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It's much more than the license, but RT is not unwilling to change. 
Apart from the core license, R3 fixes all other uptake issues. It's 
just unfortunate that it came to be a package deal that's hard to 
finish

Face it, a language with no community is no language

 I wouldn't judge REBOL's adoption rate purely by the number of people 
 who regularly post in this world. I receive a lot of email from folks 
 using stuff I've written in their day-to-day jobs and they don't 
 post here or to the mail list ... I've even spoken to a few startups 
 who are going into business primarily on the strength of REBOL and 
 "time to market". Whether a "killer app" will ever be REBOL-based 
 is the big question ...

I think Carl will find other things to do in life if interest falls 
below a certain level.

and rebol is intemporal like all languages. But yes we can say it's 
unknown and that's in my opinion a pitty.

now you have several scripting languages and most of them are a "success" 
 because of their easy interoperability like lau or VB script...

and some other are succes because of their specialisation like PHP 
 wich outside a web server can't exist

but the least we can say it that Carl is not so wrong in his vision 
because the need to extrapolate the hardware and the software is 
a more and more a need in software making industry those20 past years 
you get a lot of  scripting languages created

With out the community we have here I would not get too far with 
REBOL. Most of the apps I try to make can not be done out of the 
box without a lot of expertise and code add-ons that I get from you 
guys. For a novice reboler the community is essential...there really 
is no other source.

REBOL won't die. Consider that a statement.

Carl is making very good progress on the new VID system .. expect 
a new blog very soon.

It's going to be a much more scaleable vector driven system

There was a large amount of work spent on simplification. More than 
originally anticipated.

I picked up a 3G to replace my 1st gen iphone today..  screw Rebol.. 
give me Cocoa.

And I don't even own a Mac.

My question is this.. "What is the end game?" Is everything going 
to be a little RIA? I doubt it. A clunky browser? Probably not.

Some things are timeless.  
- Everything is data. 

- Software is a solution to a problem, or some form of entertainment.

Storage was once an huge issue.. not anymore. 
internet transfer rate was once a huge issue.. not anymore.
Always on connectivity will fall as well.

The greatest killer app the world has ever seen could very well be 
built using Rebol, which would generate a massive following overnight. 
However, the killer app itself will be about an idea.. not something 
special Rebol offers, or any other language for that matter. When 
it boils down, all languages are pretty much the same. It becomes 
a religious thing and a preference.  There's a strong tendency in 
this biz for developers to stick with what they know, even if the 
alternative is 'better' (whatever that means)

maybe JR (REBOL for JavaScript) could help a bit ... it would be 
kind of your next javascript library .... no installation .... VID 
way of defining gui, translated to JS ...

Terry: browser... iPhone.... Safari. iPhone apps are a lucrative 
niche or a nice add-on (I have an iPod Touch so I know what I'm talking 
about..., and am in the process of getting an extra Mac for -among 
others- writing IPhone apps for fun).

Apple's App Store is doing for software what eBay did for auctions 
... it's a brave new world when I can buy an 'app' for $1.99 and 
2 mouse clicks. Cell phones and the software that runs on them is 
where the growth (and future) is.

The browser as the launch platform for applications has always been 
an interesting idea. The fundamental problem of the sheer complexity 
of it can be solved with R3. If done right, it can completely wipe 
the floor with browsers and AJAX. I think the problem is that we 
haven't been speaking in a language that people can understand, such 
as "browser", "web2.0" and "webserver", but instead "dialects", "VID", 
"Viewtop" and "X Internet" and people go "huh?".

Some things I believe are needed to do this right:


- Browser form factor. People are used to browsers, not Viewtops. 
What's always the first thing a complete newbie computer user uses, 
when wanting to do anything on the internet? A webbrowser. I don't 
want a desktop inside my desktop. There are tens of solutions for 
such things and they are almost all forgotten. Carl is doing the 
REBOL browser. When you fire up R3, you will get what looks like 
a webbrowser and acts like one. The concept has to work equally well 
for people like us, as well as 5-year-olds and 95-year-olds.


- Do apps that are similar to webapps, like GMail. That's a quick 
way to compare. Don't you think a 50k GMail look-a-like inside a 
REBOL browser running at native speeds would be _slightly_ impressive? 
Remember to say that you can serve 5 times more users with the same 
bandwidth. REBOL can help make raw numbers look better without much 
effort. Google would have to use it as a content platform. They have 
no other choice. :-) Chrome? What's that?


- Plugins suddenly are very flexible. You don't have plugins as in 
Firefox, but helper scripts that can enhance/change your browsing 
experience. 15k full screen document reader that prettifies plain 
text files? Sure thing. Blog posts presented in that would be much 
nicer to read. Out goes the PDF reader.


- Do apps that are completely out of the league of AJAX, such as 
multithreaded P2P systems. In fact, why not build P2P capabilities 
right in? Have different instances of the browser allow users to 
connect and chat, when they are visiting the same "Rebsite". It's 
sort of like going into a physical store and chatting with the other 
customers and you decide to exchange business cards. Initial contact 
without needing email. Do the same thing with chat support for an 
article that you bought at that  "rebsite". Current websites are 
almost completely anonymous. You don't feel you are entering a live 
community. Coded in REBOL/Services.


- Webpages are now REBOL scripts. In R3, scripts can be closed and 
encrypted, so you can't read the source and you can sell scripts 
and have them signed. The best you can do right now is some kind 
of code obfuscation.

- Windows, MacOSX and Linux version.


- "A webbrowser that directly supports OpenGL without obscure/limited 
3rd party plugins." Say that again in your head.


- It's very important that the public get to see that creating REBOL 
scripts for the browser is very similar to creating plain HTML pages. 
REBOL scripts can be served off a plain webserver. All the infrastructure 
is already there. Or how about serving scripts from the browser itself? 
AltME can both be a client and a server. It's that P2P thing again.

- Browser would run wherever R3 runs.


- Market it as Web 4.0. Market it as a direct competition to current 
webbrowsing.


- Browser would be a 500-600 kb downloadable exe that starts immediately 
without installation. From deciding to get it, to be using it to 
browse "Rebpages", it should not take more than 30-45 seconds.

- We need AltME in that browser (Altissimo?) as well as QTask.

For developers:


- It's easy to create an HTML file in notepad and display it in your 
favourite browser. It's going to be equally easy to create a REBOL 
script in notepad and see it running in your REBOL browser. A 5-year-old 
who has just learned to type, should be able to create a script and 
display it.

- One language for everything.


- Everything is free. You can start out with notepad. The barrier 
for creating content is about as low as it can get.


- You wanna code slow web 2.0 apps or fast web 4.0 apps? Hard choice, 
I know.

That's a great vision Henrik.

A REBOL browser is a great way to really get REBOL out there and 
might be used by non-developers just as their browsing tool instead 
of current browsers.

Paul, I began rambling about replacing the viewtop with a browser-like 
deployment platform in the r3-alpha world. I didn't expect that 30 
seconds after posting it, Carl wrote something akin to "Henrik, that's 
basically what I'm doing now." and at that point he hadn't said anything 
for over a week. :-)

He has since only talked more about the new VID, so I don't know 
if he's leaving the browser implementation up to us or if he's actually 
doing the browser itself. But it looks like the plan is for a browser.

This is basically what I meant earlier about being "psyched about 
a REBOL browser". I left out things like video playback and advanced 
audio, because I don't know yet what the approach for making those 
things possible will be. But if they are possible, they would be 
equally possible, like OpenGL would be possible.


And if it turns out that he won't do the browser himself, then it 
can easily be a community effort, not hard to build.

Not hard to build, but hard to design. Graphics models, interaction 
models, security issues, trust issues, resizing and reflow, these 
are all tricky problems. I can see why it would be taking a while 
for Carl to think through the implications.

But a REBOL Browser will introduce REBOL to others that have never 
used REBOL.  And if REBOL gains some acceptance then it means that 
other browsers will have to begin to integrate some compatibiliity 
with REBOL.

yes, the point is to say "hey, this is like a webbrowser, only much 
faster."

Henrik: "When you fire up R3, you will get what looks like a webbrowser 
and acts like one." - not just that, I want R3 not just to look like 
a webbrowser and act like a webbroser but actually TO BE a webbrowser 
- download R3 (few hunderts kB), run it and be able to browse REBOL 
pages - and if you enter *.html - just show some window that says 
"downloading" and download some REBOL plugin that can display webpages 
(being based on Gecko, Webkit, whatever) - it will be few megs download, 
but people are used to it. This is definitely possible - it's possible 
to display OpenGL etc in View window so I believe there are some 
libraries to do this ("somebody" just needs to make an interface 
to them ;)'


The thing is that R3 browser (and just a R3 browser) will be once 
again a great platform without apps (Be Inc etc...). If R3 browser 
can display classic HTML+JS+CSS+DOM+XML+AJAX+WHATEVER combo it's 
win-win situation. Lots of apps available and we can improve them 
one after one to show it can be done much easier and faster.

And simply say "we made a new kind of webbrowser. it's much faster 
than your old webbrowser.". Perhaps market it as a side product of 
REBOL. This would bring up the old discussion again of what REBOL 
is.

Firefox wasn't an independent branch of Mozilla, it was a branch 
of Mozilla (the software) written and supported by Mozilla (the organization 
with corporate sponsors and backing).

At least not for a while. We have had only standalone builds for 
almost a year.

I only have the public alpha which has a dll.

It sounds as though there is still a huge amount of work to be done 
before R3 is going to be ready.

As for FF, they receive money from Google only because Google is 
preset as default search engine. We might do similar if R3 browser 
gets popular :-) At OSNews, I also suggested Google to adopt REBOL, 
as it is THE ONLY small RIA technology along to Flash, SilverLight., 
which is a complete platform ...

After reading Henrik's post, I also think we found RT a good REBOL 
advocate ;-)

Rebol as being 'half empty or half full' .. either way, is a good 
metaphor.

Be serious. There's no way you can pull the necessary resources together 
to build anything like a browser. Just won't happen.  Call that 'half-empty', 
if you want.. I call it 45:1 odds against it every happening.. any 
takers?

If by "like a browser" you mean implement HTML rendering and styling, 
a JavaScript interpreter and all of that, then I agree. If you want 
to implement a REBOL browser, then you are dead wrong. It's not the 
browser part that is the hard part.

If the html browser part is seperate from the rebol "bowser" (as 
a plug-in using web kit?) it would not be too tuff.

I can see the point to implementing a compiler from a REBOL dialect 
to HTML/CSS/JavaScript though.

html borwser would allow rebol to infiltrate the masses...No one 
will use rebol only browser if they can't also access google or any 
of their other favorite sites. A An html plug-in could activate when 
an html page is requesteed...?

No, if we are going to force them to use something other than HTML/CSS/JavaScript/Flash/Silverlight? 
it would either have to work in their existing browser, or be something 
seperate that just gets installed with an app they already want, 
as a side effect.

The latter...exactly.

I'm building an app that works great as a standalone app but I can 
see it working in this "browser" thing as the rebol "browser" I believe 
will be proving a framework to extend my app..things like caht, file 
sharing, and other things not yet thought of. If i I have a base 
of users and I stear them to use the browser as it will provide additional 
benifits to my app..that's a bunch of people nows using it that will 
quickly discover they can also rech the html web. Why us ie or firefox?

For that matter, unless you support their existing web services that 
they already have their data or the data they already want in it, 
it won't matter. That means their existing webmail account and Flash 
video. If you can't play YouTube (and RedTube, ...) it won't matter.


People don't care about the underlying technology unless they are 
techs. If you make a REBOL browser so that you can do REBOL stuff, 
and then try to support the old web stuff thinking that people will 
try the REBOL stuff and find it to be better, you will be wrong. 
Most people won't be able to tell the difference, because it isn't 
the technology that matters, it is the content. If you have the best 
content available in the most convenient way, people will install 
your software to get at it, whatever your software is written in.

We are not going to compete with Flash directly, not unless we can 
provide a better source of free videos of cats running on treadmills 
than Youtube. The only company that can kill Flash/Silverlight video 
is Google, because they can add HTML 5 video to every open source 
browser and switch Youtube to use it. Nothing that the REBOL community 
can do will work on that scale.

Agree here also, I want cross platform GUI where the rebol browser 
provides UI and other services to applications not just content. 
 The value in the Google applications is not their quality (which 
is okay) but in the access from anywhere feature.  The HTML/Browser 
is trying to grow into the application space but is really at a disadvantage 
because of the technology.

Rebol is a niche product, and unless it reaches critical mass (of 
developers) will probably remain that way.

That said, I've been discussing a new project that will probably 
use Rebol

Critical mass is a challenge for sure.  I've been bouncing around 
all the "popular" technologies for some time while earning my keep 
with old fashioned database applications.  Some are very interesting 
and have good strengths, none are making creating solutions easier 
or even better in most cases.

Everything is a niche product, even Flash. There is no general purpose 
product. Find your niche and go for it.

Hey, I had an idea today that you might be interested in. I want 
to come up with a REBOL notation that has the same basic semantics 
as JavaScript but is still valid REBOL syntax. Corresponding concepts 
should match corresponding syntax (= to :, etc.). If it could be 
executable by the standard REBOL interpreter that would be even better. 
As far as I can tell, the only thing without an approximate mapping 
is regex.

Obviously this dialect wouldn't be as powerful as the DO dialect, 
but if it is a proper subset it could be executed by DO and its buddies 
as is. Once you have this, all you would need is a syntax transliterator 
and you would have a JavaScript interpreter in REBOL.

you mean a javascript dialect for Rebol ?

I was thinking that if I could do that, then reimplement the rest 
of REBOL in that dialect, I could write a REBOL compiler to JavaScript. 
At the very least I could write a JavaScript compiler to REBOL. Or 
for that matter, a compiler for a subset of REBOL to JavaScript. 
Semantic equivalency is what would matter here, not syntax. Syntax 
is irrelevant.

Having a javascript interpreter embedded inside Rebol would allow 
more users ( familiar with javascript ) to write their own add ons 
without having to learn Rebol.

Should I make a task for this? :)

I have been giving this a lot of thought over the years, but have 
started coming up with real strategies for doing this for real in 
the last few weeks. I would like to discuss this kind of thing with 
you some time later.

Reading this discussion since Terry's first post 8 hours ago (the 
"be serious" one), shows to me how hard it gets to think outside 
the box and that's another challenge when it comes to marketing the 
REBOL browser. When we think of browser, we automatically refer to 
a whole range of technologies and languages. It's something so ingrained, 
we never notice it. Partially you can say it's the same for a PC, 
as it's very likely to run Windows and that if you want to read an 
electronic document mailed to you from an average person, it's very 
likely to be written in MS Word. That's not how we want it to be. 
That's how people think. They think in axioms and familiarity, because 
they don't know any better.


I think the marketing should play strongly on familiarity, such as 
with the aforementioned GMail clone, where it's easy to tell the 
difference in speed between the two technologies. Keep duplicating 
existing stuff. I disagree that the average person can't tell the 
difference. I've observed average people praising that GMail now 
runs faster in FF3 than it did in FF2.


The REBOL browser is disruptive technology. It will be able to do 
things that normal webbrowsers won't be able to do for the next 5 
years at least, if ever. But only if it's done right, by playing 
on familiarity. If it's done right, dumping the traditional web can 
happen faster than we think and I would do it in a heartbeat.

I imagine that if Reichart was ever to do QTask for the REBOL browser, 
he could probably build it alone at 1/3 or 1/4 the time that it takes 
to build it for a traditional browser and the final product would 
run faster.

I think we should wrap some services. Do you remember few scripts, 
wrapping SlashDot? What about wrapping Google mail? And then showing 
the source code of VID? I think it could cause some jaws drops, how 
small the source can be. Then we could encap it, and provide it as 
a Flash app. It could be downloaded in millions. And Google might 
get interested. They imo need something against Flash/Silverlight, 
and there is not third technology to the game but REBOL imo ...

We have to see the browser and its capabilities first, before we 
can make a next move.

But I am glad that my idea of REBOL "player" is fulfilled with the 
browser idea. I never liked ViewTop (desktop paradigm). I wanted 
it to strip down to "go" screen = a browser :-)

Terry, Rebol -> JS is kind of similar in purpose and in concept to 
what the Ruby on Rails guys did with Ruby -> JS (aka. RJS).  With 
Rebol's lexical muscles, it is surely a great candidate for abstracting 
what happens in the browser.

I think a few, including Reichart (Qtask), Henrik (HTML Dialect) 
and myself (not started yet, QM) are going this route.

I already used Rebol -> ECMAScript (at least to generate data (mainly 
nasted arrays)) to skip a need to write something like XML parser 
on the client side, how most people do now:)

Terry, I am not going to learn REBOL to generate JavaScript code. 
I already know REBOL. I already have to generate JavaScript code, 
for my job at the very least. As for a REBOL-hosted JavaScript runtime, 
that is likely to be just a useful side effect.

And what I learn can be adapted to other targets, including C, in 
theory. Though C is a poor choice for generating iPhone apps - it 
would be better to generate LLVM code directly, as it has a better 
semantic model than C.

You are talking to the wrong part of the community. I have a full-time 
job solving problems with REBOL.

Here's my problem.. A simple way to create apps for the iPhone.. 
Rebol seems like the perfect candidate. Any ETAs?

And a Mac?

Henrik is right... their license forbids other languages and programs 
with a plugin architecture, like say,  other browsers.....

You would have to make a subset of REBOL a library that is statically 
linked to other applications, and that subset could not include any 
of the DO dialect functions. You could generate those applications 
using Mac-hosted standard REBOL code though.

A rebol -> obj C would work.. like the ECMA -> obj C example link... 
I just doubt i will ever happen with RT

I could say that I need a development environment for a robotic vacuum 
cleaner. Do I complain that someone hasn't built it for me, or do 
I make one myself? I choose the latter. The only reason that there 
is no REBOL development environment for the iPhone is that I don't 
need one, and noone who does has made one. This is a community - 
RT is a company. If you want RT to make that, you pay them. Otherwise 
make it yourself.

I have to retract one of my statements: There is at least one person 
with the porting skills to make a development environment for the 
iPhone who actually has an iPhone. But he's busy working on more 
important (to him) stuff.

And I bought the iTouch as MP3-player while running...  figured might 
as well get some extra goodies. Now that I have it: it turns the 
world upside-down. Buying a little app for e2 over your wlan with 
to taps, it's tasteful.

See i like rebolbecause I allows OLdes to express is dreams and that's 
a hudge thing  ^^

See i like rebol because  it allows OLdes to express is dreams and 
that's a hudge thing  ^^ ( sorry it's really late and i'm prettry 
tired... = )  )

well i sued most of the programing langugages in the world  and rebol 
is from far the most interresting.  It needs to be enhanced  but 
as a matter of fact the numbres of main releases were not alot so 
we can say that rebolis still a very young language. A cross the 
years a lot of experience have been collected and i'm sure Carl took 
a good note of all this and that he will show is that R3

will be a major step  stone in Rebol history

About naming VID3.4, here's a pretty bad name for a UI: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/guis/newwave

There are finally a couple of signs of life with R3 GUI; 2 new pages 
in DocBase.

yo all, i don't find any index property in the new port file scheme 
in R3, how can we seek in a opened file ?

Keep in mind that the port model is almost completely different in 
R3 (and a vast improvement) so your low-level code will change.

What is the suggested replacement where a port is used as a data 
interface?

Though I'd still advocate a separate type for this -- adapter! if 
you will...

Chris, actually ports in R3 support a lot of different actors, though 
it is not clear yet if it should or not.

ok, the prob with the new file port is that we can not have a direct 
access using an index.

Instead we have to maintain a relative offset because we only can 
use read/seek wich use negative and positive offset. I think READ 
should allow to use an absolute index  too. (like with a refinement 
 /at )

it's not a question Brian, when the port is opened, you must use 
relative offset to advance or go back in the file.

Sorry, I said offsets when I meant indexes. And read/seek doesn't 
allow negative indexes - the index parameter is always a non-negative 
offset from the beginning, 0-based.

I'm testing it now. All read/seek calls go to a 0-based index from 
the beginning of the file. Negative offsets cause an error. What 
version of REBOL are you using?

is there a link to dowload the last alpha release ?

I can't find the /seek refinement on the READ function in the last 
public release. The OPEN, READ and WRITE functions changed quite 
a bit with the Unicode changes. All of the docs and my comments relate 
to the versions since the Unicode changes.

There is not a public link to the internal releases for the development 
group of REBOL 3, and that includes the Unicode releases. There isn't 
much point in posting one either, since Carl's GUI changes are just 
as extensive as the Unicode changes, and we haven't seen them yet.

I don't think styles are counted in yet, but there are a few styles 
in the design.. Carl sounds very pleased with the design. He's working 
out a few bugs, before I can get my hands on it.

Brian, i'm sorry i made a mistake, it was not the /seek refinement 
i used (which don't exist) with the 'read function but the /skip 
refinement.

Anyway, it seems that we can do a seek position with an obsolute 
index only when opening the file. After that, we can only skip the 
port. with relative offset. I think a /seek  refinement is missing 
in 'read function

Petr, anyone who reads the docs, has perhaps talked to Carl, and 
has done some deduction can tell quite a lot about what Carl's new 
VID will do. We aren't totally in the dark.

He posted this Monday, and am not sure it would hurt to publish it:

Delay in upload caused by:


1. Resize needed some more work.  That has been done, and it is much 
better.  We will probably see a few more bugs, and may still want 
to make some general adjustments.  The main idea of resize has changed 
from earlier VID releases. I will write a DocBase page on it to explain 
how it works and why I changed it. 


2. A few styles broke in recent changes. These need to be fixed. 
Should only take a few hours.


3. A few weeks ago, when making larger changes, I removed some of 
the compound styles. I want to add back at least one or two, probably 
LIST for text lists at minimum.