AltME groups: search

I do not bother to obtain bitcoins. Vague draining of computational 
powers of my tiny computer to compute some hashes(????) to unknown 
benefit to get by chance(???) ome 50 bitcoins of a limited(who controles 
this, I have serious doubts here too) supply of them. I am a real 
bitcoin sceptic, sorry. But again I think the Red group is not the 
place to discuss this matter, not that I have much more to say about 
this.

I thought, that once compiled = you know what is resolving to what

 Certainly not possible with a REBOL-like language, as it needs only 
 one "unresolvable" expression to force you to attach whole runtime 
 library.


Don't expect any Red app to fit in 5KB or anywhere close, that would 
be magic, not computer science. Higher-level abstractions have a 
cost, if you don't want to pay for them, there's Red/System.


There's also no "magic" in compilation, some expressions can be reduced 
to very close to CPU counterparts, most can't. Don't expect the first 
Red alpha bootstrap compiler to do extensive optimizations (it does 
none currently). Also, a sentence you will probably hear from me 
very often: "Don't expect a v0.3.0 to be a v1.0.0!".

Completely agreed 0 does not exist, even not for computers. A computer 
with 0 memory does not have memory at address 0 either :)

Counting starting at 0 is nonsense. No matter who and how many times 
it is explained. In human/fysic world we only put letter 1 in envelope 
1, letter 2 in envelope 2 etcetera, there is no letter 0 to put into 
envelope 0. It is only a confusing trick to start at 0. (I know you 
can look at memory like a binary tree) In these days of plenty of 
memory, I say let location 0 unused. Besides for who was REBOL meant 
initially? People. Scientists not computerscientists. Let those struggle 
with C and the likes. 1-base is one of the big plusses REBOL has 
over the majority of other languages. (enough bikeshedding from me 
today)

..but you did...?

 - people do crosswords, sudoko and play mindless computer games too.

My understanding is that most people stick to one desktop OS, they 
are not switching OSes whole day (that is just a very small minority 
of computer users). Having close integration with OS can bring many 
advantages over a custom GUI like hardware acceleration or close 
integration with OS/desktop services. There are still cases where 
a custom cross-platform GUI could be good enough, so a View-like 
engine for Red is welcome. I just think that the default GUI option 
should be to provide an OS-integrated user experience.

Looks like the newer Beagleboards are using regular ARM CPU (no more 
Cortex-M series), so Red should run just fine on them:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/the-beaglebone-black-is-a-new-single-board-computer-that-can-brew-beer/

I had the idea of adding a button to it to compile the console and 
1 to launch the console and as such making it more of an IDE/toolbox. 

Pretty busy and going away for a short holiday, no computer.

@arrayproposal: I really like the index to run from 1 to 10 and not 
from 0 to 9. I suspect this is because I happen to be a human-being 
not a computer. Maybe I could live with this different in Red (1 
- 10) and Red/System (0 - 9), because Red is higher level and Red/System 
being low level, but that might be confusing too.

I don't remember which, but I think there are old computer systems 
that list available commands with WHAT

About odd, this solution managed to get all odd number from the even 
ones. Your solution is way more elegant, better fitting the language.

Base-1 Base-0, my personal view on this, it is the programmers choice 
on the level of the source code. What happens beneath the surface 
is compiler/linker sh*t. As a programmer and a human being I start 
to count at 1. 0 is not the new number 1 nor is 1 the new number 
2 etc. It is only an addressing issue, compare to the post. Houses 
in the street are numbered from 1 up to N. The first address a computer 
has in an array is the all 0 address, which is the first "pidgeon-hole" 
to be used. The computer doesn't know 0 as we understand it. Well 
you know all about it.

And the computer must adapt to the human, or the human pulls the 
plug! ;)

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.

After the mirror game and the chessboard interface, the Red compiler 
script and various cgi scripts and showing all how radio buttons 
work in VID, I can now introduce to you the application to play checkers 
(10x10 international, in dutch dammen). Not bad for a REBOL newbie 
right? Wait a moment with all of your nominations please, because:

There is a tiny issue left with the moving of the pieces when playing 
against the computer but it is minor compared to all other issues 
I have already fixed ;-)


You can download the zip file with the program here http://arnoldvanhofwegen.com/stuff/damscripts.zip

Program is started with do %damb.r and you can play after setting 
the color the computer has to play with on the panel you get when 
you click the top-left button. You can look under the hood and see 
the values the program gives the legal moves. You can put your own 
positions on the board and continue from that point.
Enjoy!

Updated our R3 version. Changes:


- no longer links libstdc++ dynamically but statically. You get an 
error that libstdc++-6.dll is missing from your computer.

- changed startup procedure to support correct stdio redirection 
in console mode (used if you start R3 with a command line argument, 
else GUI mode)

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.

I bought computer magazines for more money and less interesting subjects, 
but webwise I prefer free content.

Marked 37 comments as spam, doubt if it helps. Regarding the minor 
number of comments this is simple neglect.

If I wanted to run Red on my Windows-based computer, what would be 
the process to do it?  Do I download the Red sources from Github 
and compile it on my computer?  If so, are there instructions on 
how to do it with a free compiler?

DSL's will become the norm in about 5 more years.  Seems to happen 
with Carl.  

Carl's multitasking personal computer + 15 years, everybody has it. 
Carl's DVD like TV set top box + 15 years, everybody has it.
Carl's multimedia computer + 15 years, everybody has it.
...etc (there are more).


I would not be surprised of something like JSON becomes semantically 
rich.

Yeah, I just remembered, he said something about being able to chat 
from any computer.

If he did that, he could join this world from any computer.

Raspberry Pi is just medial thing. That thing is just small computer, 
nothing more imo, much hyped, than usefull, unless you build some 
kind of min-pc or player. IMO something like Beagle Bone (Black), 
with many IO pins, is more interesting. BTW - during SO chat, Carl 
mentioned he is getting Beagle Bone Black. That's imo, where Rebol 
could find some niche - embedded, automatition, etc.

When you buy such a bare board, you have to build a computer around 
it, which makes it much more expensive and uses a lot more power

Yes, but John compared it to an Amiga 1200, so you have to take into 
account the floppy drive it had and such. It was used as a personal 
computer, so you have to add a monitor, keyboard, mouse, perhaps 
a hard drive, etc.

I've some code when I studied 8bit computer data crunchers

not be pedantic, but i linked to that for the opening two sentences:


In computer science, a tail call is a subroutine call that happens 
inside another procedure as its final action; it may produce a return 
value which is then immediately returned by the calling procedure. 
The call site is then said to be in tail position, i.e. at the end 
of the calling procedure.

I tried it on anothe computer and it seems you do need to sign in 
- I thnk I left this checkbox checked to allow editing the file, 
though - maybe that's why

Should smileys be allowed in a computer language? :D

#[[Giuseppe

  REBOL language differs from other languages because you can write 
  "human resembling" code lines.

  During the past weeks I have thought about a way to make more understandable 
  the language in a simple way

   now you can write:

   mypage: read http://www.rebol.com

    I whish to write:

    set the variable mypage: reading from http://www.rebol.com
]]Giuseppe


Carl really took some "architectural" principles of Rebol from human 
laguages making it resemble human languages in that respect. However, 
he did not want to immitate everything. Sorry, Giuseppe, but I must 
say that you are missing big what is the main principle of advancement 
relative to other computer languages. It is dialecting and not the 
ability to write the primitive and verbose

    "set the variable mypage: reading from http://www.rebol.com"

I did quite a few tests with OpenGL on R2, but the killer for me 
was the inherent delay with R2 calling the methods (functions) in 
the OpenGL dll.  I was still able to rotate an object created with 
over 1000 coordinate points 30 times per second on a quad-core computer, 
but that's probably 1000 times slower than you could do it with straight 
C on the same computer.

Yes, got a message there saying my browser was not supported and 
I should upgrade my bosses computer.

0) multiple fallback mechanisms for getting/staying connected.

1) absolute control of what is actualy removed from local machine... 
ever.

2) better support for using a single account from several machines.
3) better support for using several worlds from one computer.

4) finer control of what posts you are exposed to. (groups and users 
and users in groups) 
5) filesharing
6) api,locks, so we can muck with the filesets.

7) calendar,just fix it up. hour/day/week views, sorting,repeated,various 
alerts ...
8) adjustable font sizes

9) search should return hits (the text) from further back than your 
message buffer limit.
10) OSX support & recycle bug

I think of communication software a little differently (in general), 
so I will share this.  

Read states

 (like the Red we are talking about) are a very interesting issue. 
  


Most computer software does a very poor job of replicating empirical 
or visceral conversations.  Email for example has a method of describing 
the "direction" you are speaking.  TO: Bob, CC: Carry.  Where the 
TO: indicates you are speaking directly to Bob, and that Carry is 
standing somewhere to the left or right of you.  BCC is someone hiding 
behind you. 


Email could have an interface where you first pick the people in 
the "room." And then use something like a 2D interface to move the 
listeners around a symbolic version of you.  This would be both silly, 
time consuming, and somewhat confusing, but you get the point.


What you have read and what you have not read though has a similar 
analogy.   There are thousands of sub states and markers people use 
to sort things they have read, will read, need to read again, need 
to respond to, etc.


In Box, Out Box, Papers upside down, putting papers you need to sign 
under your car keys on the floor in front of the door leading to 
the car, etc.


I have one friend who re-wrote some open source email program to 
have some huge number of states and then some simple filters.  It 
works VERY WELL, if you know his system.  He never forgets anything.


So the current model AltME has (right now) is a very simple interface. 
 Tantimount to "Have I ever seen this before."


We are playing with some other models in Qtask, which may get adopted 
into AltME.  I'm working on a system I call Venn Chat.  Some features 
include:

Have I read this before? (like AltME)
Mark this:  

Follow up (add to a list of messages you want to think about more)
Note (All should read this when they come into the group)
All Must Read (converts it into an AltME-like alert)


Convert to a task (and keep the context of the chat in place, this 
is opens up a whole other area)
Branch (something like forum threading)
Re-file (move from one group to another)

Re-post (copy to another group, at the same time, similar to branch).
Trigger (tell me when someone has finally read this).
Status (tell me who has read this so far).
Attach (files, links, etc)

Need a paging feature whereby we can click on a persons name and 
have it play a wav file on their computer to get their attention 
and flash.

One nice thing would be, if some userdata would be saved along with 
my login, like colours, and read messages in the different groups. 
I just now installed altme on a new computer, and I have to fill 
in all of this.

Reichart, just wondering with the world of IM clients getting more 
and more cluttered with Google's Chat application.  And with enhancements 
coming to AltME, QTask etc.  Are you able to give us any feedback 
to some of the plans for AltME or other apps with respect to your 
IM future?  Specifically I was wondering if other IM communication 
standards are going to be integrated so we are not an island of private 
chat?  Of course, having the option to not be a private world in 
some situations is a great option.


I see that most IM services today are going to a smart-client (x-internet) 
type application requiring software install.  Maybe Prolific's plan 
(I believe I recall anyway) to provide both a smart-client/web-client 
will be a plus.


With Google generating IM chatter in the computer world, just hope 
you don't miss the boat and can make an impact in the IM world when 
you release your updated product(s).

when Josh appears, we will scratch each others heads and see if we 
can determine a way to parse this...he has done some work like this 
for his NASA project...and he is working on some crazy computer science 
parsing algorithms...I think he has been chatting with Ladislav too 
long ... ;-)

If there was a standard REBOL library that could open *any* common 
zip format, then yes: it'd be easy to accept a zip upload and turn 
it into a package.
Otherwise, it'd be a support headache.
***

The current method of uploading package files (via a browser interface) 
is itself a headache. But (this is where I toss the ball back to 
you Maxim), LDS (the Library's API) supports package file uploading. 
So *you* could write an easy package assembly routine to run on the 
contributor's computer. Problem solved!

That's the View cache directory (or sandbox if you prefer), which 
gets set by the installer. Although stuff is downloaded to it it 
is more like the Windows application data directory for REBOL, a 
place for (perhaps untrustworthy) scripts to put their stuff. It's 
not really a default download directory as such.


If you want to change it, the easiest way (for a newbie) is to uninstall 
REBOL, move the entire View directory (not the public subdirectory) 
where you want it to be, and reinstall REBOL, specifying the new 
location. If you are more ambitious, the View root directory is stored 
in the registry and can be changed from there. You can't move the 
public subdirectory seperately from the entire View directory though.


Keep in mind that the View root directory is under Application Data 
for good reasons, particularly to make it easier for multiple users 
on the same computer to use REBOL. It's the standard way to do this 
on Windows, and a good idea overall. 


I tend to leave the View root in appdata where it belongs and then 
set a junction point (sort of like a symbolic link for directories 
on NTFS) in some more friendly location so I can get to the data 
easier. I use the axwLink shell extension for this, which you can 
get here: http://arniworld.de/downloads.htm

Lets make a computer-museum.

Actually I'm playing with festival on linux  ;) REBOL festival Client 
 with visual interface to feed the festival software running in server 
mode only take 10 lines  I love REBOL :))). So now on linux I can 
make my Computer speech me  the Carl's blog content while I'm in 
the mean time reading the French forum new posts ;)

Damn Small Linux 2.0 released..  http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/index.html


Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:


    * Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
    * Boot from a USB pen drive

    * Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can 
    run *inside* Windows)

    * Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we 
    call "frugal install"

    * Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
    * Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram

    * Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at 
    how fast your computer can be!)

    * Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to 
    customize

A well, this is too bad. The Debian distro is on DVD, but the computer 
does not have a DVD, only CDROM.

my linux troubles (this is longer)


I'm pretty frustrated at this moment, maybe somebody can help me...


I'm linux newbie, I'm using it for 6 months or so. I've installed 
Ubuntu for my girlfriend and it works OK. So I decided to install 
linux for me too. I've got Athlon X64 computer, so I tried 64bit 
version of Ubuntu. But you cannot run 32bit programs under 64bit 
Linux, so no REBOL or AltMe. OK, I can live with 32bit linux, no 
problem. So I installed MEPIS. It's not bad, it has got media support 
but...it's KDE.


I never knew anything about KDE vs. Gnome vs. whatever wars, I just 
don't care, but day after day I found KDE to be bloated, slow and 
buggy. Compared to elegance of Ubuntu on my girfriend's computer 
I decided that I just don't like KDE, I don't like all that menus 
where I'm always lost, long loading times, that awful blue theme, 
childish icons and everything K-labeled. Every window and every button 
on KDE looks so BIG compared to windows GUI, it's just a waste of 
screens's space. So I tried different window managers and found Xfce, 
icebox and some other small and fast window managers. But running 
MEPIS with different window manager than KDE was not optimal so I 
decided to remove MEPIS and install xubuntu. Everything was OK and 
I had xubuntu instaled.


One day later I managed to exchange my gfx card. I was using Matrox 
Millenium 2MB PCI card and exchanged it for 3D labs Banshee 16MB 
PCI card (I know that both cards are somehow underpowered for my 
computer but that's OK, I don't play any 3d games, so I don't need 
some new card). I've booted into Windows and everything was OK. I 
can even select resolution better than 1024x768 (because that's not 
optimal resolution for 21" monitor :-) So I restarted and booted 
into xubuntu. x-server didn't start. 


As I said, I'm linux newbie so I don't want to mess with some config 
files so I said to myself OK, I reinstall it, it's just one day old 
installation, no problem. I've booted the live-cd, grub let me choose 
resolution of 1280x1024, I booted xubuntu and - it was running in 
640x480. Yes, I had the choice to change resolution - but only to 
320x240. I tried ubuntu (gnome) and it was the same. ubuntu's x-server 
probably does not support my banshee gfx card. I tried MEPIS also 
and - it worked! I can boot mepis 3.3.1 live cd in 1024x768 (but 
not more - with windows, I can go up to 1920x1440). But when I boot 
mepis, I do see that KDE desktop thing and it makes me feel sick 
(hell, even windows seem to be more fun to use than KDE for me!).


So, what now? I cannot use windows only (1. i don't like it :) 2. 
it's got problems of its own - it cannot download files bigger than 
cca 1MB without error. Probably some driver problem but I still haven't 
found a sollution. this is not problem on linux) and I don't like 
KDE. I know that there's one sollution - to buy relatively new pci-x 
n-vidia gfx card and problems may be gone. but that's not what I 
want to do. That 3dfx banshee is good enough for me, I just want 
some fast and small OS running on it.


Maybe I'm just missing a computer that can boot in 15 seconds into 
full GUI enviroment (yes, my old Amiga :)

Take a look at http://www.johnsons-web.com/cgi-bin/test.r.This is 
very bizarre! If you use netscape, you will see the entire usage 
message from rebol displayed prior to the mime-type header. If you 
use IE, it is likely that some but not all of these effects will 
be obfuscated, but you should be able

to see the entire output if you view the source. The sources from 
the script is being sent from a windows computer to a linux server. 
Now, if

I use a FTP client like WS_FTP which as a "ascii" mode, it automatically 
converts line enders to unix style, and this problem does not occur.

I am running XP on my local computer. Out web host's server is running 
Red Hat Linux.


Which version of core should I use on the host server to run the 
cgi scripts?


If I download the proper Linux core interpreter to my  XP computer, 
and uncompress it using WinZip, will it be corrupted by XP?  How 
do I get a clean version of core to the Linux server?

size-text: xwindows is client/server. the x-server , that is your 
local computer, which offers to aplications to display things to 
you. And it has some important informations locally, especially the 
fonts (and can cache images and such).

/view needs access to the fonts and so access to a running x-server. 
the x-libs are only an interface to connect to the server. (The xserver-libs 
could be used directly, but well, /view does not do that. Seems to 
be tricky.)
A incomplete sketch how to do it, with no attention to security:

So with /view you need a running x-server, one way to do that  headless 
is vnc.  Can also run on another machine. 

Then you need to tell  rebol where it is, there is an env-var $DISPLAY. 
Which must be set before rebol runs. Did not figure out how to configure 
that. Running a bash-script as cgi, set  $DISPLAY, call the real 
rebol-script should work. And there may be issues with authentification, 
x-windows does not like everyone to connect by default, or the other 
way around, its too easy to make it too open ("xhost + ip"). There 
are more secure ways, but looked more complicated and i never tried. 
All in all i would run such things on windows.

Louis .... yes as long as the client computer has view installed, 
just copy readmal to the usb drive and it should run from there.

if you turn off the computer while writing to disk and corrupting 
the indices .. well, nothing to do with Eudora.

if that is as good as speech recognition gets I think I could do 
better in probably about a month of programming -- I have been thinking 
about this problem for more than two decades -- while at apple computer 
by a push to get speech recognition to be part of every Macintosh 
-- but was unsuccessful

Interesting that Firefox next release is intending to have a by-site 
user CSS feature. So I'' be able to personalise *any* site I view 
regularly in Firefox by simply adding some CSS.


I can see a market for customised style sheets (make MSN look good, 
or mold Google to my corporate colors, or just look funkier than 
the boring original). Afterall, websites are just about the only 
thing on my computer that I can't reskin.


In the future, sites that are easily reskinnable, may have a competitive 
advantage over those that are not. That means using CSS.  (CSS was 
always meant to make this possible. It's the browsers that have been 
slow).

Tree rewriting is a model of computation which is used in a variety 
of contexts within computer science, for example in semantic specification 
and compiler implementation

Probably depends on sound hardware, because I've testing this previously 
and I was getting different results on my home computer and my work 
computer

In fact, in any programming language, code is just data that is executable. 
Some languages allow that the code-data be processed as any other 
date. Rebol is not the only one. And I do not believe that this is 
it's main characteristic. The fundamental characteristic of Rebol 
is that it is a language for exchanging data over networks, be it 
information (data) or programs (code) so that is can be used and 
executed (if code is passed) on any computer connected to the network.

I think it depends a lot on your audience. You said they had no previous 
experience in programming, but are they computer science students 
or humanities, or engineering?


Their are many things to teach at once; computer science concepts, 
Rebol concepts, how to program, etc. I guess you would also have 
to settle on a single programming paradigm to start with. If your 
audience are hunamities students then the not so simple concepts 
such a "programming language" and "program" (leading to "syntax", 
"semantic", "type") are very important to understand properly first. 
Then you have "expression", "evaluation", "subprogram"" etc. (leading 
to "values", "binding", "function"). I think all this can be done 
through meaningfull practical example built russian doll style.

Jean-François: one of the courses I teach is an introduction to programming 
to science students. Some of which will follow two more courses in 
programming, in the same language. Over the years, I've done this 
in Fortran, Pascal and now C++. At one time the first two courses 
were given in Python and the last (which I was giving), in C++. We 
decided that it was better to give all 3 in the same language. I 
didn't think Python was a good choice.

I'm now giving the first course (and maybe all 3). I'm exploring 
the possibility of opting at some time for Rebol, if I can break 
down the language into subsets that are "easily" learned and that 
offer useful tools for some large category of problems. I did'nt 
find any tutorial that seems to be quite there yet. 

Of course, the language is not the only thing taught. Basic programming 
and computer science concepts are also taught. But these can be taught 
independently from the choice of the language, for a large part. 

Rebol is my preoccupation. Some languages need a very lot of reading/learning 
before you can start to use it for solving problems with them. Maybe 
this is the case for Rebol. But I'm not sure yet. My hypothesis is 
that nearly everyone has learned Rebol by reading the Core manual 
and looking at examples in tutorials. It's ok to do it this way if 
one chooses so. But the teacher is expected to devise smoother paths 
for the learning process.

Actually, I'm not trying to figure out how to introduce programming 
concepts, or computer science in general. I already have a lot of 
stuff on that since I have been teaching this for 20 years now. And 
I'm not looking tor a "better" language to teach, even though I have 
given a look to Scheme.

If I can throw my two cents here. Terry is right to complain, because 
you can feel he cares, it's not destructive criticism. Pekr is saying 
he's a realist, but to me he sounds more like a dreamer (no offense).Flash 
is a Virtual Machine that lives in the browser. Rebol is a VM that 
lives on several OSes. Flash VM is present on 99% of the browsers. 
Rebol VM is not present  on browsers (plugin doesn't count because 
last time I tried it wouldn't install, and last version is more than 
a year old), and it is present on OSes of a small number of creative 
developers and hobbyists. If I had to develop a commercial app for 
the web, Flash and Flex give me extensive documentation, and a whole 
framework. Rebol can't compete with Adobe, and should not. Last week, 
I developed a GUI in Rebol and Rebgui that would have taken me four 
times longer in any other graphical toolkit, and I had a knack at 
it. But this app is for internal use. Rebol is a great language, 
and I would like to see it evolve as a computer language, not as 
a throw it all in kind of gizmo. It should go Open Source, because 
RT doesn't have the means to provide versions for all platforms. 
Where is the rebol for NetBSD? Last version is 2001. If RT hasn't 
the resources, let the developers do it. I want to run rebol on an 
internet tablet. I had wanted to run rebol on a palm (not anymore 
because Palm is deas, sort of). But the Nokia tablet run debian linux. 
There is no reason for the unabailability of rebol. It is just a 
matter of building it and packaging it. Who has the time for this? 
Plenty of people, they're just not at RT, because there people are 
busy with more important things (like developing the product).

flash is on zero browsers until installed...I've set up machines 
at work for guys in the firehouse to use. Every computer there gathers 
so much adware/spyware/viruses that I can never keep up cleaning 
them. I've had to re-install windows so many times and each time 
I have to re-install the latest flash player. I resorted to setting 
up puppy linux and running off a bootable cd..(with the typical complaints 
about it not being windows) Anyway...rebol plug-in is easire to download 
than flash so what's the bigdeal. I install active-x controls all 
the time when I find a site that interests me and needs the control.

Q: (note - my view may be influenced by insufficient knowledge in 
the area given) - last weeks I played with wrapping some Win32 functions. 
I started discussion on dll.so channel, to ask developers, if they 
would enhance interfacing to C libraries in some way, and there was 
few ideas appearing. We currently have also rather strange callbacks 
support (limited to 16) and I would like to ask, taking into account 
that DLL interface in Rebol was not changed/enhanced since it appeared 
long time ago, if RT sees any area in which it could be made more 
robust, developers friendly etc.?


A: We are planning to do a lot more on DLLs. In fact, future versions 
of REBOL will expand on the way DLLs are used in REBOL.   For example, 
I would like to see DLL support for media loaders and savers, so 
if we do not directly support a specific type of media file (say, 
TIFF) then an external DLL can be provided to load it.  There are 
a few other DLL related features down the road, but it is still a 
bit early to talk about them.



Q: I realize that the open sourcing of the viewtop wasn't that successful, 
but do you still intend to keep releasing newer versions of it? AFAIK 
the current release is over a year old. I've experienced a lot of 
obvious bugs in the viewtop editor, which I think can easily be solved 
by people outside RT.


A: yes we will continue to release newer versions.  View 1.3.2 fixed 
a number of bugs in the Viewtop editor that were listed in on RAMBO. 
Any fixes and enhancements from the community are greatly appreciated 
(by everyone, not only RT!)  You can post them to RAMBO, and we will 
review and include them (if they look good).



Q: While reviewing the action! functions, I noticed the path action. 
The doc comment says "Path selection.". The parameters aren't typed. 
Does anyone know what this action does, and how to use it? Or whether 
it can be or should be called directly at all?


A: the PATH action is what the interpreter uses to evaluate VALUE/selector 
expressions for each datatype. It is an internal action and has no 
external purpose in programs. These kinds of words often appear as 
a sort of "side-effect" from how REBOL is structured.  Datatypes 
are implemented as a sort of object class, where the interpreter 
"sends messages" to the class to evaluate expressions. The PATH action 
is a message that tells the datatype to perform a pick-like or poke-like 
internal function.


Q: Is rebcode going to support paths and/or some kind of binding?


A: Certain rebcode can support anything we feel is important to put 
into it, but note: many things we add could slow it down, by a lot. 
 For example, if we were to allow paths as variables, I estimate 
that rebcode would be about two times slower than it is now.  Perhaps 
one way to solve this issue is for you to use COMPOSE prior to specifying 
your rebcode body.  Within the compose, you can use IN object 'word 
to "pre-compute" the context references for words. For example:

    add.i (in object 'num) 10


Your question about binding is not clear to me. Rebcode already supports 
binding. Your rebcode can be part of an object context, and rebcode 
function words are bound to the code context.  (Perhaps you are referring 
to an older bug that has since been fixed?)



Q: What do you think about  http://mail.rebol.net/maillist/msgs/39493.html
? Why not say a word in your blog, if you think that it's interessant 
for rebol developpment, and if you want to contact them ?


A: Recently, I had the chance to sit down and talk with one of the 
main people from the One Laptop Per Child project (he is a friend 
of mine from Apple Computer days).  The project has an interesting 
goal, but there are also many difficult issues around it (not just 
in the technical side, but also on the social and cultural sides). 
My current understanding is that the target software is Smalltalk 
based. Yes, it would be very interesting to allow REBOL on that system, 
but if you look at the list of principals for the project, you will 
see that such a revolution is unlikely.  Is it possible that perhaps 
REBOL could provide some additional capability in the future? I think 
so. We have some special plans that I think will bring REBOL to platforms 
like that in the future. But, this is too early to say more.



Q: 1. What is fixed/added in 2.6.2/1.3.2 (change-log, please) ? 2. 
What is planned for 1.4.0 (rebcode, rebservices, rich-text, RIF, 
and last but not least, fixed sound ...) ? 3. When can we expect 
1.4.0 ? Thanks.


A: 1. Gregg is preparing a summary. The document should be available 
this week. 2. We are evaluating a large variety of changes in REBOL, 
more than even the 1.4 release that we've talked about.  I hope to 
be able to say more about these plans soon.

Pekr: Czech sort does not have anything in common with Unicode. It 
is complicated (much more complicated than useful in computer era). 
Any code (Unicode, ISO Latin2, Windows 1250, ...) can be used, the 
sort algorithm needs to be implemented in any case.

It's funny, I had to reboot Windows more often while testing rebcode 
than I have ever needed to for an entire year with that computer. 
Server 2003 is very stable, but crashing processes a dozen times 
or more a day can wear on it a little, so I needed to reboot every 
couple days. Normally I would need to reboot only for occasional 
updates of certain third-party software, never more than once a couple 
months.

On my computer, only balloon text is shown.

And then there's access -- being able to use Ajax apps without owning 
a computer...

There are three aspects that make Ajax apps compelling: 1) distribution 
is easy, with no installation, one click away from any web site; 
2) the environment is consistent, rich and predictable; 3) Remotely 
accessible, one does not have to own a computer, or even have disk 
access,  to resume using an app (classic example, using a library 
to use a web mail app).

In theory, timestamp syncing can be done by asking the server for 
its current time or time zone, comparing against your own, and then 
adjusting your timestamps for comparison by the difference. I'm not 
sure how well this would handle latency issues (we should look at 
time protocols), but it would handle the client's computer clock 
being wrong. This would have to be done at the beginning of each 
syncing session, incase the client moves time zones or otherwise 
adjusts their clock between sessions.

Yes, that's what I will do, but I wanted to completely replace the 
phone without having my computer on all the time.

You mean, without computer being on ? Can't be done, due to Skype's 
proprietary protocol.

I talk to a lot of you over Skype right now, I just wish I was not 
attached to my computer.

Mmm... some negative criticisms of Skype. It may make your computer 
a supernode, then you will be doing a lot of switching for the network.

Perhaps better than Skype because it claims "No supernodes", but 
you still need a computer as it uses a proprietary protocol.

Imagine a small kernal, sever stitched together drivers, and nothing 
more than a browser with a built in frame work for the UI.  This 
would be more than good enough for 95% of people's computer needs. 
 No Linux, no OSX, no Windows.  Barely an OS at all.

Scientists at IBM say they have figured out how to produce smaller 
and more powerful microchips than previously thought possible. It 
is hoped IBM's announcement at San Jose on Monday will mean the creation 
of miniscule microprocessors which will save the IT manufacturing 
sector billions of dollars. The breakthrough revolves around the 
distance between the circuit-lines chip makers must 'draw' onto the 
surface of a computer processor. IBM scientists declared they can 
now draw lines on silicon much closer together than ever before.

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/0222quantum.html<--- Quantum computing 
reaches more spooky levels. Get an answer from an algorithm without 
running the computer. It's called "counterfactual computation".

I've been telling people foy years to get a machine for work and 
a machine to trash for games etc.

Because if they call me (as they often do) and say "I've broken my 
only computer by downloading a game and now I can't get it to work 
and I've got to do something important" they get zero sympathy and 
I'm pretty dis-inclined to lend a hand in fixing their crisis.

Of course, those of us with only one computer must equip ourselves 
with a little common sense to avoid pain. Funny when I watch my friend 
end up trashing all of his machines because he is not similarly equipped.

Works great.. Thanks!


You know, a really cool feature for RebDB would be to use tables 
stored on an ftp instead of locally. I think it would be possible 
since it's RAM based and you control your commits, but I could be 
wrong :) Now I'll have to sync my database manually every time I 
change computer

Security Issues:

- We should to be able to restrict with the secure native what files 
and dlls the plugin can access.

- The default security of the RT-provided plugin (not encapped by 
a third-party) should prohibit any access to any local files or libraries 
at all, even in the same directory as the script, and prohibit access 
to third-party network addresses as well. Or at least ask.

- There should be some way to access the site's cookies from the 
plugin, because there shouldn't be any other way to store local data 
on the client computer's hard drive. Anything short of that will 
be a security hole.

- There should be no way to reduce the default security of the plugin 
through the use of plugin params.

- Any attempt to reduce access should prompt the user for permission, 
in terms a non-technical user can understand. This means rewriting 
the security dialogs to be more user-friendly.

- Any relaxation of these default security restrictions should require 
encapping the script.

- A user (or their lawyer) should to be able to (perhaps through 
RT) track down the author of any encapped script.

- An encapped script should count as a seperate plugin as far as 
the user is concerned, at least as far as permission-to-install is 
concerned.


Basically, the default security of the plugin should not allow scripts 
to do anything you wouldn't want your worst enemy to do on your computer. 
People will try to use this plugin for advertisements, for webbugs, 
for spyware, for every nasty thing that you aren't evil enough to 
think of. Avoiding that kind of thing should be the focus of the 
default security settings. Anything less will make the plugin unsafe 
to install.

With the current plugin release, new versions require uninstalling 
previous versions, because of the IE plugin architecture (it is finding 
the existing plugin on your computer, so it sees no need to download 
a new version).

Further, let's say he decides to clean out his computer. If he removes 
REBOL 1.3.2, seeing that it is an "old" version, he will inveitably 
break the web sites that rely on 1.3.2.

Here are the scenarios with resolutions in boolean logic as I see 
them right now:

 1. web_site_required_version not found on users computer -- download 
 required version

 2. web_site_required_version = version_on_computer && security_min_version 
 > version_on_computer -- popup, request download security update

 3. web_site_required_version = version_on_computer && security_min_version 
 <= version_on_computer && latest_version > version_on_computer -- 
 not sure

Volker, that is true. But the problem here is not COM interface/version 
compatibility. The problem here is: "Which REBOL binary to load?" 
Very simply put, if a web site relies upon plugin version 1.3.2, 
we must make sure that 1.3.2 -- or a later version backwards-compatible 
with 1.3.2 -- loads on their computer. At the same time, we need 
to deliver critical security updates and other non-breaking updates 
to users in a seamless manner.

I agree with Maxim. Most people out there in the world don't have 
any reason to trust Rebol or Rebol Technology. It might be just another 
spyware company for all they know. Why would they (initially) want 
to allow an automatic software corridor into their computer ? It's 
an issue of trust. First let them try it out, then when they like 
what they see, allow them to enable more automatic security updates 
if they want.

Networking: as far as the browser can do the same, i would use browsers 
io. Or is it that much slower than rebols handler? Advantages are: 
proxy, cache. Maybe there are some extensions people like, about 
adds or blacklist or whatever? if such things exists they would be 
shared too. Its security , and a computer which knows my "no"s looks 
smarter.

Make that "checklists" Ahh. I need to get off the computer.

Louis: try a restart of your computer. that may free up any IE resources 
that are in use.

The computer rooms ask for repairs is an old script I wrote for the 
cshool

Now they want me to add proxy handling to the rooms but the proxy 
should be handled only by some users (that's why I plan to have a 
controll room and not an extra button in computer rooms)

It might be that a single computer should be opened instead of opening 
the whole room

so in reality, each time a computer opens up a view of the current 
state of each thing, it should have its own listener port.

but now you add the concept that "another" computer changes your 
state... you have to be made aware of that change.

yes, I worked in the computer generated imagery .

well only to handle the edge of the graph, since the computer/OS 
isnt't running within a graph

Does Cheyenne have an option to limit which network adapters it will 
serve to? For example, I have 5 adapters on this computer (ethernet, 
wireless, 2 VMware, Hamachi), maybe 6 counting localhost, and I would 
like the web server to only be visible to the virtual adapters, not 
even opening a port on the physical ones.


I remember this being difficult in REBOL, that REBOL would always 
open server ports on all available adapters, so you would have to 
inspect the incoming connections and filter. Have you come up with 
a better workaround for this, or a way to do it properly?

He's not at his computer at the moment ;)

Some time ago I was writing an Ants game (originally written in Peter 
Language 1 player vs computer) and wanted to port it to REBOL with 
2 player (online too)

Mahjong also has Italian rules afaik, it was imported, I don't know 
when or by whom, in central Italy. It is also played in Japan and 
I had a Japanese computer game of Mahjong that it's defined unplayable 
by Chinese people I know.

About the tileset: on Linux I had problems with the capitalised filename 
as %TileSet.png differs from %tileset.png

RebTower (Old School MTG based card game) almost complete - just 
finishing deck art and AI for computer player.  http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower-wip.jpg

RebTower Demo available at: http://rebol.mustard.co.nz/rebtower-demo.zip
   - non demo version should hopefully be out in a couple of days 
once I get the artwork finalised and the AI beaten into shape.  Current 
demo plays computer vs computer in simulation mode.

For the Icons at the top: Blue = Crystal Mines, Green = Forests, 
Red = Gold Mines.  These are your base resources that reproduce each 
turn.  They create stockpiles of Energy, Wood and Gold respectively. 
 These stockpiles are used to activate cards in your hand.


card.png is the 'hidden' or deck card face.  This is used to hide 
the computer's cards and the deck and discard piles.  card1.png is 
a sample of the format that the card images are in.  This can be 
used as a basis for creating new cards to the correct size.  (86x64 
pixel size with a 7x7 pixel offset into the card1.png template). 
  I have a card editor that can add in the card details to match 
their stats etc.


Regarding image names - ill compile a full list and place it on the 
website later today once i finalise the deck size :)

Anyone who wants to speak with me or others on Wednesday should have 
a microphone and headphones already attached to the computer.  Please 
use headphones instead of speakers to avoid echo (echo can get to 
be a really big problem without headphones).  To test your setup, 
including your audio/video, please use this page:  http://rockfactory.us/videos/videogallery_viewer.html
.  Please let me know if you have any questions!