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You're right about LDA #. :-) It's also $A9. I had the same problem, 
wrote a disassembler in Atari BASIC until I could get hold of an 
assembler, so also have a considerable part of my brain dedicated 
to such numbers :-)

Thanks!  When I use load-image, it looks like it is returning a pointer. 
 Is that correct?

If 'load-image returns a pointer, how do I know when I have reached 
the end of the image?

Better yet, assuming 'load-image returns a pointer, how do I access 
the first memory location referenced by the pointer?

See the function spec in GDK.reds. It returns a pointer to an image! 
struct, so if you want to access the image internally, you have to 
go by that struct definition

No build regressions in a full build run

Oddly, there's a build regression in a GTK program just for Syllable, 
which is not even a valid combination

I'll take a look.

Great, I'll add a few binding tests from the tickets, then I'll do 
the merge.

cycle: func ["Cycle a series through its index."
	'series [word!]
	/local s
][
	either tail? s: get series [
		set series  next head s
		first head s
	][
		set series  next s
		s/1
	]
]

This would be a great question for Carl, as to why he did it the 
way he did it in REBOL. That is, allowing either order.

I like to put the function description on the same line as the function 
name, so it's easy to scan through a program text for them. Having 
the attributes in front of it makes the line too long and hides the 
atrributes in the text

Kaj: I've pushed a change in attributes handling for Red/System functions, 
you can now specify attributes or function's description doc-string 
in any order. I've replaced direct spec block access for attributes 
by a function call in deep compiler's code parts, so watch out for 
regressions especially in callbacks!

OpenCV binding is done by François Jouen, it's a work in progress. 
There's a Red/System version that you could find from this page (in 
french):


http://www.digicamsoft.com/cgi-bin/rebelBB.cgi?thread=%3C25May2012200150764026200%3E


There's a Red version that François sent me privately a few days 
ago for testing, but I haven't had the time yet to review it.

François showed me a few nice demos done with that binding a couple 
of weeks ago when I visited him in Paris. He had some camera-controlling 
and image recognition demos done from Red(/System).

Oh, I see he has a samples.zip file in that link you posted above.

This would be a good thing to add to the Contributions page on red-lang.org. 
:-)  (I looked there first for the OpenCV binding)

I see it's another library that dug itself into a C++ hole

No problem, I can just make a Red/System callback with a Red callback 
:-)

François also did a binding for the DAQmxBase v3.6 lib that can be 
found here:
http://www.wuala.com/fjouen/Code/NI/Red/


This lib allows to drive data acquisition devices from NI: http://www.ni.com/data-acquisition/

Yeah, significant extra work to interface with it. But there's a 
shortcut, a API is also available through a builtin websocket server, 
so you can access the device from your browser directly.

I'll write a websocket client for Red when we'll have networking, 
so I will be able to test it deeply.

My first impression was: we're half-way of the right interface, it 
lacks a force-feeback system. One of the demo allows you to manipulate 
a virtual cube with your fingers, but without force-feedback it feels 
incomplete.

Also, from the first tests, the device has some limitations, like 
loosing track of your fingers if you point them up or down. Not sure 
if it's a soft or hardware limitation.

You can see a good demo here: http://youtu.be/ssZrkXGE8ZA

(Add a 3D API, and maybe Red could find a market in gaming)

NickA: there are many domains where Red could shine, actually finding 
the right one, which fits the best, is the hard part. Supporting 
new and innovative hardware is surely a good thing to have anyway.

NickA - I share your point of view. Ppl mostly nowadays think, that 
the web rules it all. However - it is still complex. I don't care, 
if we generate HTML5 (whatever it is) in the end, as far as we can 
very easily build apps using VID like dialect. I remember those initial 
days, where we had really a small script (1.6KB) to show image from 
4 webcams ...

I agree, the Leap device is amazing!  Who's ready for a 3D operating 
system?

Red []

f: func [
	a
][
	print a
]
g: func [
	h
][
	do [h "!"]
]
g :f

It would be possible to support it in the compiler too, but that 
would require that the `h` argument get declared with a type definition 
like: 

    g: func [h [function! [a]][...]

(not implemented yet though)

The interpreter is able to detect if a function has been compiled 
to native code and run the native code version, so in the above case, 
the interpreter overhead is very small, and a JIT-ed version wouldn't 
run noticeable faster. The real place where the JIT-compiler will 
make a big difference is for functions created at runtime, that would 
otherwise need to be interpreted.

If you write a script for the interpreter, and it contains function 
references with arguments, it would run in the interpreter, but not 
in the compiler

Actually, we could just make the compiler recognize such case and 
generate a call to the interpreter without you having to specify 
DO. The drawback would be that all subsequent values in that block 
level, would be passed to the interpreter too, as the compiler can't 
determine the expression boundaries. I'm not very fond of such option, 
but it is a possibility.

Has anyone successfully read in a jpg into Red or Red/System yet?

I'm talking about converting it to a bitmap, like R2 does.

Yes.  But I was hoping for something that would simply return a flat 
binary representation.

You could write a Red/System wrapper over http://libjpeg.sourceforge.net/

If your wrapper is good enough, there's a great chance that your 
code would be included in Red at some point.

Doc - that's interesting questions indeed. What attracted ppl to 
Rebol, was, that it was a complete package. So no problem with tonnes 
of libraries out there, plus wrappers, but curious to know, if you 
still think, that some common standard would be nice to have ... 
well, it would be even better to have ports for many things, plus 
schemes, plus codecs below :-)

What attracted ppl to Rebol, was, that it was a complete package
 Who said that Red will not be a complete package too??

well, Bo, explained it better. I am not saying that you are not planning 
it, I was just asking, if it is planned, because other point of view 
might be, that we will get some very core funcionality, plus millions 
of nice wrappers, but that would make a different feeling ...

For Red, it will rather work as R2 SDK where you just import the 
modules you need to build your binary. We would also provide a console 
binary with all or most of modules included by default (like the 
fat binaries from the SDK).

I like the way the R2 SDK worked.  You could include a whole subgroup 
of functionality or just component-by-component.

Are you sure GDK has a dependency on X?

You could compile GDK on DirectFB instead of X, but it would be a 
lot of work

You could make a binding with SDL-Image to have fewer dependencies

A binding with DirectFB or Enlightenment just for the images would 
also be less massive

I don't have a lot of experience with C and library bindings, but 
I've done a bit and I can give it a shot when I have a bit of time.

Sometimes, I'm such a dunce!  Something Kaj said in the past hit 
me as I lay awake in bed at 4:45am this morning.  IIRC, he said that 
Red/System could be used to extend R3.  My problem is that I need 
to perform some advanced processing on jpg images.  I wanted to do 
this natively in Red/System, but had issues getting the jpgs loaded 
into bitmap form.  R3 can already load jpgs into bitmap form, so 
why not  call a Red/System compiled executable to do the processing?

Thanks so much, Doc, for making R3 easy to extend using a Rebol-like 
compiled language!
Thanks so much, Kaj, for your insight and foresight!

If that's your purpose, then yes, that would be a nice combo

That will be a problem.  Maybe I'll have to pass the data using slower 
semaphores.

Function building and evaluation now supported by the interpreter. 
Here's how it looks like from the Red console:

red>> foo: func [a b][a * b]
== func [a b][a * b]
red>> foo 3 4
== 12

Nobody has proposed me so far to build a R2-level cross-platform 
console for Red, so I will implement one in the next weeks. Before 
that, I will probably work on PIC support for Mach-O and ELF and 
implement object! support.

Sorry Doc, it is hard to get-and-keep up to what you all achieve!! 
(And Kaj too) Even though I myself have less hours at my job I do 
not have as much time to follow it all. (More projects and chores 
in and about the house to do now and less 'spare' time at work for 
a quick review.

I will try to answer the question of how I see possibilities to make 
Red more suitable for funding. And have it get the attention a first 
proper release needs. Everybody else is hereby invited to think along 
how to make this possible.

What I see as a first possible step is have a kind of Red website 
hosting where websites can be hosted using Red (cheyenne server) 
and a database behind it (MySQL or SQLite) and a possibility for 
digital payments (such a module could be additionally payed and kept 
'closed' source). This could obviously generate a modest cashflow.
There would be needed books etc.

That's a massive patch, Fork

It is my hope that the R2 legacy can be shed, but clearly it is not 
the time today...maybe a couple of months.  R3 patches must be taken 
in a timely manner. The current situation is untenable, so we are 
going to have to agree on a development branch.

Kaj, sometimes an interpreted language is optimal, and other times 
a compiled language is.  I hope both R3 and Red will become fully 
functional released software.

But I think that what we must realize is that Rebol and Red are essentially 
occupying a mostly similar design space, where the design choices 
getting hammered out, correct, and consistent are more important 
than performance...and will be for a while longer.

To me this lends a prioritization balance such that what's good for 
Rebol 3 is good for Red, and bootstrap should be delayed until those 
issues have been solved intelligently and in a way that converges 
the two.

Rebol's conventional ANSI C implementation makes it more "boring" 
than Red, but this boringness will be an advantage in pitching the 
interpreter as a replacement for awk/sed/whatever-crap-people-are-using. 
 If they cannot read the source or understand the toolchain, they 
will be suspicious.

A healthy Rebol gives Red another avenue for attack, especially if 
any *unnecessary* incompatibilities have been hammered out.

At first Rebol's boring and (to my taste) "shooting from the hip" 
C source code, a relic of another era, got me down a little.  But 
it's very clear.  The boringness is an asset, it plays well with 
others...

Red is going to freak a lot of people out, despite being open source. 
 Having both options gives more growth potential, and the easier 
it is to walk between them the more strength the whole ecology will 
have.

I think a different class of people will freak out, in a good way, 
over Red.

Bo, it's done in Red/System. The big advantage is that it has a very 
simple and portable tool-chain, much smaller than C.

There's also a summary here:

With the famous words of: "Well I'm also sick right now so I kind 
of have to tackle little things that don't need a lot of focus. Looking 
at building Red with the open source r3 release."

The reason is that China has a different set of electronic certifications 
that aren't compatible with the EU or US, so they had to make it 
visually different, even though the circuitry is exactly the same.

@DocKimbel, I keep going to red-lang.org to download Red and Red/System, 
but then I remember it isn't there.  Is there any way you could put 
a link on red-lang.org to the binaries?

Maybe along the top, have a "Download" tab where the other tabs are, 
and everything needed to know about downloading it could be there.

All instructions are on the Red page on github, that's just a click 
away from the red-lang home page (the "Fork me on Github" red banner).

Alright now that I'm getting a bit of time on my hands, I hope to 
start digging into Red a bit.  Looking forward to this project.

I was trying to evangelize Red/System to the Raspberry Pi forums 
today, but found it difficult to point them to a "here's how you 
get started" page.  That would be the perfect thing for a "Downloads" 
page on red-lang.org.

Yes, Github is a bit of a problem - it gets some time to orientiate 
oneself ... But otoh, on the main screen of Git, you can download 
latest archive, just see ZIP button - the link is - https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/archive/master.zip

There's not so many buttons on Github page ;-) But maybe Doc could 
add above link pointing to latest archive directly to his site, would 
make things for beginners easier. Well, looking at red website I 
now find it also a mistake not having download section ...

Red is certainly not ready for prime time now. What we need now is 
testers and contributors. So just putting a link to source archive 
in a Download section wouldn't help much, as users would have no 
clue what to do with it. Again, there's a "Fork me on Github" button 
on top of all pages on red-lang.org. If users have no clue what Github 
is, then they are probably not ready for contributing. I will add 
a Download section once we have binaries for Red compiler (encapped 
versions of R2 compiler for now).


Once Red gets ready (documented and in beta state), I will open a 
new site that will be fully user-oriented (in contrary to the current 
one which is followers/contributors oriented).


About Red/System: it is meant to be a dialect embedded in Red, however, 
its intrinsic value seems to be high and will be higher as we add 
more feature and optimize it. Maybe it could be a good selling point 
for making some low-level programmers come to Red.  As Red/System 
is much more mature than Red, maybe I should think about opening 
soon a dedicated web site for it (would still need a binary version 
of the compiler)... What do you think?

I think there is value in Red/System outside of Red. Think of the 
primary examples people might use it for, where C might be the first 
choice, and provide examples of what they look like in Red/System. 
I know CGIs are mostly done in high level langs now, but I would 
certainly include one as an example. Implement some performance intensive 
algorithms to show what RedS looks like, compare to C. Or apps that 
need to be small and fast. e.g. a 0MQ broker.

Doc - I was quite surprised with your argumentation. I really don't 
know, if we are so much in an IT, but are you guys serious, that 
for normal user, in order to just give some tool a try, such user 
should use systems like Fossil or Git? I find myself competent enough, 
but unless new Windows client appeared, it was just nightmare to 
get things going, especially if one does not feel the need to understand 
all that pull/push etc. stuff.

If users have no clue what Github is, then they are probably not 
ready for contributing.

 - Doc, that is so much off ... It is not imo about users contributing. 
 It is about various possible future Red users, who just found out 
 about Red, and want to have their first touch with the language, 
 no matter how complete the language is imo. Ppl's will to give it 
 a try should not be prevented by crappy overcomplicated things like 
 Git imo.

Is that really so much of a problem, to add link to latest zip archive, 
with just one sentence, that it points to kind of "nighty" pre alfa 
builds? Or do you really find R/S and Red not being worth giving 
a try even in an early phase of development?

As for creating R/S specific site - I am not sure, how much time 
it would take to create, but unless we are able to adress devices 
like Arduino, Android devices, BeagleBoard(Bone), RaspberryPi, I 
would postpone such a solution imo ....

Git was not designed for humans, AFAICT. It was designed to let loose, 
informal teams manage huge open source projects. Now it has become 
the default hammer, and every software project a nail. I don't mean 
git is bad in any way, and it is successful for a reason. It has 
become friendly enough that a lot of people can use it, but I still 
see notes about how most people don't know how to use it effectively. 


I imagine you could build a great, human-friendly wrapper over git, 
providing 90% of the power with 10% of the effort. It would take 
a git expert and a good designer, but maybe not too much time.

My hope is that people who want a specific platform, and have experience 
on it, would port it because that's what they need. Otherwise we're 
going to overload Doc. :-)

Gregg - the ONLY thing which is really needed, is to add Download 
section to the Red website, pointing to the ZIP button of the Github 
website. That's for those who are not familiar with Git, or to whom 
the Git creates a headache to use. So - is adding one URL to a website 
so much of a challenge?

Pekr: Agreed...that was my initial suggestion.  My further suggestion 
is to have instructions right after those links stating how to get 
started with Red/System and also Red.  A simple step-by-step for 
beginners.

Bo - some simple step-by step is in ititial distro Doc. Might be 
copied on such a page ... at least hello world could be done that 
way :-)

See here - https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/blob/master/README.md
.... good enough for a starter, imo ...

True, but it takes too much searching to find.  red-lang.org is the 
place I would expect to go to download the language, and it would 
be super nice if the instructions were right there as well.  If that 
doesn't work, the second best would be a link to the instructions.

that for normal user, in order to just give some tool a try, such 
user should use systems like Fossil or Git?


That's precisely my point, it's not ready yet for "normal users". 
That's what I mean with not ready for prime time.


I really don't  want to have to maintain two copies of the same instruction 
page on both red-lang.org and github site, just because of people 
passing by and not curious enough to click on the very visible "Fork 
me on github" red banner.

I think I will add a big "Language Under Construction" yellow banner 
on top the red-lang.org site, like in the web 1.0 era. ;-)

Doc - you still don't seem to understand. Are you so deep in an a 
language design, so that you can't understand lamers like myself? 
:-)

I obviously, work as a Windows debugger using most of the core Windows 
Debugging tools and Systems Internals so I could contribute along 
those lines until I get knowledge of RED.

I could have used you in the past week, but I just fixed cURL networking 
on Windows, after setting up a Windows installation for the first 
time in almost a decade

We still have a problem playing sound with SDL on Windows, so if 
you could do something there, that would be great

The error on XP seems to be related to DirectSound. Perhaps it needs 
a newer DirectX or a driver, but I'd think SDL would drop down to 
a more primitive sound system

The SDL audio program is MSDOS\RedSystem\play-SDL-wav.exe. There's 
a test file sample.wav