AltME groups: search

I've just lost a long post I was typing here because my finger ripped 
on the small laptop keyboard from a CTRL-S to CTRL-Q...who the hell 
got the bright idea to put the app killing (no confirm prompt) key 
close to the post sending key?...Will have a few words with Carl 
about ergonomy in AltME. ;-)

Sorry Doc on the pdb thing.  I don't think your going to find a pdb 
file format.  Closest I seen was this that someone may have been 
trying to reverse engineer https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=22685.

Paul: thanks, AdrianS posted a similar link above. Yes, it seems 
that it's not documented.

Well, MS not wanting people to debug their software explains a lot

@Doc What a nice syntax for poiinter dereferencing in Red/System! 
Well done.

Also, once the encapped version will be done for all supported platforms, 
we need to set up a continuous integration chain, with tests and 
builds automated. That will take some time to get done properly, 
so better start now.

Yes, it's a great step. I think the console is important as well, 
so once I get some other things done, we will talk about doc extraction 
and mezzanines in support of that.

Encapped Red seems cool, if it's what I think, it is. To have a script 
included and executed at launch, so it's all in one file?


I wonder, what it takes to do that in World. Probably easy enough, 
just need to figure it out.

Geomol, what is encapped is the Red toolchain, it adds no new features 
to the toolchain itself except removing the need to run it from a 
Rebol2 console.

I'd be interested to know how Doc got around the problems I was seeing 
him have with the Rebol2 encapper.  He is a digital magician!

Bo: The issue I had to fight with in my hotel room was just that 
my own prebol replacement lib was adding  an extra layer of MOLDing 
to the input source, because of the workarounds to avoid the #include 
(and others) directive collisions. This resulted in disabling some 
parts of the code leading to  odd runtime errors. I couldn't focus 
enough on it to see it that night because I was too exhausted and 
wanted to listen to the discussion at the same time. :-) (For others: 
my room was a kind of meeting point in the hotel ;-)).


To debug that, I reproduced the preprocessing changes step by step 
in a console until I located the "disabled" parts of the code, once 
I PROBEd those parts in the console, the cause was clear and the 
fix easy.

Also, to be able to see any output in DOS console from an encapped 
Rebol app, I needed to change a flag in the executable file (sub-system: 
`console` instead of `GUI`).

you can also set an attribute in the header for it to be generated 
as a console app.

its been a very long time (7 years) and I think its an undocumented 
feature he added just for me.  :-)

CGI option in header does not work for DOS it seems. The only way 
is to set it a flag manually in the exe.

I think that the far future plane is to have Red be made in Red.. 
now it's a little bit fake:) Probably to make it easier for potencial 
newcommeres.

Pekr: answer is yes to your above question. But I will wait after 
the 0.3.3 release to add a Red binary to the repo and a build script 
to encap the Red compiler. Also I need to update documentation and 
see with Andreas how we can set up automated builds for each new 
commits.

Oldes: you're right, but the encapped Red is just a convenience to 
make it easier to try and use for anyone as we're getting closer 
to a Red beta.

Pekr - Every day is a day closer to Red beta.

I don't think he said he was close to a Red beta, but closer.

Depends on what you compare with. Compared to most languages, Red 
has lots of extra features. If you want to compare with REBOL, then 
a lot is missing from Red, but also a lot of Red features are missing 
from REBOL

And Red is missing a lot - objects, IO, networking, parse, and no, 
having R/S libraries for such purpose available does not make it 
any more feature complete. R/S is a different language and should 
be treated as that ...

In almost all my programs, I have a mix of Red and Red/System, very 
tightly integrated. It's a mistake to regard them as separate languages

With a new Red release, you don't have to throw away your previous 
Red. It's still in there. And you don't even have to pay for the 
new

But for just using Red/System, giving your program a Red/System header 
is easiest

i can still imagine an example, when one would like to have more 
expressive R/S. Red does not compile only down to R/S, it also adds 
some Red related framework, which might mean larger executable, loss 
of speed, etc. Not sure what Doc thinks, as he always tells me - 
hey, use Red for such purposes, but maybe, who knows, there is a 
place for more advanced barebones R/S 2.0 after all :-)

Sometimes the decision is made easier. It would be hard to use Red 
in a kernel driver, for example, so you need everything for Red/System 
that you need to write drivers

You'll need them to write Red/System programs, but a lot of it has 
no place in Red. Perhaps that will make it easier to understand why 
most of my stuff is separate from Red

Red follows the REBOL model, with batteries included, where you need 
a strict standard. Red/System follows the C model, with a small languages 
that needs to be exttended with libraries, and where many C libraries 
are available that can be bound to Red/System

Red/System is a dialect of Red meant to address specific needs. You 
should see it as a feature of Red, even if it can be used alone (which 
is kind of side-effect of starting Red project by building R/S first).

Doc and/or Kaj, at what point will we be able to use Red and R/S 
to start things off by programming the MBR and jumping to a Red OS. 
What I am interested in is learning to use Red and R/S to build a 
native O/S from the ground up as this is the best way to truly understand 
computers. Also a PC that is Red and R/S from the ground up is a 
very exciting prospect.

Pekr: "alpha" means "feature-incomplete". See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Alpha


The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze, indicating that 
no more features will be added to the software. At this time, the 
software is said to be feature complete.

Kensingleton: for writing your own OS, you will need to write a custom 
file emitter for Red/System unless ELF could also be used for that?

Doc: you should consider a 128 GB SSD or at least a hybrid HDD+SSD 
drive from Seagate. That's why that Mac Air was running so fast, 
which you have avoided taking... I just realized 5 minutes after 
you left w Brian that you didn't take it w you... :/

I'm upgrading from 3GB to 12GB, I kept having "out of memory" error 
after opening a few dozens web pages and starting some heavy tools 
like Eclipse, Android Emulator or various VM...now I should be able 
to run everything at the same time. ;-)

I'm using only SSD disks since 5-6 years, and HDD only for backups. 
My configuration has one 32GB SSD for OS and one 64GB for VMs. Now 
that SSD prices have dropped significantly, I bought two cheap 128GB 
SSD, so I won't have to fight anymore with disk space for a while.

@onetom: your offer was more than generous, but I couldn't take it, 
you need it too. I'm exchanging it with a few days at your place 
in Hong-Kong in a couple of month if that's fine with you. ;-)

You can have a look at the files online here: 
http://red.esperconsultancy.nl/Red-GLib/dir?ci=tip

I managed to get the fossildownload from the download.r script running, 
unfortunately everything ended in the downloads folder where the 
script was still placed. I reran the script from the folder I wanted 
the repositories to land. I copied the terminal information output 
to a text document for there are several passwords created for the 
repos and I had not yet time to store them properly..

Whenever asked for the correct link, Kaj provides it. Or a volunteer 
like me posts a reminder. :-)

How does anyone know, there is a download script?

Not only a link but also a short help doc howto would be welcome.

I want to dedicate a video to it in the near future.

I've also explained a number of times that I will make a central 
website for Red, but that I have been too busy so far with doing 
actual Red work

Oldes, if you consider that a big issue, there's not much I can do 
about it right now. In my view, it's a small requirement

You also have to install REBOL for it. Do you also find that a big 
issue?

I believe it would not be difficult to write a script, which would 
download your sources without Fossil, but it's not my priority... 
just wanted to note, that there are people who don't want to install 
Fossil.

If you want to contribute a download script without Fossil, please 
do

I know, but you are the only one I know. I was already thinking if 
you would have a problem if someone would mirror your files on Github, 
wouldn't you?

How many people do you know who use Red? Do you also think that's 
a reason to reject it?

I wish it would be enough to state my position once. I know how others 
think about it. I'm making improvements all the time, but I haven't 
had time for a central website yet. Is that so hard to accept?

Half a year ago people complained about the Fossil websites, so I 
developed the download script for them. That will have to do for 
now. I'm sure that when I make the website, people will want something 
else again

Here is a starter: https://raw.github.com/Oldes/rs/master/projects/kaj-fossil-download/latest/kaj-fossil-download.r

I agree.  If someone has a favorite or preferred tool and I want 
to access that person's work, I will learn the tool instead of making 
the person change.

Oldes, I'm interested in the psychology of this. Why would you rather 
write a script for which you need deep Fossil knowledge, than download 
one Fossil executable file?

Do we have a Fossil group? If not, we should, so this knowledge and 
chat doesn't get lost.

I know Kaj has posted thing a number of times, and I hate to make 
him repeat himself.

I need Github for what? I just used Github to share the script with 
other people who could use it. It's just a script made in a hurry, 
nothing special, I'm using many such a scripts :)

And why I make a script instead of installing Fossil? Because I like 
to write such a "data mining" scripts.. It's something like for someone 
else solving sudoku, for example.

OK, I can understand that. I have a hard time understanding such 
things from an efficiency standpoint. I'm always forced to be as 
efficient as I can, because I am doing so many projects

The fundamental problem here is that my decisions are always driven 
by efficiency, while the code I open source for free is downloaded 
by people who want to play with it. I can't afford to loose any time 
to playing, so I must insist that people don't waste my time. I don't 
think that should be a big requirement for all the work I give away 
for free

Difference between Github's web UI and Fossil's web UI is that Github 
can generate stable download URLs for the "latest" version. That's 
a huge difference even from an efficiency standpoint.

Then what's a stable link for the latest version of your download.r?

I always link to this article with a zip package of all my binaries:

I publish such links often when a single file is requested

Never saw such a link for download.r before (and don't find anything 
using AltME search either, but then ...).

I am with Kaj on this. Supplying the download link when you update 
some project is not meaningful. If the corresponding link to the 
fossil rep is posted you can take a quick look at the  projectfiles 
and then decide if it is worth the troul]ble for you to update your 
own repo's with the dl script.

Besides that, the Github is not a nice solution imho just chosen 
because of free, and widely used (for exposure purposes) not for 
real ease iyam (if you ask me). So better appreciate the huge work 
Kaj has pulled of to make Red much more widely useable and accept 
his choice.

My use is quite simple. I just check in my work and seldomly need 
a branch. It can be seen in the timelines

I have already thought, since Doc mentioned the small gains Red would 
see from compiler optimizations, that having a Red level optimizer 
might be even better.

Kaj: depends if it's in a function body or in global context, and 
if the bodies are stored or not.

How does the compilation differ between global context and a function 
body (apart from storing)

I spend a very small part of my time typing

I think it's good to have both from many perspectives, one being 
that EITHER reduces the values while PICK does not. I tend to use 
PICK for passive values and EITHER for evaluating expressions. You 
can also express a different intent using PICK than EITHER, think 
how a static code analysis tool (e.g. an IDE) would interpret it.

I have taken a look at XieQ's version of the Mersenne Twister and 
found that that too does not produce exactly the same results as 
'my' C version of the program. One of the issues is the shift result. 
I give this example:
int: 80000000h
print ["Value int: " int lf]
shi: int >> 31
print ["Value shi: " shi lf]
Result is Value int: -2147483648
Value shi: -1

afaict the C version using unsigned long integers this shift action 
results in +1

After that the xor with this different signed number get rid of the 
sign. 

Another little thing is the adding of the count/sequence number is 
different when added to a positive/negative number.

Getting the exact same result is important to me. While this version 
is good enough to use as random for throwing dice in a game of Yahtzee, 
distribution of randoms in longer term could be more predictable 
than with the "official" version, which would be a bad thing when 
used in encrypting.

(Because of the multiplication factor used a small difference in 
startvalue will result in completely incomparable resulting numbers)

If you want to print an integer in hex format in Red/System, you 
can also achieve it by a simple casting to a pointer type:

    print as byte-ptr! int

FYI, I've been mostly offline these last days as a friend of mine 
came to visit me from Paris. Also, that's the moment my Windows chose 
to die, not sure if it was triggered by a hardware issue or not. 
So, I'm now in the process of setting up a new system, moving to 
64-bit and bigger disks. I hope to be able to get all my tools back 
by tomorrow, so I'll be able to start committing changes again.

I can't wait to have a cross-platform Red IDE and forget about what 
"installation" means. :-) A Red OS would also help a lot. ;-)

Sorry for the hardware problem Doc. You can blame me. I sometimes 
think "How can I get Doc to write a Red OS...?"

How do we install support for Unicode when using a Windows console 
? When I open Hello.red with my MS Word, the unicode characters are 
visible but when I run it my "invite de Commande" I can't see them, 
they are replaced by ? Must we go the old way of page codes as when 
we were under DOS boxes ? I hope not ...

I'm trying this small Rebol 3 sample code under Red console and I 
get 3 load errors plus a real error at the end  - invalid char!. 
char ending delimiter " not found! unmatched ] closing bracket! word 
has no value.  Is it OK ?  Here is what I tried to enter : red>> 
 #"^(3B1)"     ; char as a hex encoded literal

It' located under the Panneau de configuration (accessible using 
MSConfig) but the problem I have is that I don't have the admin privilege 
to add such a char set - I found one which is described as ARIAL 
MS UNICODE which could do the job. I'll try again...

;-----------------------------
mystr: "^/"        ; a newline character
print "test-1" probe mystr print length? mystr

mystr: "^(line)"   ; a newline character (alternative)
		     ; last one is converted into "^/"
print "test-2" probe mystr print length? mystr

mystr: "\n"        ; two characters, \ and n
print "test-3" probe mystr print length? mystr

;-----------------------------
mystr: "Jon 'Maddog' Orwant"  ; literal single quote inside 
                              ; double quotes
print "test-4" probe mystr print length? mystr

mystr: {Jon "Maddog" Orwant}  ; literal double quote inside 
                              ; braces (also used for multilines)
print "test-5" probe mystr print length? mystr
;-----------------------------
mystr: {
This is a multiline string literal
enclosed in single braces.
}
print "test-6" probe mystr print length? mystr

mystr: "^(line)"   { a newline character (alternative)
		      the last one is converted into "^/" by Rebol}
print "test-7" probe mystr print length? mystr

;-----------------------------

; There si no way to change the delimiters for strings
; No way either to define strings using "Here Documents" form

;-----------------------------

How do we install support for Unicode when using a Windows console 
?
 


You just need to select Lucida or Consolas font, raster font has 
no Unicode support. The CJK plans are not supported anyway by those 
fonts AFAIK.

OK but in a sense what I typed is in full ASCII, isn't ?

Thanks Gerard! I'll have a look at your posts on RebelBB and will 
send you my comments, if any.

Red/System: Could it be that if you 
#define MAX-SIZE 100
my-array: as int-ptr! allocate MAX-SIZE * size? integer!
then using  
my-array/MAX-SIZE 
gives a compilation error??
*** Compilation Error: undefined pointer index variable

Right but then I have a #define macro AND a variable. So I had better 
started of with the variable in this case.

But is really is a constant.

Such things always take a lot of time

Is that on a 64 bit machine?

It must be 64 bit, because a long on Mac would probably be 84 bit 
there. Indeed, your multiplication result is 64 bit, so on Red/System, 
it is wrapping around

Yes, there is a trick to AND with FFFFFFFFh to bring it back to 32 
bits, but harm to the resulting values has been done then.

There were some more hooks and traps, in the end the same generated 
numbers! Now removing a real truckload of dumps and prints from the 
source.

I was mislead by an incorrect intermediate result in the Red/System 
source that I expected to be correct already but had not fixed on 
this machine, together with a short blackout overseeing that adding 
nonzerobits to the left of a binary number changes the decimal representation 
in the lower digits too. Lots of output lines, many output terminal 
windows, small laptopscreen.
Same results make sense.

Kaj made a big breakthrough today on the commercial project we are 
using Red to develop.  That means we are close to getting paid.  
In turn, that means that Doc is close to getting as big a donation 
as we can afford for creating Red and helping us develop the functionality 
we needed in Red.  And if we can successfully market the product, 
Doc will be getting a donation for each one sold.  We are doing a 
presentation of the product on August 19th to people in the Computer-Aided 
Design industry toward that goal.

Fortunately, Respectech has several cloud servers.  I had my system 
administrator create a couple of Windows 8 x64 virtual machines so 
we could simulate a Windows network environment with Solidworks.

guys, is your project the surveilance camera related, or a newe stuff? 
As for the breakthrough - some kind of optimisation, or some important 
functionality, etc?

A new project. The breakthrough is the coming together of the key 
functionality that is the identity of the product