is, we will use REBOL or a dialect 
to access the DB, no need for another language).


I would really like to get the help of the community in this effort, 
but I do not have time to even organize a decent search.  If someone 
else wants to head it up, it would very much improve R3.0. If not, 
then we will do RIF, which gets us a lot of DB, and is super efficient 
compared to any other DB. But, it is only an index system, not a 
RDB."

Please note that there is a very limited time to make a decision 
here. So if you have any idea / can help in any way, please speak. 
Otherwise, we're probably going to either just implement RIF or try 
to work something from scratch.

not a good sign

I am only a lurker in database-things. But we have 1-2 sql-dialects? 
RebDb and somehthing from Coccinelle IIRC? I guess if these people 
get something super efficient in their hands, they could not resist 
to buidl an RDB n top of it?

Who's the guy who wants db built into Rebol? Guys - anything built 
directly into rebol is waste of space and will not please next guy! 
I expect Rebol 3 being a proper design - no inbuild stuff, please!

that kind of stuff really does not belong under the RT's radar. Give 
us general abstraction interfaces, e.g. RIF, not a concrete DB and 
if so, do it via some interface ... What is wrong with current sqlite 
driver? Well, maybe the .dll requirement which is not free ....

Would you really want a non-native GUI, with every call to / from 
it going via slow [in relative terms] routine! APIs?


I agree that having one *huge* exe that does 100% of what *everyone* 
wants but only has 20% of it's functionality used by the average 
coder is a bad thing. The problem is defining what constitutes huge 
and what functionality is needed by most coders. Here are some typical 
components:

	Graphics
	Sound
	Networking
	Maths
	Encryption
	Data storage
	Installer
	Registry access
	Library access


Which should be built-in? Which should be loadable modules? Is your 
preference going to be the same as mine? These are not easy design 
questions.

Every OS is done in modular way for a reason - give a break please 
- one of the best OS designs I looked into a bit imo is QNX - even 
something like event system for gui is external to kernel - in fact, 
the kernel is really small and nearly everything is module. Aren't 
we talking real-time OS here?

Besides that, IIRC Carl told us in the past, that currently what 
you find as a rebol component (look into system object), is already 
internally modular, so who knows - maybe it already goes via some 
abstraction api

What I am simply a bit scared about is missing the chance by doing 
the things right this time. I would really hate to see someone pushing 
Carl to include mp3 inside, while the oter guy will complain he/she 
wants ogg, and next one will require something from Microsoft (wmv?):-)

I have also suspicion, that some of you guys, e.g. Gabriele (I mean 
it in a friendly non complaining mode :-), don't mind having everything 
in one .exe. Neither do I in fact, View is still small in today's 
terms - but - if we talk small devices - it is not. Go and try to 
download it via GPRS I use with my cell phone - it does not look 
like a small app to upgrade in any way :-)

if you want mp3 then you need to write a plugin for it. but we're 
talking about all the reblets that need to save their data somewhere

you mean database/storage as a default? That makes sense ... but 
I thought (knowing little about what RIF actually was supposed to 
be), that it will be RIF .... e.g. for me, RebDB was good way - because 
of the form of representation - not that it was written in rebol 
- simply you could very easily mold any value, it was text readable 
and you could maintain it by other script easily ...

well, maybe I could regard its binary representation as a kind of 
rebin (whatever rebin was supposed to be :-) ....

a contact db, or chat program requires a RDBMS?

i'm guessing a flat-file would handle 99% of any reblets needs.

An ISAM-like solution is pretty handy for folks who want something 
more than plain-text storage but something less than a full-blown 
RDBMS.

I'd like a basic cross-platform data manager of the sort Ashley suggests.

That can then be used to build SQL type databases for those who want 
them. 

Or list type databases (for people like me who use that sort of approach 
a lot)
Or whatever.
No need to prematurely bind to the relational model/

An SQL type database is one where the basic unit of storage is an 
atomic data item, though packaged into rows / tuples.   Getting rid 
of 1NF data (recurring groups) is the first thing you are taught 
to do.

In a list type database the basic unit of storage is a list (think 
REBOL block). That's far from being 1NF, especially as a list can 
contain other lists.

Ok.. that's a bit excessive

I'm looking for a good FTP Client for XP.
Any suggestions?

Interesting. It would work with my XML data structure, assuming I 
used a block for the attributes rather than a hash (something I considered 
anyway).

of course parse may not be the best for every kind of structure matching. 
but it can be a good start.

if you come up with a dialect idea, let me know; maybe it's possible 
to write a compiler to parse, or we can just implement it directly.

Perhaps a supply of temporaries could be provided to the rewriter 
for it to use, and then it would complain if it didn't have enough.

do you have an example? (i don't know if we can find a general solution, 
but i'm sure each problem can be solved quite easily)

i have been thinking about function! values inside parse rules; parse 
could you the function code block as a rule, but "enter" the function 
when entering the rule; so you can take advantage of the function's 
context.

Parse uses a lot of temporaries for doing common tricks with code 
blocks that should really be built into parse as keywords, like REMOVE, 
REPLACE, UNLESS, USE, etc.

there are many subtle issues with a proposal like this though.

Using a variant on Carl's new make function! syntax.

A new function type where the code block would be executed by the 
parse engine rather than the DO engine.

You could keep the spec block mostly the same as function!, just 
like rebcode does. Calling it would call parse on its first argument. 
This would be sort-of like a parse rule compiler.

well... i need to get some sleep. this is a very interesting topic 
though. i hope we can improve parse on r3 too (the problem is deciding 
where to stop).

I need some dinner, so I'll think about this a bit and come up with 
a set of appropriate parse functions and their equivalent rewrite 
code.

Here are some minimum additonal parse operations, and some workarounds 
that could be used to replace them until they are implemented.

fail ==> [end skip]
check (code) ==> (tmp1: unless (code) [fail]) tmp1
remove rule ==> tmp1: rule tmp2: :tmp1 (remove/part :tmp1 :tmp2)

replace rule (code) ==> tmp1: rule tmp2: :tmp1 (tmp1: change/part 
:tmp1 (code) :tmp2) :tmp1

replace-only rule (code) ==> tmp1: rule tmp2: :tmp1 (tmp1: change/part/only 
:tmp1 (code) :tmp2) :tmp1

into-string rule ==> set tmp1 string! (tmp1: unless parse tmp1 rule 
[fail]) tmp1


Note that if parse operations are changed to take refinements or 
if these are being done as rewrite rules, replace-only and into-string 
could be expressed as remove/only and into/string. This would be 
slower in a native implementation, but about the same in rewrite 
rules. It would look more REBOL-like if that matters to you.


A rewrite engine for these workarounds will need temporaries for 
their implementation. The caller would need to provide a block of 
their own temporaries, and would not be able to reuse them in their 
code. The rewriter will need to count temporaries and complain if 
the caller doesn't provide enough. As with all parse rules, these 
temporaries will not be recursion-safe. Directly nested rules should 
be fine as long as there are enough temporaries provided.

I'm still working on parse extensions to enable recursion-safe temporary 
variables. Obviously they are a bit more involved.

I did that last year. Let's see.. the interface is make-recursive-rule 
which takes a parse rule block and outputs one that saves and restores 
temporary variables at the right time. It extends the parse dialect 
with a new 'recurse-into keyword. 

Make-recursive-rule essentially just looks for   [ recurse-into rule 
]   and replaces it with   [ save-vars   rule   restore-vars ]

Anton, I would like to see that. As it is, Gabriele and I started 
this discussion with an idea towards seeing what could be fixed in 
REBOL 3. I'm trying to come up with simple operations that parse 
could be extended with, the minimum necessary I hope. Bear with me 
or a moment.

Here's my first attempt at a pattern for recursion-safe temporaries:


use [var ...] [rule ...] ==> (tmp1: use [var ...] copy/deep [[rule 
...]]) tmp1


It would only work with a directly specified variable and rule block, 
and you should only use the temporaries directly in the rule block 
or they won't get rebound. Now, using REBOL 3's closure (probably 
better):


use [var ...] [rule ...] ==> (tmp1: do closure [/local var ...] [[rule 
...]]) tmp1


Of course this is just an example. An actual rewrite engine would 
premake the closure and insert it directly instead of making it in 
the rule and doing it. REBOL's existing function recursion support 
wouldn't work because the function returns before the rule is run.


I would prefer a native implementation of this operation if possible.

>> a: join "line1" [newline "line2"]
== "line1^/line2"
>> parse a [any [newline (print "newline found") | skip]]
newline found
== true

When parsing strings without the /all refinement, words are separated 
by space. Example that work:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" "word3" newline 
"word4"]
== true
You can also explicit specify the tab:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" #(tab) "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== true

Actually the #(tab) seems to be ignored, because you can specify 
it anywhere:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "wo" #(tab) "rd2" "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== true

But you get false, if specifying the space (which may be a strange 
thing):

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" #" " "word2" "word3" 
newline "word4"]
== false
Also you need to specify newlines, they are not seen as space:

>> parse "word1 word2^-word3^/word4" ["word1" "word2" "word3" "word4"]
== false

If you need to parse for tabs at certain places, use: parse/all
I hope, it helps!

so your "tab" is ignored because it's not a tab at all. it's the 
same as doing "" (tab) in the rule, ie empty string (always matches) 
followed by code that basically does nothing.

There is a parse page on the Wikibook.

Ok ran into an issue.  Is there an easy way to parse a string that 
has doublequotes in it together.  Such as {some chars "" some more 
chars"" and more}

I need the quotes to be single just one set and not two together 
and the parse to keep intact the string section because often it 
is a part of an html tag.

Paul, do a search & replace upfront. Much simpler than to create 
complex parse rules.

Thanks Robert, I'll look into that further as I did place with replace 
but because they were quotes it seemed that parse/all still wanted 
to break apart at a quote even though I told it only tabs.

It looks like it breaks on html tags that might be broken.  For example, 
I was testing parse on a tab deliminated file and performing the 
following parse:

Just when a quote is preceeding the tag

Notice you get it breaking the string even where there is NOT a tab.

Is this a bug?

I've looked at this some more and it only seems to be a problem if 
the quote is preceeding the <span> tag.  If you move the quote around 
you get what is expected and get the correct expected parsing.