AltME groups: search

(ok i'm in a big trouble now, my bottle of whisky is empty)

I have a variety of booze here, and thanks for reminding me Steeve 
:)

Can't you see how cool it would be to let a person   load %textfile.txt 
and do analysis?  With foreign! sitting there ready to trigger if 
evaluated?

That is what I mean by the fallback approach. We could even provide 
a transform function argument :)

just a question: IIRC, we will be able to build our own rebol distro 
to include our own mezzanines, right Brian ?

Some time ago we discussed this on a blog post.  Carl had some valid 
concerns about "where to restart the lexical scan", but I trust him 
and you and Gabriele to get that right, in an explainable way.   
So yes.

But ... come think.  The fallback now leads to professionals wondering 
if the human data was entered in quotes as string! or a fallback 
coercion....so I'd still go for a psuedostring! type to differentiate. 
 Maybe?

I'd send you a little down the tubes (if they were indeed tubes...)

No, in my case it is AltME, or more specificly the blocking file 
access, single-threaded REBOL 2 it is built in. I get a lot of freezes.

Thanks to the people who argued with me, you'll have better code 
as a result :)

Pekr;  I still don't get the counter argument.  What is the scary 
deal with  load "1 2 3 abc $10,000,000.00" returning a block of [integer! 
integer! integer! word! foreign!]  instead of a syntax error?  Why 
fear this?

Sure, and it'll still be foreign!   so would 1212.12.1212.12121212.121212. 
  S'okay   still just foreign!   as would  $$$$12@@!@!@#3   just 
foreign!   instead of a syntax error during the make phase.

And tomc, yes,  unrefined load  is a poor choice of example   load/somerefinement 
 would be far better, but I still don't see the fear of foreign!

for me the biggest obstacle is national difference for decimal point 
representation. While your example might be valid for a number, in 
CZ we use comma as a decimal point separator. Is it stupid? Yes, 
of course it is ....

I'm aiming to open up REBOL to "all data" analysis and I don't see 
where that should scare normal rebols from going about producing 
good clean parses just as today;  with the addition of a foreign! 
datatype that has semantics of "junk"

yeah parse-the-line-and ... is not code a History Professor may feel 
comfortable writing.   I want REBOL to open up new domains, and I 
don't think this change really hurts existing usage.

But now it's sack time for me and I've broken a promise that I'd 
keep quiet on the issue (for another 2 months ... then I'll whinge 
again)   ;)

OK, I don't mind either way. Talk to gurus, as i can't see the consequences. 
If it does not slow rebol code parser, then it is OK. And as BrianH 
said - 'load is a mezzanine. It can be patched. I think that adding 
one refinement would not hurt us ...

Well, a refinement and a datatype with semantics of junk, power in 
my opinion, scary REBOL breaking crud to others (others that I do 
respect the opinion of), but I can't see the fear of this datatype!

But anyway Petr; have a good day, I'm off

Pekr parse is a hell of a complex programming paradigm.

you have to be kidding, right? Even lamer like me can write some 
parse expression. Not much complicated, but can. But I can't write 
a bit of regexp. Any person stating that regexp can be more easily 
tought to our mums needs a medicine :-)

but parsing is a hell of a complicated thing.  on the surface it 
looks easy, then you start trying stuff and the vast majority of 
people are stumped.

a bit like we can add invisible line-feeds in block.

We need something like load/markup.....That splits a string into 
<tags> and "strings". The strings can then be processed separately 
from the tags.

So load/datatypes -- split a string into recognisable REBOL datatypes, 
and other! (aka Junk!)

a bit like saying that series is the super type of both string and 
block.

when parsing it could be usefull sometimes, to be able to assign 
a label to a block, so we can leave it where it lay and know later 
on that its a block of some type.

adding some kind of tags to a data element means you are describing 
IT.  you can do whatever you want with it, that info always stays 
with it.

adding this basic functionality in the language would allow us to 
use it directly in load and then just have a simple mechanism where 
either a new word, like 'ASSIMILATE is used and indentifies foreign 
data with a  !foreign!   label.

but internally, it is a data structure anyway, which is just automatically 
attached to data you want to describe, no? How large such label could 
be? What structure? That might get complex, no?

Brian, what you aren't getting is that foreign! could *either* throw 
an error *or* be analyzed, but not *both*. If it throws an error 
at all, it will throw an error when analyzed. This means that foreign! 
is either a useless error (only useful *because* it is an error), 
or something that every line of REBOL code in existence would need 
to screen for (because it doesn't throw an error), a huge overhead 
for all code. Either way, most existing REBOL code would break.

I like that a link too the RebDev chat client is built into R3 (as 
of the last build). Links to DocBase and CureCode too.

Yup, that's why it's a link. RebDev is not going to be the final 
name for that though - I think it will be called "DevBase Chat".

even if it makes me smile a little

(btw for the others, the notepad editor is a joke)

I don't know. I know that if you need to have an unset! vale in a 
series, not being able to insert one would be a hassle. I just don't 
like the wrapper code  that it requires sometimes (as in that MAP 
discussion).

you can insert unset! as a word , it's enough

Then it is a word, or perhaps a datatype. Sometimes you really need 
an unset! value - like if you *want* an error on eval.

in many scripts i use unset! values to compose optionnals data (like 
in to a draw block).
>> compose [ a b 1 (opt1) 2 c x (opt1)]
with opt as empty blocks ot containing optionnal values

so it's a problem

In 2.7.6:
>> compose [a b c (()) d]
== [a b c d]
>> compose [a b c (#[unset!]) d]
== [a b c d]
>> compose [a b c ([#[unset!]]) d]
== [a b c unset d]

>> compose [a b c (reduce[()]) d]
== [a b c unset! d]

is there a newer meaner version of protect?

cause right now, we can't ensure a word is never replaced by a malicious 
piece of code.

For example, I'd add quite a few protects in my user.r to ensure, 
no application tries to replace how LOAD and SAVE function...

AmigaOS has a similar command. :-)

R3 is getting a much nicer startup screen, as you've seen in the 
screenshots. I think that part of R3 is going to be a big thing for 
the coming public alpha.

if there will be a chance to write bindings for R3 then this shouldn't 
be a problem because people will probably make bindings to various 
sound libs like (I know few that are used in (casual) game engines 
like irrKlang, KSound, SDL mixer, or something.

I asked about sound in R3 a few weeks back. The answer was that there 
is no sound support in R3 yet.

at sound (to my limited knowledge) there are many solutions but neither 
one is ideal. It's not like software rendering for graphics - where 
you know they will work everywhere. Or even OpenGL (which has problems 
on certain % of windows users because of bad drivers)... there is 
OpenAL but it also won't work on some hardware. Example of this is 
that something as big as Java doesn't have a solid sound library 
that would work in non-signed applets. I wrote a game in processing(java 
lib/lang) but had to rewrite it to java+lwjgl+jopenAL because there 
was no way to make native java play sound consistenty. Basically 
it didn't work on more computers that it did, and processing is very 
media oriented.

I will prey my God that RT will be able to provide what I described, 
because that is the root of all things and I imagine no simple task. 
I don't worry for community part.. when someone will need something 
bad enought  they will make a binding/lib/framework

I just noticed blog about R3 being released to a larger group of 
developers today

Kaj, there will be a useful subset of REBOL that will work on R2 
and R3 both. Optimized code will often not do so.

No UI yet, which I'm a bit happy about. :-) It is definitely not 
ready for release.

A request has been made for your addition, so we'll see what happens. 
:-)

on hold for now as I'm working on a large R2 project. it's also good 
to take a break to get away from it, so I can get fresh ideas for 
the UI.

(and I have a few)

wow, so you are a programmer that can design .. the deadly combination 
:)

The visual design is still up for change. I may figure out something 
better tomorrow if I get a good idea. It should also be evident from 
the screenshots that it's an iterative process. There are still a 
lot of things left to do to make this UI really "sing".

hi i would like to obtain a user / password for r3-alpha  thanks

It would help with a better console. I've also proposed to adopt 
a traditional LS/DIR, CD .. command set. I think that would click 
much easier for us.

If you're going to look like a console, at least let's use console 
familiar tool names

probably because you're only in one console at a time!

For a GUI version to do this, one could open N windows in the same 
RebDev script. I would love to see that.

is there a http or gui client ?

A GUI client will certainly help usability, but since we have console, 
we can use it over SSH and that's a great thing.

Graham, yes, just like you can SSH to a linux box and use Rebol/Core 
through that already now.

for sure! Just a newbie question: as I've to wait for R3, is there 
a way to have a descent font rendering on Windows (antialiased) ? 
Ugly courier fonts really annoying for working/ reading AltMe messages.

Graham, the console client is also because Carl uses SSH quite a 
lot in different locations, which is why he started with a console 
client instead of a GUI one.

So, is Carl going to prevent developments that will eventually render 
this type of chat unusable in a console?

I don't want to be a negative influence :)

kib2: why? Perl 6 is in development two times the R3. And one year 
ago there was a public alpha. Soon enough there will be another one. 
This time with final GUI architecture (although not complete yet)

kib2, I know, but as I can see now, making a programming language 
is no picnic. This is the first time I've witnessed it close up. 
There is still a long way to go.

When we use to block! on input data, most of the time we don't want 
 duplicate them if data are already a block.
(we use copy instead if we really want that behavior)

i think to block!, to string! , form and some other native conversions 
should never duplicate the data if they already have the correct 
format.

This, should limit the memory overhead in many scripts or mezzanines, 
and save us from coding many useless tests.

I agree with you and it seems to me that it would be a wise fix.

as Pekr stated, if we want a copy, we use copy

PeterWood, report DevBase bugs in the !DevBase group here. There 
is no CureCode area for DevBase. Keep in mind:

- The current DevBase will be replaced soon. RebDev is a code name 
for the next DevBase.

- DevBase may be more updated than you think. Ask more in the !DevBase 
group.

Steeve, to-block is used in a lot of code to *copy* and/or convert 
to blocks. We depend on the copying behavior a lot.

I think he is saying that if the value is already a block why copy 
it.

I would love a separate function called AS-BLOCK that does convert 
if necessary else pass on. Maybe an AS native with a ton of wrappers, 
just like TO. That would solve the problem without losing the existing 
behavior.

Temporary UI weirdness aside, it is really cool to have a chat client 
for REBOL right there *in* REBOL :)

one question I have... does the object type also copy every series 
included like in R2 ?  that, IMHO one of the biggest regressions 
in rebol's history.   reversing the copy is impossible to do perfectly 
(scanning the new object, and attempting to link back the old series). 
plus it slows down rebol in a few ways.

I'll check. It should just do a bind/copy, not a copy/deep.

Perhaps it's moment for Brian to add a page in the wiki...

(it's not an order just a request)

Any change to get a CONTINUE function in R3?

yes, I have it in latest alpha here:

>> ? continue
USAGE:
        CONTINUE

DESCRIPTION:
        Throws control back to top of loop.
        CONTINUE is a native value.

It allows you to skip the rest of a while loop for example when the 
conditions are met.

A continue should skip the rest of a loop cycle and advance the loop 
to the next cycle based on the condition of the loop.  This means 
it is far more efficient than our current methods.

Sunanda try profiling the R3 version with and without the xxx word 
and see if there is a speed difference. If not, then the word appears 
due to binding on first use of the block.

I think system/words is similiar to a string table as found in other 
languages with respect to literals.

It's similar to a THROW, setjump/longjump overhead mostly.

That is why returning a value as the last expression of a function 
is faster than using the RETURN function.

REBOL isn't compiled so it's not the same thing as in a native language.

Brian, is it possible to expand on that (setjump/longjump), or is 
there a Carl post that summarises?  This is good to know - specifically 
as it relates to R2 and R3 implementation...

For example, [return true] vs [true] or ["a" exit | other rule]

I tried timing tests on my R2 ad R3 examples.
R3 runs in about half the time. 

Conclusion: 'continue is a good optimisation over loop 1 [...break...]

That does not say anything about the overheads of 'continue.....Just 
that an extra loop is an extra overhead.

REBOL/View 2.7.6.3.1 14-Mar-2008
Copyright 2000-2008 REBOL Technologies.  All rights reserved.
REBOL is a trademark of REBOL Technologies. WWW.REBOL.COM
>> load [blah: 1]
== [blah: 1]
>> find first system/words 'blah
== [blah]
>> blah
** Script Error: blah has no value
** Where: halt-view
** Near: blah

REBOL/View 2.7.6.3.1 14-Mar-2008
Copyright 2000-2008 REBOL Technologies.  All rights reserved.
REBOL is a trademark of REBOL Technologies. WWW.REBOL.COM
>> loop 1 [break blah: 1]
>> find first system/words 'blah
== [blah]
>> blah
** Script Error: blah has no value
** Where: halt-view
** Near: blah

A better test is:

	"any-word-you-like" = last first system/words

which does not introduce a new word before evaluation is done.

Anton, I think that would be a nice topic for a blog post.