AltME groups: search

Actually, it's pretty simple to do it in HTML:

<table>
    <tr>
        <th>One</th><td>one</td>
    </tr><tr>
         <th>Two</th><td>two</td>
     </tr>
</table>

Just use TH instead of TD where you want the Header cells to be.

do we have a make-doc with a PDF emitter? I would like to use make-doc 
with a cgi script to create registration forms and PDF them before 
mailing

Henrik, if you need to do automatic update, you might want to look 
at how the detective does it, it has worked *very* well so far, and 
it can update both the exe (if you change version of the interpreter) 
and the code only (to save download time). the autoupdate library 
is bsd.

Try to write Carl on feedback. This could push him to do a new Linux 
SDK build.

when trying to do it manually, I get the compression error. if I 
try it with scripting, I just get "invalid command" in the reshacker 
log. is it illegal to provide full path to the executable?

Paths are fine, just need to be fully qualified local (not REBOL). 
Key is to ensure that after replacing icons they are in the same 
order and have the same dimensions and depths as before. You can 
use reshacker to do a before and after check.


The example I use in the link above has everything in the same directory. 
Get that working first before worrying about paths.

you do have to fiddle quite a bit, but it works. I wish the SDK docs 
mentioned a bit more about this. it would reduce the amount of fiddling 
:-)

quick question: I've got a file with a block in it that contains 
issue! elements particularly #do and #value. This is for a function 
that has nothing to do with the preprocessor.


I read the docs on how to include the file using do #include-string 
%file.r


This seems to work fine, but in a way that I can't see, #do is now 
not recognized in the block. Is the block somehow altered? When I 
probe the block it looks fine, but the function in which the block 
is used, won't deal with the #do elements anymore.

This is probably a Gregg question: You know that ftpgadget package? 
How do I compile that thing? I think I've tried just about every 
.exe in the SDK (2.6.2) and I think maybe I need to "do" some of 
those sources but there some trick to those as well. It's time just 
to consult the experts. Thanks in advance.

I don't think so Graham. Normally I do it all from REBOL and wait 
for the output file to appear.

I had to do some conditionals to make it operate the same as a script 
vs. .exe but I think I have that working.

Which folder do you need? The system/options/path is supposed to 
be the current directory from which you started the script. Is that 
the case with a encapped script?

anyway, I did do a conditional run so the code works both ways, except 
that I have to edit the script to make it encap.  ( #include %view.r 
 ;that sort of thing)

How do you change the publisher(?) information on an .exe produced 
with SDK? (So it doesn't say "REBOL Technologies...")   I remember 
doing it before with some tool, but I can't seem to find it at the 
moment.

Are there any good freeware tools to do this?

What's the best way to detect different versions in an encapped script? 
For automatic update purposes. 

Should I just include some versioning syntax in the name of the updated 
exe that sits on the server?
Also...

I''m having trouble downloading exe's and saving them locally while 
preserving the icons. Do I use read-thru?

they already do. you can do all this the same way in R2 by going 
to the console and typing:

do http://www.somewhere.com/script.r

the browser will just present the scripts a little differently.

Maybe I'm wrong...

When I move the encapped exe to another directory it can no long 
see the include files....

ie: It can not find sqlite3.dll anymore.???

I'm including it...
#INCLUDE-binary %sqlite3.dll
But it only works if the dll is located in the same directory.

Does it run it from the Encapped biary or do I have to install these 
files (write to disk) to access them?

Back to DLL Problem...
** Access Error: Cannot open sqlite3.dll as library
** Near: *lib: load/library switch/default fourth system/version


Do I need to write the DLL to disk to use it? Or can it run from 
inside encap

THat's what i"m trying to do but it keeps looking for the dll on 
disk

I do not know if I'm doing this wrong but it seems to me that I should 
be able to use a data file without saving it to disk first...something 
I can do with XPackerX...
But I do not seem able to get it to work..

All you have to do is:
>> write/binary %my.dll x
>> load/library %my.dll
>>

It's possible to load DLLs from memory IIRC, but it's deep voodoo, 
and I don't know if it will work from REBOL. If you're comfortable 
writing your DLL prologs in ASM, it's probably something you can 
do. :-)

Getting an error on an ecapped script...works fine as script though:

** Script Error: base-effect has no value
** Where: do-facets
** Near: base-effect
** Press enter to quit...

Sounds like I'm missing an include but I have:
#INCLUDE %"../../../rebol-sdk-276/source/mezz.r"
#INCLUDE %"../../../rebol-sdk-276/source/prot.r"
#INCLUDE %"../../../rebol-sdk-276/source/view.r"
and just in case I tried adding:
#INCLUDE %"../../../rebol-sdk-276/source/gfx-colors.r"
#INCLUDE %"../../../rebol-sdk-276/source/gfx-funcs.r"

It crashes when I request-dir

I have a application that is spread over around 15 files.. I use 
>>do %file<< to "include" them now. Now I am making a encapped version 
of app. do still tries to do the .r files but they don't exist when 
single exe is created so I get errors. I tried naming all files when 
doing encap but it behved the same. I read about prebol and understand 
that I have to  #include the files but I suppose that won't work

when developing and executing from it directly with >>rebol mainfile.r<< 
because it will need to be prereboled each time? 


Is there a way to make a script that I can encap and run directly 
via .r files? If there is no other way I was thinking about making 
>>either encap [ #include %file.r ] [ do %file.r ]<< but it's not 
the most elegant solution .. Is there any better?

I find it to be far less cumbersome than trying to come up with fancy 
methods of using a single file for do and #include. Especially if 
you are using multi-level includes.

In the build system I use now for my projects, there are two separate 
files. The one I use for development is the 'do, and the one my customer 
gets is the #included version. Then I have a make-file, that builds 
the project and puts it where it needs to be (local webserver), counts 
up the build version. I can build it whenever I want and there are 
no hiccups.


My earlier attempts at a build system was by trying to be fancy, 
i.e. build with as few keypresses as possible. It never worked as 
well as this one.

The difference between the 'require and the script's #include is, 
that in the header I use only projects/script name and or version 
and not relative path as one has to do with the #include.

...as one has to do with #include...
 - it depends...

I have massive make files like this which do all kinds of script 
fixup, directory creations, zipping of archives, backups... and call 
res hacker... its the easiest way to encap stuff.

There might be some unusual disokay properties set but I do not have 
access to them it seems...

Yes, issues running from desktop ... so don't advise it .. and I 
specifically check for desktop installation and alert user not to 
do this ...

Graham, in principle, Carl could be speculating in not doing upgrades 
for 366 days, which I think is too easy to perceive as sinister. 
Everyone else do it on version numbers, not time period. Time periods 
are used during the final weeks before an upgrade, so a purchase 
right before an upgrade doesn't seem unreasonable.


Also he says "within the last year", but from what specific date? 
Is this a one time offer?

RT should look into how Luxology does it with the 3D modeler, Modo. 
That model is worth copying parts of and is probably possible to 
graft onto RT.

Here's how they do it:


- Create a strong and unique product from scratch using people with 
many years of experience in the business.
- Keep a community forum on the main site.

- Keep a community creation portfolio on the main site. That's important, 
perhaps more than the forum.

- Have a charismatic front person who is daily in touch with the 
community. Creates a weekly podcast that also includes personal content 
and interviews.

- This person is so close in contact with the community that he can 
discuss product pricing and licensing with the community.

- Being a private company, they are free to opine on the policies 
of other companies, and Adobe and Autodesk are often criticized openly 
by Luxology.
- Make it really, really, really, REALLY easy to buy the program.
- Make upgrade paths really, really clear.

- Make the licensing scheme very loose. Don't bind it to a platform, 
but to a computer.

- Create content, tutorials and other items that are purchasable 
for a small amount (10-20 USD or so).

- Paid content is really cleverly done as an extension of the program. 
You can buy "kits" that for example let you easily set up studio 
lighting. This allows people to use the program in ways that were 
not originally intended or would be laborious to build on your own. 
In a sense, the 3D modeler is suddenly not only attracting 3D artists 
but photographers as well. It works similarly to how modules would 
work in R3. I suspect this will be one of their main income sources.

- Keep proprietary tech to yourself and license it to various vendors. 
This seems to be what they are mainly making their money on now.


This model works really well for them and they are growing constantly 
and with a fanbase about as strong and loyal as RTs. Luxology feels 
like a distinctively non-corporate entity, and like more a bunch 
of people having fun. Purely through years of word of mouth they 
got their program visible in one of the featurettes for the Avatar 
movie and on the Apple website demoing the Mac Pro. They even have 
guys from Pixar on the forums and making tutorials. Modo is known 
for being different than other 3D modelers much like in the same 
way that REBOL is different from other programming languages, making 
it fun to use.


In a sense REBOL as a product is not dissimilar to Modo (it's fun 
to use) and with their business model already working, I think it 
could be grafted onto RT's business model.

RT is a single person ... I don't think it's possible for one person 
to do all of this

Sorry, I repeat... I upgraded to sdk 2.7.7 for $50. I am a very old 
Command and SDK legally licensed user. I am a macosx and windows 
user. My original license was for windows. According to a mail from 
Cindy, when upgrading to 2.7.7 existing license file would work for 
all platforms. I am willing to support rebol development and this 
why I choose to upgrade even if I do not really have the use for 
such a minor update. But, it looks that current sdk 2.7.7 release 
is not really bullet proof: under macosx, rebcmd et rebpro complain 
they could not find a valid license key file, while encap binaries 
seem to recognize my license key. Under windows XP, my license seem 
to be recognized, but rebcmd returns the following error: 'REBOL 
Internal Error: Boot error: 316' Anyone enconutering such problems? 
Thanks in advance.

So, do we have to wait for 2.7.8 SDK to upgrade ? What about the 
upgrade command inside Rebol? When R3 is finished, do we have to 
buy a new sdk for R3?

Brian, in insert-event-func, the parameter name is 'funct ... so 
nothing to do with the 'funct mezzanine.

I know that the problem has nothing to do with the FUNCT mezzanine 
- it errors out before then. His *next* problem will have to do with 
using 'funct.

Yes, I never do that Henrik. I've used a number of systems over the 
years (I think I posted my enlist script on rebol.org), and now generally 
use build and encap scripts, with Ladislav's INCLUDE as the foundation. 
In the encap script I include all the reshacker stuff to set the 
icon and version info.

Gregg, I never do it either, but was an "emergency build" that needed 
to be done right then :-)

Gregg, that would be a good tutorial on encapping with the Gregg 
method. I don't do much encapping so each time is a hit or miss and 
I reshack manually which adds to the time.

I'll put it on my to-do list. I'm caught up up through 1993 now. 


The biggest pain with reshacker is version info. I couldn't get it 
to work with version resources as quickly as I wanted so I cheated 
and pump keystrokes to it.

That's true - I feel like we're little kids trying to do big boy's 
work (MS). :-) Of course if it gets the job done...

I had a report from a user that it did not work on his sys (do not 
know his sys) so I asked my brother to try it. He is using a laptop.

Just a note...

We check www.rebol.com/feedback.html twice a day.


If you have something to ask or report, do it there. Otherwise, we 
may never see it posted in other places. Thanks.

I discovered what is causing my program to hang in windows 7....something 
to do with a "Call/output" command i'm using:

Not that I know of. Figuring out how to trigger the UAC prompt is 
on the list of things to do for the new installer though.

Do you think that it also has something to do with kernel version 
(2.4 vs 2.6)?

Did you read the SDK documentation how to do it?

don't know where the SDK docs are.  I ususally just use the viewtop 
to do most everything

Thanks Graham. Do you have a copy of send-gmail.r laying around by 
any chance? I am trying to get Rebol to make an SSL connection.

Ironically, all it seems I have to do is post a question somewhere 
and then I find the answer on the internet.  I've been trying to 
figure that out for several days off and on.  Post the question, 
go back to the internet and then find the answer.  
Here it is:  system/script/args
its a string.
hope this helps someone else.

Ok now I found the URL to download SDK 2.7.8. There is download URL 
for 2.7.7 in the email that RT send me when I purchase. I changed 
the url and find the 2.7.8.

But I got 404 not found when I try 2.7.6. I'll send a msg to RT. 
Thank you.

May I use my license file for all of them? 2.7.6 to 2.7.8, or do 
I need to request a new license file as well?

to do this, I need to encrypt my json records using Rebol in the 
server using 'crypt scheme. Do you have a cookbook to do this?

I'd like to encrypt json text using Rebol and AES encryption. And 
decrypt this using javascript. Do you have any idea how to do this 
using Rebol. I mean the AES encryption. I mean : txt: "blablablba" 
 key: #CEDEFF.. encrypt  txt key   ...  using AES rhinjael algorithm 
.. thanks

I tried to do AES encryption but anything I encypted was not de-crpytable 
by standard tools

REBOL [
Title: "ARCFOUR and CipherSaber"
Date: 17-Jan-2004
File: %arcfour.r
Author: "Cal Dixon"

Purpose: {Provides encryption and decryption using the ARCFOUR algorithm}

Note: {this implementation can decrypt data at about 40KB/s on my 
1Ghz AMD Duron system with Rebol/View 1.2.10.3.1}
Library: [
level: 'advanced
platform: 'all
type: [function module protocol]
domain: [encryption scheme]
tested-under: [view 1.2.10.3.1 on [W2K] by "Cal"]
license: 'PD
support: none
]
]


;ARCFOUR specification: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/draft-kaukonen-cipher-arcfour-03.txt

;CipherSabre specification: http://ciphersaber.gurus.com/faq.html#getrc4


arcfour-short: func [key [string! binary!] stream [binary! string!] 
/mix n /local state i j output swap addmod sz][

swap: func [a b s /local][ local: sz s a poke s a + 1 to-char sz 
s b poke s b + 1 to-char local ]
addmod: func [ a b ][ a + b // 256 ]
sz: func [ s a ][ pick s a + 1 ]

state: make binary! 256 repeat var 256 [ insert tail state to-char 
var - 1 ]

j: 0 loop any [ n 1 ] [ i: 0 loop 256 [ swap i j: addmod j add sz 
state i sz key i // length? key state i: i + 1] ]
i: j: 0 output: make binary! length? stream
repeat byte stream [
swap i: addmod i 1 j: addmod j sz state i state

insert tail output to-char xor~ byte to-char sz state addmod (sz 
state i) (sz state j)
]
clear state
return output
] 

make root-protocol [
addmod: addmod: func [ a b ][ a + b // 256 ]
sz: func [ s a ][ pick s a + 1 ]

swap: func [a b s /local][ local: sz s a poke s a + 1 to-char sz 
s b poke s b + 1 to-char local ]
ins: get in system/words 'insert
i: 0 j: 0
open: func [port][
port/state/tail: 2000
port/state/index: 0
port/state/flags: port/state/flags or port-flags

port/locals: context [ inbuffer: make binary! 40000 state: make binary! 
256]
use [key n i j] [
key: port/key
n: port/strength
repeat var 256 [ ins tail port/locals/state to-char var - 1 ]
j: 0 loop any [ n 1 ] [
i: 0 loop 256 [

swap i j: addmod j add sz port/locals/state i sz key i // length? 
key port/locals/state i: i + 1
]
]
]
i: j: 0
]
insert: func [port data][
system/words/insert tail port/locals/inbuffer data do []
]
copy: func [port /local output][
output: make binary! local: length? port/locals/inbuffer
loop local [

swap i: addmod i 1 j: addmod j sz port/locals/state i port/locals/state

ins tail output to-char sz port/locals/state addmod (sz port/locals/state 
i) (sz port/locals/state j)
]
local: xor~ output port/locals/inbuffer
clear port/locals/inbuffer
local
]

close: func [port][ clear port/locals/inbuffer clear port/locals/state 
clear port/url clear port/key]
port-flags: system/standard/port-flags/pass-thru
net-utils/net-install arcfour self 0
]

arcfour: func [key stream /mix n /local port][
port: open compose [scheme: 'arcfour key: (key) strength: (n)]
insert port stream
local: copy port
close port
return local
]


; CipherSaber is an ARCFOUR stream prepended with 10 bytes of random 
key data
ciphersaber: func [ key stream /v2 n ][

arcfour/mix join key copy/part stream 10 skip stream 10 either v2 
[ any [ n 42 ] ][ 1 ]
]

Cyphre: do you plan to release it in open source? Is your implementation 
client-side, server-side or both? It would be a great addition to 
Cheyenne to support SSL natively.

sounds like a joke.  How do they want to stop the warming with that 
? it can only make things worst

Marketing Ideas to lawyers
AN ARTICLE FROM SUNDAY'S NEW YORK TIMES WE SHOULD READ CAREFULLY.


Awaiting the Day When Everyone Writes Software

By JASON PONTIN
Published: January 28, 2007

BJARNE STROUSTRUP, the designer of C++, the most influential programming 
language of the last 25 years, has said that “our technological civilization 
depends on software.” True, but most software isn’t much good. Too 
many programs are ugly: inelegant, unreliable and not very useful. 
Software that satisfies and delights is as rare as a phoenix.

Skip to next paragraph

Sergei Remezov/Reuters

Charles Simonyi, chief executive of Intentional Software, in training 
for his trip to the International Space Station, scheduled for April.

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All this does more than frustrate computer users. Bad software is 
terrible for business and the economy. Software failures cost $59.5 
billion a year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology 
concluded in a 2002 study, and fully 25 percent of commercial software 
projects are abandoned before completion. Of projects that are finished, 
75 percent ship late or over budget.


The reasons aren’t hard to divine. Programmers don’t know what a 
computer user wants because they spend their days interacting with 
machines. They hunch over keyboards, pecking out individual lines 
of code in esoteric programming languages, like medieval monks laboring 
over illustrated manuscripts.


Worse, programs today contain millions of lines of code, and programmers 
are fallible like all other humans: there are, on average, 100 to 
150 bugs per 1,000 lines of code, according to a 1994 study by the 
Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. No 
wonder so much software is so bad: programmers are drowning in ignorance, 
complexity and error.


Charles Simonyi, the chief executive of Intentional Software, a start-up 
in Bellevue, Wash., believes that there is another way. He wants 
to overthrow conventional coding for something he calls “intentional 
programming,” in which programmers would talk to machines as little 
as possible. Instead, they would concentrate on capturing the intentions 
of computer users.


Mr. Simonyi, the former chief architect of Microsoft, is arguably 
the most successful pure programmer in the world, with a personal 
fortune that Forbes magazine estimates at $1 billion. There may be 
richer programmer-billionaires — Bill Gates of Microsoft and Larry 
Page of Google come to mind — but they became rich by founding and 
managing technology ventures; Mr. Simonyi rose mainly by writing 
code.


He designed Microsoft’s most successful applications, Word and Excel, 
and he devised the programming method that the company’s software 
developers have used for the last quarter-century. Mr. Simonyi, 58, 
was important before he joined Microsoft in 1981, too. He belongs 
to the fabled generation of supergeeks who invented personal computing 
at Xerox PARC in the 1970s: there, he wrote the first modern application, 
a word processor called Bravo that displayed text on a computer screen 
as it would appear when printed on page.


Even at leisure, Mr. Simonyi, who was born in Hungary and taught 
himself programming by punching machine code on Russian mainframes, 
is a restless, expansive personality. In April, he will become the 
fifth space tourist, paying $20 million to board a Russian Soyuz 
rocket and visit the International Space Station.


Mr. Simonyi says he is not disgusted with big, bloated, buggy programs 
like Word and Excel. But he acknowledges that he is disappointed 
that we have been unable to use “our incredible computational ability” 
to address efficiently “our practical computational problems.”


“Software is truly the bottleneck in the high-tech horn of plenty,” 
he said.


Mr. Simonyi began thinking about a new method for creating software 
in the mid-1990s, while he was still at Microsoft. But his ideas 
were so at odds with .Net, the software environment that Microsoft 
was building then, that he left the company in 2002 to found Intentional 
Software.


“It was impractical, when Microsoft was making tremendous strides 
with .Net, to send somebody out from the same organization who says, 
‘What if you did things in this other, more disruptive way?’ ” he 
said in the January issue of Technology Review.


For once, that overfavored word — “disruptive” — is apt; intentional 
programming is disruptive. It would automate much of software development.


The method begins with the intentions of the people inside an organization 
who know what a program should do. Mr. Simonyi calls these people 
“domain experts,” and he expects them to work with programmers to 
list all the concepts the software must possess.


The concepts are then translated into a higher-level representation 
of the software’s functions called the domain code, using a tool 
called the domain workbench.


At two conferences last fall, Intentional Software amazed software 
developers by demonstrating how the workbench could project the intentions 
of domain experts into a wonderful variety of forms. Using the workbench, 
domain experts and programmers can imagine the program however they 
want: as something akin to a PowerPoint presentation, as a flow chart, 
as a sketch of what they want the actual user screen to look like, 
or in the formal logic that computer scientists love.


Thus, programmers and domain experts can fiddle with whatever projections 
they prefer, editing and re-editing until both parties are happy. 
Only then is the resulting domain code fed to another program called 
a generator that manufactures the actual target code that a computer 
can compile and run. If the software still doesn’t do what its users 
want, the programmers can blithely discard the target code and resume 
working on the domain workbench with the domain experts.


As an idea, intentional programming is similar to the word processor 
that Mr. Simonyi developed at PARC. In the jargon of programming, 
Bravo was Wysiwyg — an acronym, pronounced WIZ-e-wig, for “what you 
see is what you get.” Intentional programming also allows computer 
users to see and change what they are getting.


“Programming is very complicated,” Mr. Simonyi said. “Computer languages 
are really computer-oriented. But we can make it possible for domain 
experts to provide domain information in their own terms which then 
directly contributes to the production of the software.”


Intentional programming has three great advantages: The people who 
design a program are the ones who understand the task that needs 
to be automated; that design can be manipulated simply and directly, 
rather than by rewriting arcane computer code; and human programmers 
do not generate the final software code, thus reducing bugs and other 
errors.


NOT everyone believes in the promise of intentional programming. 
There are three common objections.


The first is theoretical: it is based on the belief that human intention 
cannot, in principle, be captured (or, less metaphysically, that 
computer users don’t know what people want).


The second is practical: to programmers, the intentional method constitutes 
an “abstraction” of the underlying target code. But most programmers 
believe that abstractions “leak” — that is, they fail to perfectly 
represent the thing they are meant to be abstracting, which means 
software developers must sink their hands into the code anyway.


The final objection is cynical: Mr. Simonyi has been working on intentional 
programming for many years; only two companies, bound to silence 
by nondisclosure agreements, acknowledge experimenting with the domain 
workbench and generator. Thus, no one knows if intentional programming 
works.


Sheltered by Mr. Simonyi’s wealth, Intentional Software seems in 
no hurry to release an imperfect product. But it is addressing real 
and pressing problems, and Mr. Simonyi’s approach is thrillingly 
innovative.


If intentional programming does what its inventor says, we may have 
something we have seldom enjoyed as computer users: software that 
makes us glad.


Jason Pontin is the editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review, 
a magazine and Web site owned by M.I.T. E-mail: [pontin-:-nytimes-:-com].

Reichart, I read the article, and my opinion is, that you will always 
need good programmers, no matter what abstraction you make to the 
problem.

A good programmer (or more general: developer) can something, a typical 
user can't. The developer can - based on logic - see the consequences 
of different rules within the software. When users are alloud to 
decide, how the software should work, you always end up with something, 
which will break logically, when some situation occur. A good developer 
can think of that beforehand and make sure, the whole system of rules 
makes sense and do the right thing, whatever will happen. The user 
may be happy for a while, if she "designed" the software, but a little 
later it'll break down logically, and she'll loose money and time 
again.

Oldes,  why do people "have" to do something?

I know I'm not saying anything revolutionary... but "programming" 
has always been around us.  and since we will foreseeably continue 
to use machines... we'll always do so in the future... I only guess 
that in 50 years, we'll be making AI apps which learn concepts.  
and the interface to these systems will be more easy to use... but 
there will always be people who do work for others...

In the past century, so called "capitalist" knew his people. His 
motives and intention was to make a money, but he needed those ppl. 
In today's world, we suffer badly from globalisation. Only numbers 
are important. CZ is often so called off-shore development country. 
So, one of last built factories here is factory built by Citroen, 
Toyota, Peugeot (http://www.tpca-cz.com/cz/) They produce 1 car 
in 1 minute? My friend from IBM, visiting the factory told me, that 
he got really strange feeling about it. The autiomatition is so hig, 
that ppl do what robots can't do effectively. Actually those ppl 
do look like robots. Imo even worse situation is with Ahold and similar 
global companies, where TV helped to uncover some unhuman treatment 
of employees.

you see, humans currently do live inside the Matrix. it was created 
by sellers, not by machines, to extract money, not electricity. but 
the principle is the same.

Technology and progress make far more jobs than they destroy.

I don't think so. I don't see where this (mis-)conception comes from 
(as I have friends telling the same). Of course there will always 
be new technologies and these need people developing them and the 
like. But since we started the industrial revolution and especially 
since the information-age, people get (luckily) less and less important 
and needed. Also we just need so many programmers nowadays because 
the state of the industry is still in its infancy and there is still 
no real solution to the complexity problem very much apparent here. 
In a more ideal world there wouldn't even be so much progammers needed, 
just to fix bugs and do all kinds of things which should be automized.

In the past the majority of people fed themself. So many people were 
kind of self-employed, just to live. In the industrial age we still 
didn't have his much automation, so people were needed to fill this 
gap, even though they were getting more and more fed by less farmers. 
But this need for man-power is declining now, it's just not that 
obvious because there are so and so many countries where labor is 
still cheaper than the machines, but that's not gonna last.

Remember PA Semi? The company has just released, as promised, its 
first chipset. "They are full 64-bit PPC, support virtualisation, 
and would do Alitvec but that name is copyrighted by Freescale. Instead 
they do 'VMA'. The three parts run at a max wattage of 25, 15 and 
10W for the 2.0, 1.5 and 1.0GHz parts respectively, with typical 
wattage listed at 13, 8 and 6W. The individual cores are said to 
have a 7W max and 4W typical power consumption at 2.0GHz." PA Semi 
was one of the prime reasons why Ars's John 'Hannibal' Stokes doubted 
Apple's reasoning for the switch to Intel.

It would be really nice to have possibility to interact with Rebol 
and hardware like in these java examples one day:) But the examples 
are quite huge. I have to download 7.7MB to see one demo. I'm looking 
forward, what it will do:)

Java imo lost its browser position looong time ago. I remember few 
sites, trying to do JAVA menus etc. in JAVA, back in some 1998-2000? 
Man it was ugly, slow, most ppl hated it. Then JAVA departured from 
browser.

yes, I know. IIRC it was MS who screwed, no? They created jvm with 
Win-only extensions .... They had the power to do so ...

so if you  are not thinking of a full View app, then what do you 
plan to use Rebol for? As an js replacement?

I only wish there where a safe way to implement local file sandbox 
within plugin.  AFAIK, the write and save commands do nothing...

Yes, Jobs asked the music industry to remove DRM, and yet won't himself 
even when requested to do so by the artists.

If an artist or label wants to sell music on iTunes with no DRM, 
Apple won't do it. There are documented cases for this, for which 
I am too lazy to provide a link.

AFAICT its like the sdk, you can choose, enhance, but now we will 
also have access to lower levels.  the desktop source has been available 
for years and very little real community support exists.  we mostly 
do not care to much for the desktop.

I used to do demo at conventions... event did a few years at siggraph 
for nothing real ... before it was ransacked by apple.

Reichart;  You rat b#$%&@d you.  (He said with a big smile)  I promised 
the graphic

designer we'd go for a live trial run today.  I've done nothing but 
twiddle with D all

morning.  :)  To be honest, I place C++ at the bottom of my "likey" 
pile, maybe more 

from being pigheaded, than deserved merit.  (I tried to respect Bjarne's 
work.  I and

I can only assume he has a Computer IQ in the very high hundreds.) 

I expected the same from D.  Not so. You rat b@&%$#d.  (Again, with 
a nice big
friendly smile).  I have work to do today.

Reichart, seen the Etoilé desktop? Early concepts of it shows how 
apps are banished and everything is made up of smaller bits which 
you put together to an "app". You do it on the fly.

I would like it to completely ban the use of actual apps and just 
rely on services to do everything. And then on top of that, make 
the whole damn thing scriptable. It would be a hell of a bold move, 
but I think it would work.

They are talking about banning the concept of files, and rely fully 
on persistent stores, but there is still not a solution on how to 
do that.

Services are small. They do one single thing and they do that one 
thing very well. OSX has them and they've been there for ages, but 
the system only relies on them for manipulating things in apps, not 
to construct ad hoc apps themselves. How often have you not wanted 
a cool feature from program X in program Y and vice versa? This would 
do the trick.

Yes, the whole "not saving" thing has been done before, but we haven't 
pushed far enough in that regard. Anyone remember Lotus Agenda? That 
was one smart app, and that's how you can auto-file things and find 
them again easily. 


The concept of a persistent image, ala Smalltalk, has also come up 
before. I think Maarten wanted to do something like that, but it's 
not a simple thing to do.

I would really like to do more videos, but it would need some scripting. 
I think we should have a video group.

what tool was used to do the video?

Gabriele, Even though there Scheme uses two stages the line between 
compile time and runtime is not the same as in C. You can write macros 
during runtime that get compile on the fly and avaialbe without ever 
stopping a program. So in this sense the two phase is just process 
is not really important. The feature that macros brings is syntactic 
abstraction. Also in Rebol you can not do low level control structures. 
That is you can not add foreach without having a looping construct 
already in place. So the mezzanine is slow. Compare to delimited 
continuations of Scheme where is  only control structure and recursion 
and optimized goto. You construct other control syntaxes on top of 
that.

Jaime: that is debatable. continuations are the control structure. 
so it's hard to say that in rebol you need a native control structure 
while in scheme you don't - of course you do. :) also, be it JIT 
or not, compilation is still compilation. it requires knowledge about 
the code before evaluation. which means, that there must be a syntactic 
difference between code and data.

Just got an email about this:
Micro Focus COBOL acquires Acucorp COBOL: http://www.acucorp.com/

Maybe it's time to do that COBOL dialect in REBOL!? ;-)

Ladislav;  I can't give you much of a 'technical' report, but I tried 
to break the

include sequences and failed.  I'm starting to feel the power of 
this.  I like the fact that
scripts can end with 
context [#include %libfuncs.r]
to let endusers pick their own name with
mycon: do %libouts.r

after an include/link   Very nice.  An easy grok, and I'll say I 
"get it" already and

won't have to read your docs over and over to actually use it.   
(Well except maybe

to refresh the #do [[  and (#do [false]) tricks, if I don't use them 
soon.)  This really needs

to be promoted.  Here's hoping the DevCon talk gets this into the 
fore.

I started on a Logo interpreter, mainly just to do turtle graphics. 
I don't know how much value it has, but I'd be happy to send it to 
anyone that wants to pursue it.

Since finding REBOL, I have thought it would be a nearly ideal tool 
to teach language and interpreter design and development, because 
you can do so at a very high level. I think Lisp, Forth, and Logo 
would be a great place to start, but there is no reason I know of 
that would prevent us from doing Smalltalk, Erlang, Icon, and others. 
I would LOVE to see that happen.

They don't. :-) If you *can* do something as a dialect, and parse 
it as blocks, that makes things much easier, but you don't have to 
make them dialects, they're just interpreters; that's why it's important, 
I think, to start with lanugages that have simple syntax rules. Otherwise 
the grammar may dominate and distract from learning.


I should also say that the interpreters don't have to be complete. 
That is, you could do a Ruby interpreter, but not support the full 
spec of the language. You just do enough to get an idea of how you 
might implement something like Ruby, and see how it works internally.

Gabriele, We have this debate before. You are quick to disregard 
macros as nothing. Data and Code are the same in Lisp and in Rebol. 
As matter of fact Rebol borrowed this feature from lisp, so did smalltalk. 
It is call homoiconicity. And it has nothing to do with compilation 
or interpretation.

Scheme  JIT is cool, but it doesn't have to do anything with DATA 
as CODE. Even rebol code needs to eventually schedule  the bits and 
opcodes required by the hardware. So that imo has nothing to do with 
Programming Language Design (PLD). It has to do with how the Programming 
Language carries out a computation. So the debate of interpreter 
vs compiler is pretty arid for me. The important thing in a PL is 
how expressive it is?  How can you enhance it? The beauty of LIsp 
and SmallTalk is that the ng of Lisp and SmallTalk is writting in 
themselves and that for me is beauty.

Jaime; Did you ever try Icon?  http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon/

Very high level.  It has that "get 'er done quick", to "holy crap, 
what the....".  Many

angles of Computer Science are covered, and well IMHO.  If you do 
check, make

sure to read The Icon Analyst.  Last issue was June 2001.  Every 
issue has the
holy crap, what the...
, but are very good reads.  The Icon books are all online.

I have a lot of respect for the late Dr. Ralph Griswold.  Unfortunately, 
Icon is far

too brainy for wide spread adoption, but your last thread leads me 
to believe you
may relish it.  (As would most rebols IMHO).

Syntax objects enable the implementation of most any little language 
or language extension. Using syntax-case, we have implemented a Java-like 
class system for Scheme, lex- and yacc-like forms for building parsers, 
and constructs for defining and linking program components. Programmers 
using these constructs do not reason about them in terms of their 
expansion. Instead, syntax objects allow the expansion to be hidden 
behind abstract definitions of the constructs, just as the inner 
workings of any compiler are hidden behind a language definition.

Do you have to do a line-by-line explanation, or can you give an 
overview?

One of the tricks you would need is to realize that there is no "REBOL" 
language. Each dialect is semantically a seperate language, with 
a different execution model. You can't treat REBOL data as a particular 
dialect until you know which one, and you often don't know until 
runtime. Because of this you would have to compile at runtime, or 
at least function build time. Any attempt to compile ahead of time 
would change the semantics, in a similar way to how prebol does.


Even at runtime the semantics would be different, but not as different 
as you think. Few people realize that while the DO dialect looks 
a lot like a Lisp or Scheme clone, its underlying semantics are quite 
different - and yet they still are able to program in REBOL just 
fine. You could change the underlying semantics to a completely different 
model and keep all but the most guru of programming similar enough 
that most people won't notice the difference. The only main change 
would be to make the code blocks of compiled functions unchangeable 
once the function is built - so no more patching running code.

I don't think the compilation of Rebol language has anything to do 
with CPU features. But CPU are algorithms in silicon, so maybe you 
could in the future expedite branch searching.

Compiling Scheme to Rebol has nothing to do with that argument. imo.