AltME groups: search

Hello, now http://rebol.informe.com/portal.htmlworks weel, I''m 
including all Rebol wiki around the web in it. So with just one account, 
you can:
- improve wiki
-discuss of rebol on forum
- upload images on Gallery
-... and much more
Take a look and try...

New Android release:

URL		: http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/

Direct URL	: http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/r3-droid.apk

Changes:
-added DH and AES 128/256 encryption
-rewritten console syncing code
-TLS scheme improvements
-fixed runtime stack size issue
-fixed FP math using dtoa()  (thanks to Ladislav!)
-fixed shared lib unloading issue
-fixed "exit on script error" bug
-minor app handling tweaks

Please give it a try and have fun.

Hello, now on http://rebol.informe.comthere is a wiki containing 
Rebol 2 and Rebol 3 (GitHub) wikis. You are welcome to contribute! 
If you are curious on  in the forum you'll find the scripts to upload 
automatically all words descriptions in a wiki.

I wrote a simple text editor in the Red GUI dialect:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-GTK/dir?ci=tip&name=examples

In the line field, you can enter either a local file name or a URL, 
so the editor can be used both on local files and files on remote 
servers

I extended the Red text editor to support a program argument, for 
loading a text source from the command line:

With Doc's latest Red fixes, I was able to write a very simple IDE 
in the GUI dialect:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-GTK/dir?ci=tip&name=examples


You can write either regular Red code or GUI dialect code, and execute 
it with respectively the Do or View button. Do executes the code 
in the interpreter, so no compilation is needed, but the current 
limitations of the interpreter apply.


The code is only 25 lines, but at Brian's request, I'll post that 
in the #Red channel.

It's best to start it from a command line to get any diagnostic output

That's helpful - it took me a little looking to find and download 
all the libs.  I doubt there are too many people outside our small 
group who would put in the effort.

I wrote a Red binding on top of the Red/System binding for 0MQ:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-ZeroMQ-binding/dir?ci=tip


I also wrote Red versions of the client/server request/reply example:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-ZeroMQ-binding/dir?ci=tip&name=examples

I added the new Red examples for 0MQ to the test repository with 
ready builds, so you can try them without compiling:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip


I enhanced the Red versions with support for a program parameter 
giving the network URL, so you can adapt it to your environment and 
try different transport protocols.

I implemented the 0MQ ventilator example for Red, in which the push/pull 
pattern is used to distribute tasks over an arbitrary number of worker 
processes, then afterwards collect the results by a sink process:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-ZeroMQ-binding/dir?ci=tip&name=examples

Rebol3 is dead, long live to Rebol3Bazaar


I've been quiet for a long while, and this blog is not easy for me 
to write.

I'm sitting here with a glass of 2013 Ferrarelle mineral water of 
the glass bottle... hoping to be inspired on how to write this...
No, bad introduction...

You know that Rebol is a fantastic programming language, but its 
development was discontinued and bad supported. A lot of people when 
encounter Rebol falls in love for its simplicity, a blend of theory, 
experimentation, and invention, the language embodies elegant and 
wonderful concepts and properties. It was and is the most productive 
language I've ever used. I hope your experience has been similar.


Unfortunately a lot of bad events are leading Rebol to a no through 
road:

- no direction of the new Rebol3
- no a central site open for discussion
- no updates on Rebol 3 source (well, just one every month)
- to many sites about Rebol and with no updates from years


These and other reasons forced me to create http://rebol.informe.com/portal.html
a public forum, with a public wiki and a blog, where everybody can 
contribute. The result is just 17 users, this means that Rebol is 
dying; the cathedral way of Rebol 3  development is not working.

So I'm forced by my love for Rebol to create a new GitHub repository: 
Rebol 3 Bazaar, it's a Rebol 3 source, with graphic working (VID, 
but just on windows at the moment); I promise you:


- pull requests and issues discussed and merged in 24 hours (or max 
a week)
- open to add people to its organiziation
- always update!
- link:  https://github.com/angerangel/r3bazaar


If you like to contribute write me, use GitHub or Rebol portal; you 
don't need to be a programmer, think about a new logo, contribute 
the wiki.

If you know REBOLers who might be interested in this discussion, 
please let them know about this blog posting. I look forward to hearing 
from you,
-Max

I wrote an example of a browser for Internet sites written in Red. 
The source code is here:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-GTK/doc/trunk/examples/GTK-browser.red


The usage model is like a web browser. You point it to network or 
local file links, in an address bar or as a command line parameter, 
and it displays them in the same content area in one window. A Red 
page can contain links that make the browser go to another page.


You can create and roll out Red sites just like websites. We are 
hosting the first Redsite here:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/index.red

I upgraded the Fossil server for the Red bindings to the new version 
1.25. There are some nice new features in it:

http://www.fossil-scm.org/download.html

They also have a new short introduction guide:


http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/fiveminutes.wiki

It turns out that the C library on Windows converts Windows newlines 
in text files to standard Unix newlines, so when reading a file, 
it can return fewer bytes than requested. I have extended the Red/System 
read-file function in the C library binding to support this:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-C-library/dir?ci=tip


This fix propagates to READ in common/input-output, console-pro, 
GTK-text-editor and GTK-browser. They can now load local text files 
with Windows newlines, including those that were originally in Unix 
format but converted when downloading.


Thanks to Doc for helping test, and to Gerard and Sqlab for additional 
reports.

New Android release:

URL		: http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/

Direct URL	: http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/r3-droid.apk

Changes:
-fixed console output crashes
-implemented CLIPBOARD:// device
-implemented BROWSE
-added circular buffer to console

-release has now correct platform, version, product and build information
-fixed console input hang-on-destroy bug

Please give it a try and have fun.


This release is a milestone since now Rebol CORE is fully done for 
Android. We will now start to get the VIEW (graphics) to Android. 
As soon as we have this, R3-GUI should almost work on Android too.

Again, I want to thank everyone who is supporting the Android port. 
A special thanks goes to NickA for his great support.

This is a fantastic thing Robert :)

Great news, Robert! Can hardly wait for the UI part. Will you be 
putting any of this stuff in a public repo any time soon?

I moved the SDL binding for Red/System into a CONTEXT:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-SDL/dir?ci=tip


If you have written any code on top of it, you need to adapt the 
interface.

In Carl's defense, just because someone is a genius with code architecture 
and development doesn't mean they are perfect in other areas, like 
finding time to work on free projects.


As an example, look at Albert Einstein.  An absolute genius in many 
things, but absolutely horrible in others.  I guess it's a trade-off. 
 If you're going to be really good at something, you have to be really 
bad at something else, or at least below average in a bunch of things. 
 I guess that's better than being average at everything.

I must be pretty good at something, because I can think of a lot 
of things where I am below average, and some I'm WAY below average. 
;-)

There are a bunch of 5-10 liners in there that should appeal to just 
about anyone.

I'm pitching the much bigger text at http://business-programming.com
to some colleges, as a business school (entrepreneur) course.

The R2/Forward project has been moved to Github, including an import 
of the DevBase change history by Andreas.
Go here: https://github.com/BrianHawley/r2-forward


No issues or wiki yet, and it needs a lot of work. Still, it's a 
start! Discuss stuff in !REBOL2 here until we have something better. 
I have some improvements to make right away, not the least of which 
is making sure that the license is compatible with R3 and Red.

At a request, I upgraded R3 on Try REBOL from 2.99.111, the last 
official RT version, to Andreas' current build, the ongoing 2.101 
series. Not many changes, but some bug fixes.

http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nl


Graham programmed a nice bot for Stack Overflow chat that is able 
to call the Try REBOL web service to execute code examples and post 
the result.

Yes it is nice, and you're avoiding trying it out. I thought you 
were going to drop by the SO chat at some point. Or have you been 
in there under a different name?

PBKDF2 in R2 -- please check if I did anything stoopid ... I needed 
this function for AGES at the end it was very simple to implement 
(when I found a nice implementation to copy) https://github.com/refaktor/Rebol2-PBKDF2

Just in case nobody saw, Carl wrote in R3 github the following:

Been busy. Will check-in more frequently in March.


Sorry folks, Dec-Feb is the "crazy crazy busy" time for new product 
development. Yes, I know, I'm bad. But, I'm quite addicted to making 
new products... especially cute little electronic ones that sell 
in all the major stores in the US. Each one presents special new 
challenges that I just can't resist.


Starting in March I'll break away for a few hours a week to take 
care of things here.


Also... I really want to try using R3 with graphics running on DirectFB. 
It would be quite cool.


One other thing... has anyone got R3 running graphics on Raspberry 
Pi yet? If not, let's talk about how we can make that happen. What 
do we need?

I missed making a donation to Red last month, so I will make up for 
it by doing a matching challenge this month. I will match donations 
to Red, up to USD$200, for donations made between now and the end 
of the month.

The audio example is now forced to open a small borderless window 
on Windows. It shouldn't be visible, but there will be an icon on 
the task bar now, and it will probably appear in the window switcher

Then again, maybe not with the MSDOS version, that is compiled to 
not be a GUI program

I've updated the Red test binaries with the latest Red features, 
including the new support for the file! type:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip


As a reminder, here are instructions for downloading them in one 
go:


http://web.syllable.org/news/2012-11-18-20-47-Red-high-level-programming-language-first-alpha.html


All programs for Syllable, Linux and Windows are supposed to work 
now. If you want to help improve the quality of the upcoming Red 
release, please test them and report bugs you find.

I updated our Redsite for the latest Red features, specifically runtime 
function creation in the interpreter (which executes the Redpages):

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/index.red

I added a simple IDE example to the list of apps:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/examples/IDE.red


It's a cross between the standalone GTK-IDE example and Try REBOL; 
basically Try Red written in Red itself. There are two main areas: 
one for editing your code and one for showing the result. Since it 
runs on your computer, unlike Try REBOL, it keeps state between execution 
of code snippets.


To browse the site and the apps you need the latest binary version 
of the GTK-browser. See above.

Thanks to a build machine provided by HostileFork, OSX PPC ("2.4") 
builds of R3 (from mainline Git) are now available for your convenience:

http://www.rebolsource.net/

(Look for "OSX PPC" under the "experimental builds" section.)

On that page there is a broken link: the small "2" note.

Sorry, I just noted where it point, I thought a broken link since 
page remained still.

I have a very early sl4a protocol at https://github.com/gchiu/Rebol3/blob/master/protocols/prot-sl4a.r3


Needs altjson loaded first.  Not sure why I have to do the wait in 
the write actor.  Steve?

I've added a Red interpreter to the Try REBOL site:

http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nl


Also reorganised many outdated REBOL links. The Red functionality 
is also available on StackOverflow through Graham's bot.

Some people have wanted to do timing with Red. That was already possible 
with wall clock time, but I've added a new function get-process-seconds 
to both Red and Red/System to get the CPU time used by the process. 
Be aware that on Windows, this still uses wall clock time:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-C-library/dir?ci=tip

I've included examples in the Red Fibonacci examples.

I have written a primer on how to wriite a network scheme in Rebol 
3 .. http://www.r3gui.com/Writing_a_Network_Scheme.html

Let me know if you spot any errors so that I may correct them

I accepted the first batch of pull requests to "community r3" at 
https://github.com/rebolsource/r3.The purpose of the fork is to 
accept new requests when there is a consensus they shall be accepted 
to inform Carl that such a consensus exists.

To support the OpenCV binding, I've split the C library binding for 
Red into an ANSI standard base and a BSD extensions part:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-C-library/dir?ci=tip


Instead of %C-library/C-library.red and %C-library/C-library.reds 
you should now #include %C-library/ANSI.red and %C-library/ANSI.reds.


%C-library/BSD.reds includes %C-library/ANSI.reds automatically and 
provides new functions NaN?, finite?, infinite? and infinity-sign-of. 
It can only be used on platforms that have them.

The ReadLine library is available for Android, but hard to install, 
so I made an attempt to build a red console for Android that doesn't 
use it. I have no idea if it works, so I would really like someone 
to test it:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/doc/trunk/Android/Red/red-core


There may also be issues with the paths to the cURL and SQLite libraries. 
They should be included in Android, but if the paths are different, 
I would like to know that, too. Remember Doc's blog about how to 
start Red executables on Android:

http://www.red-lang.org/2011/12/arm-support-released.html

I've temporarily rerouted our most important domains to our current 
IP address, so they work again, but they will break again when our 
network provider changes the address back.


Try REBOL works again, but it being half down allowed Graham and 
Andreas to find a bug in R3's HTTP handler. :-)

Hello, I started a wiki about only the Rebol 3 source: https://github.com/angerangel/r3bazaar/wiki/Source-explained
, may you help me? ;-)

Carl has mentioned that he is willing to discuss handing over control 
of the Rebol websites, likely to a Rebol community working group. 
 AdrianS (I believe) requested this, and I passed it on to Carl. 
 Just FYI.

I implemented UTF-8 output support for Red. I ended up writing optimised 
versions based more on the Red print backend. I integrated them in 
my I/O routines and made heavy performance optimisations. Thanks 
to Peter for leading the way. There are the following Red/System 
encoders embedded in %common.red:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-common/dir?ci=tip


to-UTF8: encodes a Red string into UTF-8 Red/System c-string! format.

to-local-file: encodes a Red string into Latin-1 Red/System c-string! 
format on Windows, and into UTF-8 on other systems. This yields a 
string suitable for the local file name APIs. Latin-1 can be output 
as long as it was input into Red via UTF-8. Non-Latin-1 code points 
cannot be encoded in Latin-1 and yield a NULL for the entire result.


These encoders make use of the Latin1-to-UTF8, UCS2-to-UTF8 and UCS4-to-UTF8 
encoding functions. An example of their use in the Red READ and WRITE 
functions is in %input-output.red

Following in the footsteps of Red ( https://trello.com/board/red-programming-language/51387ada4e1ba9b86b001141
) 


we have also started a Trello page for R3 ( https://trello.com/board/main-board/518dd9128fbdf0fc6a0004cf
)


to track who is doing what ... Feel free to join Trello and let any 
of the current members know if you wish to be added to the project

You can now write REBOL 3 extensions in Red. I've added a Red example 
to the existing Red/System example:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-REBOL-3/dir?ci=tip&name=examples

This currently still requires the dyn-lib-emitter branch of Red.

Here's an example of a session:

r3
>> import %hello-REBOL-3-extension.dll
>> hello
Hello Red REBOL extension!

Here's a complete JNI binding from Red/System to Java:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-Java/dir?ci=tip

I finally got my OpenGL binding for Red/System in a form suitable 
for publishing:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-OpenGL/dir?ci=tip


Currently, the only available backend is for PicoGL, which does software 
rendering with the TinyGL library and shows it through SDL.

PicoGL is included in Syllable Desktop, but there's a symbol loading 
issue that currently prevents the Red/System programs from loading 
the PicoGL library there

Not sure if this is useful for Android, but the JVM JNI interface 
can be loaded as a library from a normal executable:


http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/jni/spec/invocation.html


I've added a static JVM binding to my JNI binding for Red/System, 
so Java can be loaded and controlled from regular Red executables:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-Java/dir?ci=tip

I made an OS-Mesa backend on SDL for my Red/System OpenGL binding:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-OpenGL/dir?ci=tip


This does off-screen rendering in a memory buffer using the Mesa3D 
engine and then displays the result using SDL. Somehow I can't get 
it to work on Linux, but it's the first time I can use Red/System 
for OpenGL on Syllable. It circumvents two problems: the PicoGL library 
expects application functions that Red doesn't export, and Syllable's 
SDL port doesn't support the official OpenGL backend, so those routes 
both don't work. For most other targets than Syllable, the official 
SDL backend can be used.


It's also the first time that I have used my Mesa3D port to Syllable. 
I couldn't display the output before, because there is no display 
driver for the current Mesa3D versions for Syllable, just the standard 
off-screen rendering. It works great, even though it does only software 
rendering. PicoGL is a bit faster, but Mesa3D is a much more modern 
and complete OpenGL implementation.

I added a similar workaround for ELF libraries as in Doc's JNI bridge 
to my R3 and JNI bindings:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-REBOL-3/dir?ci=tip
http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-Java/dir?ci=tip


R3 extensions written in Red/System and Red now work on ELF platforms 
such as Syllable and Linux. Should work on Android, too, at least 
when Doc has tested libraries there.

The first thing we start with will be a bunch of documentation files. 
All written in MDP format. These are the files, from which the documentations 
on our web-site are dynamically generated from.

Another "batch" of doc files committed. See e.g.:


https://github.com/saphirion/documentation/blob/master/r3/whatsnew.mdp

, which tries to compare R2 and R3, which was a popular request.

I dropped the cURL dependency from my red-base distribution. This 
means that it now only depends on a few libraries that can be expected 
to be included in all platforms. This version of the Red interpreter 
can now be used on Windows as a single executable, without any extra 
libraries. The Windows version red-base.exe is here:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip&name=MSDOS/Red


It has versions of READ and WRITE for local file I/O, but no network 
I/O. It also has the other functionality from the C library, such 
as INPUT, ASK, GET-ENV, CALL, NOW and RANDOM, but for more functionality 
you still have to use red-core and red, and download the extra libraries 
for Windows.

I'm happy to announce that we reached a major milestone and can release 
a bunch of new things. All the different versions have been merged 
into one code base which makes things easier for us. This was possible 
because the new 'retargetable' graphics subsystem was finished. This 
allows us to port R3 to other platforms much easier. Next target 
Linux. The release in detail:


R3-GUI: Quite a lot of fixes and enhancements. Thanks for all the 
feedback. The main milestone we achieved was to switch to a resolution 
independent sizing system. This will scale your app widgets to look 
the same on different display densities. It's a must have for mobile 
apps. Next for R3-GUI is to create a simple mobile style set. Fruther, 
we are going to push the source code to GitHub. We need to setup 
a bridge to our internal SVN repository, so expect some back and 
forth on Github before we are stable.	Anway feel free to help making 
R3-GUI better and better.


Android: This release is now mostly the same as the windows release. 
So, yes, it's now possible to do R3-GUI apps on Android. I'm going 
to try to run Treemapper on it. Type DEMO to see the new R3-GUI version 
and widget scaling feature. Post as much screenshots / pictures of 
your phone as you can :-)


R3/Saphir: New version for windows with bug-fixes are released as 
well. Please see the change-log on our web-site for details.


Thanks to all the team for the great work! I really think we are 
close to have a very good and stable base with R3 and R3-GUI. Looking 
forward to see more and more people joining and becoming part of 
it.

Links:
http://development.saphirion.com			(Change Logs, Downloads, etc.)
http://development.saphirion.com/experimental	(Android)
https://github.com/organizations/saphirion		(Documentations)

I set up a Youtube account under the name of REBOL Coder using the 
gmail account [RedREBOLs-:-gmail-:-com]. I added a small number of youtube 
Red presentations. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4UikCida6olTyowsi5JyyA

As it is an extra channel I think about sharing this account with 
interested from the community.

Robert, thank you for the improvements and progress with Android 
(sorry, I've been away from AltMe for a while)

What a bad choice of color for your name - I just can't read it ... 
is it from Aries ?

I'm happy to announce that we made good progress regarding the Android 
R3 encapper.


A major breakthru in the multiple-app generation has been made (thanks 
to Andreas for ELF format hints). Now it is possible to create encapped 
apps with unique app-id. Such apps can be recognized properly by 
the Android OS and also accepted on the Google Play market.


The cool thing with this approach is one really don't need anything 
more than the Android encapper to produce the apk file. No need for 
android NDK, SDK or even JAVA to be installed ;-)


There are some glitches we are going to fix and than the encapper 
is ready for production.

I wrote a quick & minimal example illustrating how to use R3-GUI 
together with R3's async HTTP:

https://gist.github.com/earl/447e4e9510a68c308f6b

I changed the Red 0MQ interface to optimise the memory use during 
receiving of messages:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-ZeroMQ-binding/info/2a1541af57


SEND and RECEIVE have been renamed to send-string and receive-string, 
because they currently handle messages as UTF-8 text. When Red gets 
a binary! type, versions for binary messages will be added, and there 
will probably be type agnostic SEND and RECEIVE wrappers again. Previously, 
you used

message: receive socket


to receive a string message. Now you pass a premade string! (similar 
to call/output in R2):

message: ""
receive-string socket message


This means that you can choose between creating new strings for each 
message (with COPY) or reusing the same string. In the latter case, 
some Red/System code in receive-string makes sure that no extra Red 
memory is used, and that all used system and 0MQ memory is freed 
again. By optimising memory use, this also improves performance of 
message throughput.

This work will be paid for by Respectech as part of an assignment 
I'm doing for them. As far as we know, this is the first commercial 
assignment done with Red.


I'm implementing a network server that needs to run for long periods 
and handle relatively large numbers of requests. This is tricky because 
Red has no garbage collector yet, and the memory allocator doesn't 
handle large series yet. We have been testing the memory system to 
scale it, and Doc has fixed an allocator bug so that series can now 
be twice as large. I've also found and reported seven other bugs 
so far.


The results are very encouraging. The memory system is reliable in 
my stress testing. It can use all the memory available in a machine 
for the contents of series. In the default configuration, one series 
can have a maximum content of 2 MB, or 131070 values for a block!. 
This can be enlarged, basically at will, by compiling your program 
with customised allocator settings.


To reduce the amount of memory that currently cannot be reclaimed 
by garbage collection, I am reducing the number of series generated 
during the handling of each server request. This can be done within 
the same Red program, because low level optimised Red/System code 
can be inserted anywhere. I am down to only a few hundred bytes per 
handled request, and the memory budget of the server is a GB, so 
the Red 0MQ server will be able to handle several million requests.

For relevant platforms, I added extra versions of my Red interpreter 
console distributions to my downloads:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip


They provide versions that include my 0MQ binding for messaging. 
Previous interpreter distributions didn't include it, because on 
most platforms, you have to install the 0MQ library as an extra. 
Further, people may need 0MQ with the GTK+ GUI binding, or without 
it on servers and embedded systems. So there are two new distributions 
in each platform folder:

*/Red/red-core-message
*/Red/red-message


red-core-message is meant for servers and includes bindings for the 
C library, cURL, SQLite and 0MQ. In addition, red-message also includes 
the GTK binding and is meant for GUI programs. For Windows, most 
of these interpreters are in the MSDOS/Red/ folder, but I also added 
a version that is meant to start scripts for GUI programs, so it 
doesn't open an extra console window:

Windows/Red/red-message.exe

As an example, the interpreter to run messaging scripts on a Raspberry 
Pi without GUI is here:

Linux-ARM/Red/red-core-message


The interpreter to develop GUI scripts on x86 Linux to communicate 
with a Raspberry Pi is here:

Linux/Red/red-message


A similar interpreter to develop GUI scripts on Windows to communicate 
with a Raspberry Pi is here:

MSDOS/Red/red-message.exe


As always, for Windows you also have to download the libraries that 
are included in the repository, according to the instructions here:


http://web.syllable.org/news/2012-11-18-20-47-Red-high-level-programming-language-first-alpha.html

Ladislav, couldn't you convert the docs to markdown into a file called 
readme.md so that they are visible by default?

Added 2 more video's to the RedRebols channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4UikCida6olTyowsi5JyyA

I forgot to tell about not requiring a specific return, not needed 
to declare types and use of normal naming is encouraged and the automatic 
casting of the return value. Need to make a [3.5] too someday..

Video number 5 posted. This one uses routine to call a Red/System 
function from a Red script.

I'm happy to announce that Doc and I got the first Red/System kernel 
driver working, for Windows. This is Doc's second kernel driver, 
and my first, and also my first real Windows program, so it took 
a few weeks to figure it out. This new ability of Red is sponsored 
by Respectech. Our test driver just loads and prints a Hello World 
style message that a kernel debugger can view, but I will be developing 
the driver into the functionality we need for our Respectech project. 
I will post the code of the test driver in the Red group.

This replaces the Windows Driver Development Kit (WDK) that you normally 
have to install on Windows to compile drivers. The WDK is a full 
CD download, 650MB. You don't need the WDK, but currently, you do 
still need to run the Red/System compiler on Windows (or WINE on 
Linux) to compile Windows drivers. This limitation will be removed 
later, so you will be able to cross-compile Windows drivers from 
all other Red platforms, like you can with other Red programs.

You should be able to compile the test driver with the latest Red/System 
development version, following the normal build procedure but adding 
the following parameter to the Red/System compiler command line:

rsc.r -t WinDRV driver.reds


This effectively replaces a makefile build script that the WDK uses 
that is almost 12,000 lines.


By the way, the WDK is unable to work in a path that contains spaces, 
so for example on older Windows versions such as XP, you can't develop 
drivers in your home directory, because your home path always contains 
spaces. I think Red will now allow you to do that.

You will get a driver.sys file that you can install, start, query 
and remove like this, from a Windows account with administrative 
rights:


sc create hello-Red type= kernel binPath= C:\full\path\to\driver.sys
sc qc hello-Red
sc start hello-Red
sc query hello-Red
sc delete hello-Red

To view the debug message generated by sc start, you need to install 
a (kernel) debug tool such as DebugView, and enable kernel debugging 
in the Windows boot options.


Other than that, you should see sc query showing the driver as running.

Red has a new platform, Android for x86 processors, so I added it 
to the downloads of example programs:

http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip


The Android programs for both ARM and x86 include the recent fixes 
to the Red Android port, so they have a better chance of working 
now. I would still like someone to test them.


All example programs for other platforms have also been rebuilt with 
the latest Red enhancements and fixes.

Now that generation of shared libraries and drivers is available 
in Red's mainline, I have extended my build script to build libraries 
and drivers. I have added examples of a Windows kernel driver and 
libraries for R3 extensions in both Red/System and Red to the downloads 
repository mentioned above. The R3 extensions are available for all 
platforms to test, but the Windows kernel driver is here, as hello-kernel-driver.sys:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-test/dir?ci=tip&name=MSDOS/RedSystem


See above how to start the driver. Instructions for using the R3 
extensions are in the headers of the source code:


http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-REBOL-3/dir?ci=tip&name=examples

I have extended the Red/System null driver for the Windows kernel 
into a null mini-filter driver. It now registers itself as a mini-filter 
and imports functions not only from the kernel, but also from the 
FilterManager driver, so it is now in a hierarchy of drivers. It 
now responds to a stop command, so you can stop running the driver 
like this:

sc stop hello-Red


I will set up a new repository later to publish the Windows kernel 
and FilterManager bindings and examples.

We did a new Saphir / R3 Andoid release.

Changes:
-fixed input text renderin bug

-reworked misc internal threads synchronisation issues to fix possible 
dead locks
-added ACTIVE, INACTIVE events
-added horizontal native scrolling for layouts wider than screen
-fixed screen rotation
-updated demo script (just type DEMO in the console)
-fixed BROWSE bug

-added .r3 suffix to be able open this type of R3 scripts automatically
-other smaller internal fixes


If you want to test it on your phone just run the console and type:

do http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/demo.r


ATTENTION: We changed the directory layout a bit. You find the Andoid 
release here:

http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/builds/android

We added other platforms as well:
http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/builds/

And the root is still:
http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/


Next Wednesday I will give a short talk about our porting efforts 
here via Web-Cast:  http://www.vksi.de/sneak-preview/17072013-android-qs.htm
(German)

In conjunction we did a new R3-GUI release as well.


added DETAB flag support
fixed TEXT-AREA issues
fixed TEXT init-size handling
fixed SIZE-TXT bug
built new R3GUI release (version 4897)
delete "experimental" layout-sizing-independent.r3
improve rouding
move docs/r3-gui/ to documentation/r3/r3-gui/

remove documentation/r3/r3-gui/license/ directory containing obsolete 
license
Copyright notice update
license update
typo fixed
Rounding correction
improved rotate event handling

improved drag handling code (removed duplicate gui-events/drag reference)
improved android text input handling
fixed progress resizing
improved text-able cell font handling
fonts are antialiased by default on android now

http://development.saphirion.com/resources/r3-gui.r

New World alpha release at
https://github.com/Geomol/World


- Added better networking using cURL library, libcurl (OS X and Linux)
- Added tasks incl.:
	- task! datatype
	- task-id! datatype
	- TASKS native function
	- task? and task-id? mezzanines

 - Task support for many functions incl. HELP, SOURCE, FIRST, SECOND, 
 PICK, COMPILED? and DISASM
	- KILL mezzanine to call TASKS/KILL

- Added inter-task communication using SEND and RECEIVE native functions
- Added support for messages to WAIT as: wait 'message

- Added preemptive multitasking using TASKS/TICKS to specify number 
of Virtual Machine instructions per task run (default is 200)

- Added timers for tasks triggered by WAIT native and READ native, 
when reading from url
- Task yield can be achieved by: wait 0
- Changed ;{ } comment syntax to ;( )
- Parens can now span several lines at the prompt
- Added system/console/paren
- Added support for pressing <Esc> to stop execution of main task

- Sending input via pipe to World started with a script will activate 
input without echo and without <tab>-completion etc.. (Not sure how 
and if this works under Windows.)
- Added support for picking 'Re and 'Im of complex numbers
- Better implementation of TRY

- New test versions of IF and EITHER, that can take other than block! 
arguments
- Added more tests

We have pushed our R3-GUI sources to Github. The project was cleaned 
up, old stuff removed etc. So it should be in pretty good shape. 
We keep the GibHub repository in sync with our internal SVN repository. 
We will further take a look at pull requests and take your feedback 
into our main line. You can find the repository here:

https://github.com/saphirion/r3-gui

I mentioned a little earlier the idea of posting a message containing 
links to all Rebol/Rebol-related community locations along with activity 
levels in each of these. This would be a weekly or bi-weekly posting 
at each location. The idea is to allow people to easily find out 
how active the other communities are at the moment if they happen 
to fall into any one of them as a result of a search, for example.

The content would be something like:

This is a periodic posting of community links along with activity 
levels for discussion dedicated to Rebol and Rebol-like languages. 
The intent is to bring a dispersed community together by providing 
the current list of places where the community gathers along with 
reasonably accurate activity indicators for each place. This list 
will be posted in each location weekly or bi-weekly so that anyone 
dropping by will not have to look far in order to learn where else 
things are happening.


Currently the activity stats are gathered manually and postings are 
also not automated. This will hopefully change as the requisite scripts 
to scrape and post automatically are developed. This updated list 
will eventually be available at http://rebol.comas the site is cleaned 
up post Rebol open sourcing. 


# Chats

## R3 Chat

This is the primary forum for Rebol 3.0. It runs from any Rebol console 
in a text mode, but a GUI version is planned.
- Run R3, type chat and follow the instructions (all platforms.)

- Type "help" for more information or visit R3 DevBase Chat Forum 
(http://www.rebol.com/r3/devbase/index.html).

- To view public messages from any web browser go to RebDev mobile/phone 
interface (http://www.rebol.net/cgi-bin/rebdev-web.r).

- Problems? Please contact Rebol Technologies at (http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/feedback/post2.r).
Activity: 4 messages this month


## Rebol chat on Stack Overflow (http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/291/rebol)

- Note that you will need a reputation of 20 in order to be able 
to post in the chat. 

- You can gain this minimal reputation (essentially a spam filter) 
by participating in the Stack Overflow group of sites. 
Activity: 380 messages this week


## AltME Worlds

A private instant messaging system where rebolers hang out 24/7. 
The current world dedicated to Rebol and Rebol-like language discussion 
is called REBOL4
- Get client at http://www.altme.com/download.html
- connect to the 'rebol-gate' world with user/pass, guest/guest
- request account on REBOL4 world in the REBOL4 request group

Web archives of public groups, first to last in the most active world, 
REBOL4, as well as the dormant world, REBOL3:
REBOL4 (http://www.rebol.org/aga-groups-index.r?world=r4wp)
Activity: 286 posts last 6 days
REBOL3 (http://www.rebol.org/aga-groups-index.r?world=r3wp)


# Forums

## Rebol Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/groups/rebol)
A new special interest group for Facebook users.
Activity: 26 messages this month



## Rebol Google+ community (https://plus.google.com/communities/100845931109002755204)
Activity: 4 messages this month



## Rebol Google Group (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/rebol)
Activity: 43 messages this month



## Synapse EHR Rebol Forum (http://synapse-ehr.com/community/forums/rebol.5)
A web-based forum for R2 and R3, provided by Synapse EHR
Activity: 13 messages this month



## RebelBB France (http://www.digicamsoft.com/cgi-bin/rebelBB.cgi)
A simple forum, written in Rebol, for French speakers.
Activity: 140 messages this month


## Nick's Rebol Forum (http://rebolforum.com/index.cgi)

A micro-forum (just a few lines of Rebol) hosted by Nick Antonaccio. 
(Note: the captcha question is first.)
Activity: 79 messages this month


# Q&A (Question & Answer)

## Stack Overflow questions on Rebol
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rebol
Activity: 219 questions tagged
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/rebol3
Activity: 2 questions tagged

not sure - thought I remembered that the lists are defunct now. The 
Facebook spot is just a group - is there a mailing list somewhere 
there as well?

the AltME numbers are bogus though - I got those from the web archive 
which shows only the web-public activity (and a non-constant one 
at that, if you hit F5 repeatedly)

what is "f8bk"? You mean facebook? Fb is not a mailing list, I think. 
The

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/rebol

is

I think we should put this up on the rebol.net Wiki for a start. 
This will give us a convenient location to point to.

Actually, we had such a page before:
http://rebol.net/wiki/DocBase:Community_Portal

Also, note an additional "chat" venue: IRC.


A few of us hang out in IRC in the channel #rebol on freenode (irc://chat.freenode.net, 
http://freenode.net). 128 messages in December. If you don't have 
an IRC client handy, freenode also provides a web-based client for 
quickly looking around: https://webchat.freenode.net/

I took the liberty of taking AdrianS's posting, reformatted it to 
Markdown (only minimal changes necessary), added IRC, reordered things 
slightly, and updated two few counts.

Here's a rendering of this updated Markdown document to HTML:
http://bolka.at/2012/rebol3/pages/community-radar.html

Here's the Markdown source of the updated document:
http://bolka.at/2012/rebol3/pages/community-radar.mkd

Ladislav, I agree about the level of activity not being as useful 
if the number of contributors is not specified, but for now this 
will have to do. The way to do this is through some reasonably smart 
scripting that can obtain a better breakdown of posts by user, either 
through scraping or some sort of API, if available.

obtain a better breakdown of posts by user

 - I do not criticize your findings, I do not even think it is needed 
 to know how many contributors there are; that was rather an observation 
 from me related to one "prolific" contributor

Andreas, your R3 binaries page looks really nice.  Might be worth 
putting up a link to the Android binary even though it's not built 
(yet) by your build farm just to have everything available in one 
place. I'm assuming Saphirion wouldn't mind if the right attribution 
is made.

how the hell do we ask to be member of a bord in trello?  there is 
absolutely no menu anywhere to join or ask for membership..


if there is one its very well hidden... so I guess this is an official 
request to be part of the trello board

Well, if you want to use 'web app'  which tries a bit to not  resemble 
just "HTML page" you have to always use the most updated browsers. 
I think this rule will hold for very long time :-)