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I have written my first bit of code that is starting to do something 
useful.

All the bad bits are mine & all the good bits are from the help I 
have been given here.

My main intention is to start off with code that I can understand 
& develop so any criticism would be most welcome.


My next step is to remove the debug code & replace it with code that 
stores all the information in a structured form for searching & further 
analysis.
Thanks for all your help with this.

filename: copy %/c/temp/cisco.txt   ;; cisco config file
host: copy []
interface: copy []
intDescription: copy []
intIpAddress: []
ipRoute: []
IntFlag: false
spacer: charset " ^/"
name-char: complement spacer

lines: read/lines filename

foreach line lines [          ;; move through lines

 parse/all line [copy temp ["interface" to end] ( ;; evaluated if 
 "interface" found preceeded by nothing else
		interface: copy temp 
		print interface           ;; debug code
		IntFlag: true)   

 | copy temp2 [" desc" to end] (  ;; evaluate if " desc" found preceeded 
 by nothing else
		if IntFlag [print temp2]     ;; debug
	) 
	| copy temp3 [" ip address" to end] ( ;; " ip address"
		print temp3    ;; debug
	)
	| copy temp4 ["hostname" to end] ( ;; "hostname"
		print temp4      ;; debug
	)

 | copy temp5 [name-char to end] ( ;;  any char except space or newline. 
 this must be last 
;		if IntFlag [print temp5]      ;; debug
		if IntFlag [print "!"]      ;; debug
		IntFlag: false
	)
	] 
]

;######################################

 the input file contains these lines which are extracted (except the 
 !) plus it has a load more lines that are ignored at the moment.

hostname pig
interface Null0
!
interface Loopback58
 description SLA changed this
!
interface ATM0
!
interface ATM0.1 point-to-point
!
interface FastEthernet0
 description my first port
!
interface FastEthernet1
 description test1
!
interface FastEthernet2
 description test2
!
interface FastEthernet3
!
interface Dot11Radio0
!
interface Vlan1
 description User vlan (only 1 vlan allowed)
!
interface Dialer0
 description $FW_OUTSIDE$
 ip address negotiated
!
interface BVI1
 description $FW_INSIDE$
 ip address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0
!
!########### end ##########

Steeve - why a waste? REBOL's parse allows even lamers like me to 
produce the result, which in the end does what I want it to do, but 
you surely would not like to see my parse rules :-) I can't write 
single piece of regexp, yet REBOL's parse is usefull to me.

Thanks for the feed back, all is most welcome. I will try to avoid 
read/line if it is bad, is there a list of things I can't expect 
to load?  Should I convert them to some symbolic value & then convert 
them back again for the final output?

I don't yet understand why a block would be easier to parse than 
lines, by easier do you mean more efficient or easier to create the 
code?

The optional rules (inside parents) are to change the behavior based 
on lines read previously so I don't yet understand any concept that 
would let me avoid those. 

I need the code to be very simple (like me) so I can understand how 
it is operating. I know my implementation goes against the Rebol 
ethos of  small & efficient but perhaps in time I can understand 
enough to make it so & also start using relative expressions properly 
so it can be simple to understand.

I don't yet understand why a block would be easier to parse than 
lines, by easier do you mean more efficient or easier to create the 
code?


Yes, it's easier, because REBOL is based around this concept. Without 
this concept, dialects wouldn't make much sense. Your configuration 
file shown above is a good candidate for a dialect with some tweaks.


I suggest, you read again what I wrote above about the basics of 
words, context and meaning. I can't emphasize enough how important 
this is to REBOL and especially for block parsing. It's important 
to understand this before moving on, or REBOL will remain difficult 
to use for you. Or drop your parse project for now and stick with 
the basics until you understand more of REBOL.

is there a list of things I can't expect to load?


The LOAD function will error out, if a string (such as a file you 
read) can't be loaded into a block of data. 

Try these in the console, and see which ones work:

load "hello"

load "hello,"

load "hello."

load "%"

load "1 2 3 4"


load "hostname pig interface Null0 ! interface Loopback58 description 
SLA changed this"

load %/c/temp/cisco.txt

Good point about my temp1 temp2 etc. that was sloppy.

It is true I cannot control what is inside the config files. They 
can contain any printable chars (eg in encrypted password fields 
or remarks/descriptions or embedded TCL code) and sometimes I am 
going to want to capture that text. 

I don't mind trying to do both methods as it will help me learn. 
Since I can't load the file directly I am thinking I will need to 
do a read %file.txt & replace the /\,[]%$()@:? with %xx etc.  then 
load the result?   I cant find a list of all the chars that I would 
need to treat like this yet.

Henrik, I do continue to read what you have written, it is helpful 
& I think I am beginning to appreciate the concepts. I am probably 
not as clear as I should be about the specification of what I am 
trying to do so the code has tended towards listing the requirements 
rather than being elegant.  Thanks /\/\

I am still new and confused.   where can I read about how to do this 
please?
file: "%file.txt"
host: "Router1"
interface: "fa0"
i: 25
description: []
ipaddr: "1.1.1.1 255.255.255.0"


write/append/string %/c/temp/result.log [file tab i tab host tab 
interface tab description tab  ipaddr newline]


I want the output file to be a tab-seperated set of values but all 
I get is the text 
filetabitabhosttabinterfacetabdescriptiontabipaddrnewline

I have tried to understand & take on what I have been told, thanks. 
Is this worse or better. It does what I was looking to do & I know 
how to extend it in the same structure.  I am sure it would be educational 
for me if anyone has time to tear it to shreds please.


Should I stop using read/line now?  Would I get the benefit still? 
Or is the requirement too fragmented for this approach now?
Should I use functions anywhere instead?
Have I initialised my variables in the right & appropriate way?

filename: copy %/c/temp/cisco.txt   ;; cisco config file
outFile: copy %/c/temp/outFile.log  ;; tab separated output
hostname: copy []
interface: copy []
intDesc: copy []
intIpaddr: []
ipRoute: []
IntFlag: false
spacer: charset " ^/"
name-char: complement spacer

lines: read/lines filename


outInterface: [ write/append outFile reduce 

 [filename tab i tab hostname tab interface tab intDesc tab intIpaddr 
 newline]
]

clearInterface: [
	interface: copy []
	intDesc: copy []
	intIpaddr: []
]


interfaceRule: [ ["interface " copy temp-interface to end] (   ;; 
captures point-point as well

  if IntFlag outInterface           ;; start of new interface section 
  so output data collected previously.
		if IntFlag clearInterface        
		interface: copy temp-interface
		print ["! found at line " i]      ;; debug
		print current-line                ;; debug
		IntFlag: true
	)
]

descRule: [ [" description " copy intDesc to end] (  
		if IntFlag [print current-line]     ;; debug
	)
]
	
ipAddrRule: [[" ip address " copy intIpaddr to end] ( 
		print current-line                  ;; debug
	)
]

hostnameRule: [["hostname " copy hostname to end] ( ;; "hostname"
		print current-line                  ;; debug
	)
]

iprouteRule: [copy iproute ["ip route" to end] ( ;; "ip route"
		print current-line                  ;; debug
	)
]



IntFlagRule: [copy tempZZ [name-char to end] ( ;; not space or newline. 
this must be out of the int section

  if IntFlag outInterface      ;; end of interface section so output 
  data collected.
		if IntFlag clearInterface
		if IntFlag [print "!"]       ;; debug
		IntFlag: false               ;; 
	)
]

i: 0


foreach line lines [i: i + 1 ;; move through lines & track line number
	current-line: line       ;; for debug output
	parse/all line [         ;; parse only using rules below

  interfaceRule        ;; evaluated if "interface" found preceeded 
  by nothing else

  | descRule           ;; evaluate if " desc" found preceeded by nothing 
  else
		| ipAddrRule         ;; " ip address"
		| hostnameRule       ;; " hostname"
		| iprouteRule        ;; "ip route"

  | IntFlagRule        ;; unset interface flag if no longer in interface 
  section (no " ^/")
	] 
]

another very basic question.
how can I pass a filename from the command line please?


filename: %/c/temp/file.txt works fine, but if I pass the filename 
from the command line it get surrounded by ""

do I have to parse the result to get the filename, or is there a 
simpler way for something so common?
The only reference I could find was here
http://www.rebol.com/docs/sdk/custom.html#section-3


It seems there is a great deal of Rebol documentation, but simple 
questions can be had to find answers to.

Well, it might confuse to talk about do-face. :-) When you create 
a face (style) with an action block, it's set in the face. You can 
see it like this:

>> layout [s: slider [print "hm"]]
>> probe get in s 'action
func [face value][print "hm"]


That function is called, when you operate the style (face). Makes 
sense?

mhinson, if you want to see the SLIDER from which all slider instances 
are derived, then you can do this:

	print mold system/view/vid/vid-styles/slider

(Instead of printing you could write to a file, etc.)

You can easily be overwhelmed with information, however, as faces 
are complex objects.
I usually aim for key facets like:

	print mold svv/vid-styles/slider/init
	print mold svv/vid-styles/slider/feel

etc.

ok, thanks. I was sort of hoping to use the GUI for input too, rather 
than just drawing titles & pictures etc.

I know how to do that with slider now, but it seems a bit over the 
top if I have to ask you guys every time I want to use a function.

I just wrote above a line of code how to do that...

mhinson, you've stumbled onto the first limitation. If we take the 
line of code apart, it does the following:

view								; view the created layout

 layout							; create the layout (object tree of FACES) from the 
 VID dialect block
		[						; start of VID dialect block
			button					; the first element, a BUTTON
				"ok"				; the text for BUTTON

    [				; start of the action block for the button. it's evaluated when 
    the button is clicked.

     name: get-face face	; get the value of the button through the buttons 
     GET-FACE accessor
					print name		; print the value (likely none)
				]				; end of action block
		]						; end of layout block


Now when I say limitation, it's because you can't easily check for 
mouse button up, release, mouse movement, etc. The VID dialect directly 
uses a block right after the button description to describe what 
should happen after clicking the button. That's part of the syntax 
and above I wrote it as:

	<face style> <face text> [<action>]


You can specify size, color, edge size, background image and a few 
grahpical effects.


And with it being a dialect, you can leave things out or swap the 
ordering of some parameters.


If you want more advanced control, you need to use the FEEL object, 
but you are definitely not ready for that. :-) Settle for working 
with VID and some layouts like above. VID was designed to be easy 
and very fast to use. If you go beyond VID, you will need a whole 
lot more knowledge on how to do things.

Thanks for your help again. Trust me to stumble on something ;-) 
I think I am getting there now.  Would this be the right way to identify 
which button was pressed?

view layout [button "ok" [print "button1"] button "ok" [print "button2"]]

I was expecting the buttons to have names other than the text on 
the button. I guess identifying the button by its possition in the 
code is what I will need to do.   Thanks.   I have never done any 
GUI programming before so perhaps I am just in a muddle about how 
it is done in general terms. I was expecting the event that a button 
was pressed to pop up in another part of the code (are they called 
event handlers?) (thus needing to identify which button it was). 
 If Rebol dosn't do it like that I may just be asking the wrong questions.

I guess identifying the button by its possition in the code is what 
I will need to do.


Not necessary. That is what the set-word! prior to the style name 
is for. You can do that like this:

layout [b: button "Hello!" [print "clicked"]]

'b is now a button face. You can access it like this:

>> get-face b
== none

>> b/text
== "Hello!"

>> b/color
== 44.80.132

>> do-face b none
clicked


From inside the action block, you can also access it by FACE, e.g.:

[get-face face]

with that line, you need to know about SHOW and HIDE. If you set 
b/text like that, you need to do a:

show b

afterwards, or the face won't update.

Well, I modified the code from draw-controls.r in the script library 
to get this. It is more complex than I expected, 

Is it a reasonable way to do this sort of thing please?

pos1: 20x20  pos2: 80x0
view layout [
	scrn: box rate 0:0:0.1 feel [
		engage: func [face action event] [
			if action = 'time [
				scrn/effect/draw: copy []
				append scrn/effect/draw [line pos1 pos2]
				show scrn
			]
		]
	] effect [ draw [] ]
	s1: slider [
		ss1: to-integer (100 * get-face s1)
		pos2: (as-pair 80 ss1)
	]
]


Next step is to work out how to make the thing that moves leave a 
trail.

To leave a trail, you could append to the draw block (without setting 
it to a new block each time, as you've done above), but that would 
mean your draw block would get very big over time.

So a better thing to do is to draw onto an image!, which serves as 
a cache of your previous draw commands. For this, you can use an 
IMAGE instead of a BOX, and use the DRAW function to draw permanently 
onto the image. (The IMAGE style is very similar to BOX, but its 
'image facet is set to an image! for us, ready to use.)

Once you find a specific facet you are interested in, you can then 
probe it to see its value:

	print mold get in face 'color  ; == 200.200.200


and you can do this, of course, with any face you make, such as the 
BOX above.

I have a plan, but I am stuck before that as I can't work out how 
to reference the value of a variable in a block.
aa: 1  bb: 2  cc: [aa bb]  print first cc

I want it to print 1, but however I arange the brackets I can work 
out how to do it..  I know this is very basic, sorry.

I still dont feel up to the parse version of the first puzzel, so 
I have had a go at the first part of the second puzzel.  I think 
I am a bit confused about where to use var: 0 
var: copy 0

I have also got a bit mixed up with the use of global variables which 
I know is bad.  This is the code, which now dosnt seem to work since 
I put the variable initalisation inside the compress function, and 
tried to pass the variables to the function.. Dont laugh, but this 
is about 3 hours work.

raw-data: [1 2 3 10 11 99 101 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004]

sequence-break: func [count store result][
	if/else (count > 1) [
		append result to-pair rejoin [store "x" count]
		count: 1
	][
		append result store
	]
]


compress: func [raw-data][count: 1 store: reduce raw-data/1 result: 
[]
	repeat i ((length? raw-data) - 1) [
		if/else ((raw-data/(i) + 1) = (raw-data/(i + 1))) [
			count: count + 1 
		][
			sequence-break count store result
			store: reduce raw-data/(i + 1)
		] 
	] sequence-break count store result
]

probe compress raw-data


I am happy if my code is functional & easy to maintain at the moment. 
 I will never be an application developer but using small bits of 
code to increase personal productivity is IMHO a very worthwhile 
thing to try and do.

Object types are reference types too, but you usually need to do 
other tricks instead of COPY with them.

wow!  so do I need to pass them my globals & copy them in the function?

I expected that copy to be implicit....  I better look at DOES HAS 
& FUNCTION before I waste anymore of everyones time. sorry.

what's a sample of what you are trying to do ?

since it only moves forward, its very fast.  in order to do look 
ahead assertion and things like that (which are slow in regexp anyways) 
you must learn a few tricks in order to manually set and retrieve 
the "current" character index.

if we want to extract what is after that single tag, then you can 
easily use to or even better thru:


but lets do it using skip.  starting with a simple example will make 
the lesson 2 more obvious.

Here is a crude way to do what we did earlier that doesn't use parse 
but matches any part to any first occurence of the letter

>> chars: charset "by"
== make bitset! #{
0000000000000000000000000400000200000000000000000000000000000000
}
>> copy/part z: find {aabbyyc} chars next find z "c"
== "bbyyc"

For example, I rather do this:

parse/all {zzabyybc} [to charset copy result thru "c"]

I am trying to formulate an example that shows why I thought TO was 
useful.  It mostly has to do with where I want to extract the data 
complete with the key I used to find it.  Without using TO it seems 
that I need to add the string I was looking for back onto the data 
I have extracted.

I have been working out ways to extract IP addresses from a string 
today.  Is this a good way to do it? What could catch me out?


parse to-block "junk 111.111.111.111 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.128 junk" 
[
  any [
    set tup tuple! (print tup)
    | skip
  ]
]

I was hoping the TO-BLOCK would take care of that. do I need to parse 
the junk first  to remove unloadable strings?  or is there another 
TO- function that will do it for me please?

If you want to return the event handler to the UI, type DO-EVENTS.

I have been looking at the library examples & noticed that some of 
them start off with something like
navigator: make object! [

The ones like this dont do anything so I am guessing I need to use 
this code in a way I have not come across yet. I have been madley 
trying things like

make a: navigator  and looking up make in the documentation, but 
not understanding the answers.

That's the way I do it, using 'context / make object!

Some people prefer using blocks rather than objects:
    blk: [a 4 b 5 c 6]
    blk/b
    == 5
   blk/b: 99
   probe blk
    == [a 4 b 99 c 6]

There are advantages and disadvantages to each approach.

A question: if I want to provide a dialoge to navigate to a directory 
can I call up the ms windows file open & save dialogs, or do I have 
to do it all in rebol. I cant find any examples of this & dont have 
the skills to create my own...  I like the idea of having a GUI interface, 
but I may have to go back to command line if it is too hard for me 
:-)

REBOL []

do %include.r
include %file-list.r


flash-wnd: flash "Finding test files..."

if file: request-file/only [
    files: read first split-path file
]
if none? file [halt]

items: collect/only item [
    foreach file files [item: reduce [file none]]
]

unview/only flash-wnd



;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
;-- Generic functions

call*: func [cmd] [
    either find first :call /show [call/show cmd] [call cmd]
]

change-each: func [
    [throw]

    "Change each value in the series by applying a function to it"

    'word   [word!] "Word or block of words to set each time (will be 
    local)"
    series  [series!] "The series to traverse"

    body    [block!] "Block to evaluate. Return value to change current 
    item to."
    /local do-body
][
    do-body: func reduce [[throw] word] body
    forall series [change/only series do-body series/1]

    ; The newer FORALL doesn't return the series at the tail like the 
    old one

    ; did, but it will return the result of the block, which is CHANGE's 
    result,
    ; so we need to explicitly return the series here.
    series
]

collect: func [
    "Collects block evaluations." [throw]
    'word
    block [block!] "Block to evaluate."
    /into dest [block!] "Where to append results"
    /only "Insert series results as series"

    /local fn code marker at-marker? marker* mark replace-marker rules
][
    block: copy/deep block
    dest: any [dest make block! []]

    fn: func [val] compose [(pick [insert insert/only] not only) tail 
    dest get/any 'val

        get/any 'val
    ]
    code: 'fn
    marker: to set-word! word
    at-marker?: does [mark/1 = marker]
    replace-marker: does [change/part mark code 1]
    marker*: [mark: set-word! (if at-marker? [replace-marker])]
    parse block rules: [any [marker* | into rules | skip]]
    do block
    head :dest
]

edit-file: func [file] [
    ;print mold file

    call* join "notepad.exe " to-local-file file ;join test-file-dir 
    file
]

flatten: func [block [any-block!]][
    parse block [

        any [block: any-block! (change/part block first block 1) :block | 
        skip]
    ]
    head block
]

logic-to-words: func [block] [

    change-each val block [either logic? val [to word! form val] [:val]]
]

standardize: func [

    "Make sure a block contains standard key-value pairs, using a template 
    block"
    block    [block!] "Block to standardize"
    template [block!] "Key value template pairs"
][
    foreach [key val] template [
        if not found? find/skip block key 2 [
            repend block [key val]
        ]
    ]
]

tally: func [

    "Counts values in the series; returns a block of [value count] sub-blocks."
    series [series!]
    /local result blk
][
    result: make block! length? unique series

    foreach value unique series [repend result [value reduce [value 0]]]
    foreach value series [
        blk: first next find/skip result value 2
        blk/2: blk/2 + 1
    ]
    extract next result 2
]


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

counts: none

refresh: has [i] [
    reset-counts
    i: 0
    foreach item items [
        i: i + 1
        set-status reform ["Testing" mold item/1]
        item/2: random/only reduce [true false]
        show main-lst
        set-face f-prog i / length? items
        wait .25
    ]
    update-counts
    set-status mold counts
]

reset-counts: does [counts: copy [total 0 passed 0 failed 0]]

set-status: func [value] [set-face status form value]

update-counts: has [pass-fail] [
    counts/total: length? items

    pass-fail: logic-to-words flatten tally collect res [foreach item 
    items [res: item/2]]
    ;result (e.g.): [true 2012 false 232]
    standardize pass-fail [true 0 false 0]
    counts/passed: pass-fail/true
    counts/failed: pass-fail/false
]

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


main-lst: sld: ; The list and slider faces
c-1:           ; A face we use for some sizing calculations
    none
ml-cnt:        ; Used to track the result list slider value.
visible-rows:  ; How many result items are visible at one time.
    0

lay: layout [
    origin 5x5
    space 1x0
    across

    style col-hdr text 100 center black mint - 20

    text 600 navy bold {

        This is a sample using file-list and updating progress as files are
        processed. 
    }
    return
    pad 0x10

    col-hdr "Result"  col-hdr 400 "File" col-hdr 100
    return
    pad -2x0

    ; The first block for a LIST specifies the sub-layout of a "row",

    ; which can be any valid layout, not just a simple "line" of data.

    ; The SUPPLY block for a list is the code that gets called to display

    ; data, in this case as the list is scrolled. Here COUNT tells us

    ; which ~visible~ row data is being requested for. We add that to 
    the

    ; offset (ML-CNT) set as the slider is moved. INDEX tells us which
    ; ~face~ in the sub-layout the data is going to.

    ; COUNT is defined in the list style itself, as a local variable 
    in
    ; the 'pane function.
    main-lst: list 607x300 [
        across space 1x0 origin 0x0
        style cell text 100x20 black mint + 25 center middle
        c-1: cell  cell 400 left   cell [edit-file item/1]
    ] supply [
        count: count + ml-cnt
        item: pick items count
        face/text: either item [
            switch index [
                1 [

                    face/color: switch item/2 reduce [none [gray] false [red] true [green]]
                    item/2
                ]
                2 [mold item/1]
                3 ["Edit"]
            ]
        ] [none]
    ]

    sld: scroller 16x298 [ ; use SLIDER for older versions of View

        if ml-cnt <> (val: to-integer value * subtract length? items visible-rows) 
        [
            ml-cnt: val
            show main-lst
        ]
    ]
    return
    pad 0x20
    f-prog: progress 600x16
    return
    status: text 500 return
    button 200 "Run" [refresh  show lay]
    pad 200
    button "Quit" #"^q" [quit]
]

visible-rows: to integer! (main-lst/size/y / c-1/size/y)

either visible-rows >= length? items [
    sld/step: 0
    sld/redrag 1
][
    sld/step: 1 / ((length? items) - visible-rows)
    sld/redrag (max 1 visible-rows) / length? items
]

view lay

Hi, I am trying to reduce the number of global variables I use in 
functions & so my functions return blocks, but I have not discovered 
any simple way to dereference the information in the variables, within 
the blocks..  I have written a function to do it, but I guess there 
is a built in function if I could find it. Or at least something 
a bit more elegant than this: "return_value_of_block_component" function. 
  Any tips most welcome please.

f1: func [a] [
	b: join a "-Bee"
	c: join a "-Cee"
	return [b c]
]

d: f1 {Hi}

return_value_of_block_component: func [block component] [
	foreach element block [
	if element = component [return reduce [element]]
	]
]

H: return_value_of_block_component d 'b
I: return_value_of_block_component d 'c

print H
print I

no you must use the /local switch to do that.

Thanks Oldes, that looks good. I didnt know I could use compliment 
in a parse like that either. I must have been doing it wrong when 
I tried as I kept getting errors. 

Thanks Steeve, I must go & study more about opt too now.   I very 
much appreciate you clever guys coming in this group to help me with 
my simple questions. I am begining to get a bit more productive with 
some of the things I am trying to do, although I am still very much 
a beginner in most areas. Thanks.

yes, for something like that, I would do some simple splitting to 
get the numbers isolated.

... from where do you parse 5 out... is that supose NUM-NUM suppose 
to be ranges?

which is what I figured you wanted to do. you need to make the text 
at 0x0, rotate it and then translate it to the position you want

that's good. I don't have to do it then.

do you have to create the kids first?

What you want to do is set the origin to the centre of your object, 
then change the angle and translate as you wish.

We can assume, Cairo is distributed under LGPL, right? If so, it 
becomes 
really incompatible with the GPL. For now I'd suggest you 
to keep using AGG 
2.4, at least until we can come up with a better 
legal solution. Basically, 
I want to prevent some 
commercial monster corporations" from free use of 

AGG. But I do want the Linux world to keep using it for free. I'm 
not quite 

sure how well LGPL protects from uncontrolled free commercial use; 
if it 

does, I may re-think and switch to the LGPL. But I'm not willing 
to keep 

using totally free, BSD-like licences in future versions. Ideally, 
I'd like 
to come up with some kind of a QT-like licensing scheme."

Pekr, the reason for backporting is that: 1) there will be high demand 
from R2 userbase for such feature 2) it would be easy to do it. So 
my note above is very hypothetical ;)

AGG wouldn't have this effect since it does not seem to use clear 
text.  in fact, in general I find AGG font AA pretty ugly... is there 
a way to improve this?  even if its slow?  there are some situations 
which do not mind speed (generating HQ output graphics, for example) 
 or small GUIs or when converting face looks to bitmaps before display.. 
(trades speed for ram)

for example, if you want to slide a picture of a stars, you must 
first boost the gamma of the picture by 2, do the move and then apply 
a .5 gamma.  then, the AA will have spread out according to energy 
rather than color.  which means that the 2 side-by-side pixels will 
be at much more than 0.5 of the original 1.0 single pixel brightness.

90+% of what you need to do that, Steeve, is already in the Library:

[1] we could (in minutes) add extra valid domains or types so a script 
could be categorised as draw-snippet


[2] the LIbrary doesn't use rebservices for an API. It has an API 
called LDS that predates rebservices (basically, the library team 
got there first). You can use it to download any script (among other 
things too)

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/documentation.r?script=lds-local.r#toc-50


[3] using LS to download a snippet every time it is needed would 
be slow and wasteful.....But you could easily write get-draw-snippet 
that caches results locally.
****

That would not be perfect as it would be good to have a page/pages 
showing the images the snippets produce. But if there were enough 
snippets, we could add that.....And, before we do someone else could 
beat us to it on their own website -- they could use LDS to get all 
the snippets and display the images. It'd be a neat bit of Community 
interaction.

====> Perhaps switch to Library for any detailed discussion.

BTW, I'm working on a DRAW-based visual CAPTCHA for web forms. I 
guess that if these commands are buggy, I'll have to  do it the old-fashion 
way, making all the calculations in REBOL (instead of letting DRAW 
do the maths).

if viewport was to be done like shape - but contain the full AGG 
dialect we could do nesting.

what is the viewport? I do remember it from Amiga, but don't remember 
what it was about..... kind of separate gfx space/bitmap to draw 
on?

if you had a game that was operated by keys only, for example, you 
would not need to do any of this, so it's even faster than R2

or you put an id in gob/data and then use that to do whatever you 
want

event > window + offset > gob at that offset > use gob/data to get 
to face object > face/feel/on-click etc.

 - that sentence might actually help me to better understand the concept. 
 So gob is not necessarily child of face. It is completly separate 
 concept - kind of gfx node. And that node points to higher concept 
 - your face, or whatever you want, so you can do anything ....

Anton: ofcourse you can do nested transformations. You don't  CLIP 
for that. I had no problem to make 'robot arms' etc. in current DRAW.

yes please do  :-)  it will make it very easy to build cliping shapes 
which are often the easiest way to achieve advanced (multipass) fill 
effects in complex shapes.

it could be - ive got to catch up with geomol re how he wants to 
do the drawing :)

hmm.. one thing that i would like to do when R3 comes out is to make 
a rebol 3D model viewer with rotation

Henrik, funny you should post that.............I'm in need of a way 
to take a 2D diagram, and turn into exactly that (which is called 
an isometric view).


A cool feature would be that the colour of a 2D rectangle, and perhaps 
even the line weight and colour would dictate the 3D height, colour, 
and treatment.


The reason I want this is that I'm building a diagram of the architecture 
of Qtask, and want to make it easy to see and understand.


What I'm planning to do right now is draw it in 2D first.  Then pick 
a good angle (in my mind).  Then build all the 3D objects on an isometric 
field (sort of like old video games like Zaxxon).


Then scale them into place.  Then add the text words in front of 
them.

I like the words on top vs side as well of the image you posted.

If you know what was used to generate that I would like to know.

Oh...You mean the effect append...Yeah I've been appending every 
time I do the search. But I probed bx/effect but it does not look 
like its growing unless i"m only seeing the tail in the probe

I got an out of memory crash before that I've been trying to track 
down. This might be it.

Excellent, as always. Anton - don't you want to "volunteer" to do 
text handling for VID3.4? As per Henrik's words, Carl's VID so far 
has only basic text handling. And so far, as for REBOL GUI in overall, 
you text area is the best ...

It's got some debugging lines still in it, so console will fill up.

The demo also has a problem with control of the ellipse - which turns 
out to be a tough math problem to solve. More difficult than the 
line/ellipse intersection. Maybe it will take me a week to do... 
 but anyway the demo works well enough for now.

i'm talking about that because i currently try to do a draw editor 
with R3 (like my old easy-drawer).

well My svg engine is working and got trouble only with matrix calulations 
due to an odd bug in the adapted version. Next i don't like the way 
my SVG works  I wish to be able to do it  in plain parse way (My 
method in not really elegant but it works fine  in most cases SVG 
is an XML file so the XML data is converted to REBOL  objects using 
parse and then i process those objects to convert into draw/Agg instructions). 
That was the fastest way i found at that time since what was important 
to me was the result not the beauty of the processing way.

BrianH yeah mpeg2 was pattented and what it ends too ? the endustry 
was fed up with it and found 2 new ways to do the tast better without 
having to pay royal ties (HD DVD and blue ray)

don't know really.  but in any case, you don't have to use the library 
to do the rendering...  We can always render them using AGG or OpenGL. 
 as long as we have the coordinates.

there will be no gain when scaling and rotation are ALSO applied 
to the transformation.


but if there is ONLY translation, then there is no need for any interpolation 
or matrix calculus... just a simple blit as if you do:
draw [ image my-image 30x30]

Now, about "resident extensions" that's simple: it's just an extension 
that is resides in the host part of the exe.  It should not take 
much to do that (mostly docs.)

I got 'yes' from the AGG author to be able use v2.4 but there is 
not much significant changes in 2.3 vs 2.4 except internal code cleanup 
and few new custom rasterizers so the priority for going to 2.4 was 
never high enough to spend time on it.

The AGG in R3 uses some code from 2.4 as it was much easier to add 
it this way than merge all the custom changes to 2.4 and then do 
all the testing to see if something went wrong.


Ofcourse any effeort to make the proper transition from the current 
2.3 based code to v2.4 is welcome.

No he don't need any other solution.  He just needs to use ports 
to do the work for him and preserve memory.

Carl has nothing to do with the Wikibook. We have an old group for 
the Wikibook.

Sunanda, thanks for your help. Anyway, I tried all my fonts, which 
do have russian (cyrillic) letters, but still had no luck. Seems 
I really have to wait for Rebol3 as nobody knows how to solve this.

if you are using blocks which seems fine as it's even shorter and 
more agile (and similar to quotations in factor), but how do blocks 
define which parameter is which , in case of map it must take 1 parameter 
in case of reduce 2 ?

really? that would be nice, I imagine I "do" the block , but before 
I have to somehow set those variables, I mean words

Let me look at it for a sec (unless you want to do it - this is the 
School group).

and finaly, we can use a single var:

map: func ['vars list exec][do reduce [:foreach to-block vars list 
reduce [:append [] :do exec]]]

>> map [x][1 2 3 4][x * x]
== [1 4 9 16]
>> map x [1 2 3 4][x * x]
== [1 4 9 16]

I'm going to do a study of all of the REBOL functions that generate 
series (even natives) and determine which would benefit from the 
/into option, then get it added. It might be tricky to modify actions 
though. REDUCE and COMPOSE are getting the /into option.

but we should use change to do that job, not insert

If you guys get some good  mezzanines please post them on my Mezzanine 
thread.  http://www.tretbase.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30Also, 
if anyone wants to make the current ones posted more efficient please 
do.

There are mezz groups in various places, but it does't look like 
we have a group for it here. Feel free to start one. Maybe add a 
checklist as well, for final versions and prioritizing. In any case, 
FOLD is not necessary, but nice for those that want it. REBOL lives 
in many worlds. One world is for imperative-minded folks, that don't 
know or care about HOFs and such, another is those that do.

This was a backport mezzanine, and for backports the compatibility 
with R3 is key. You have to do some extra work when writing mezzanine 
functions that you don't have to do with one-off functions.

Ok, I am going to ask my question too.   I have to run a report where 
I collect data from a number of different functions.  Each of the 
functions runs asynchronously.  So, one might return data before 
another.  Not that the order matters.  But the user can select from 
1 to say 6 data functions/sources.

Now since these functions are async, I have to use callbacks to deal 
with the data once it arrives.
What would be the best way of programming this?  

At the end of this, I then need to do something with the collected 
data  .... ie. generate a graph.

I really do want to make it fast though, because slow functions don't 
get used in optimal code. This is why most of the loop functions 
from R2 have been converted to natives: The non-native loop functions 
were getting optimized out of R2 code.

something i don't uderstand with your unset! test.
>>head insert [] do []
== []

so, unset! values cause no problem with insert ??? why do you need 
to test that ?
have you an example ?

It's a quandry. I already had to add a local function to get around 
the limits of FOREACH, because the alternatives were slower. Do you 
have a solution that handles both breaks and returns?

if you can do it within view... then you problem seems pretty simple 
to me... I did a 4 way async system with on-demand buttons, loading 
data from the net and bg transfers syncing all running clients with 
a central cerver.

presumably when one transfer finishes, it could check the others 
and then render if they were all finished.  Do I need to poll?

the checkup loop was something like


you can do it that way too... but you might get into some strange 
stack issues, cause you end up handling  port messages from one port 
to another within the messaging stack... but I guess a simple test 
sould suffice to see if its stable or not.


in my case, the gui had to stay responsive, since the xfer-contexts 
had cancel methods, which interrupted any xfer in real-time, and 
the whole gui had to still handle events smoothly, like scrolling 
a huge list, while it was adding items to that list, as it parsed 
the return value from the google search engine  :-)

I'd really appreciate it if one of our graphic gurus can jump in 
and let me know how I can either use the code above to do this, or 
suggest an alternative.

Well, if you assume that your internal storage method is one which 
just needs to be "converted" to an other, like CSV => XML, you might 
be in for a suprise when trying to model a real time dynamic system 
with Undo like a paint program with a file format as export.


For example, do you store a given object once, with the history of 
the object elsewhere, or do you store the object together, with the 
most recent at the top of the list.

Also, Do you store objects, and actions, or both togther.

It's pretty slow to transfer the files as well.  I tried transfering 
a 49 MB file and it took near an hour to transfer.  I don't do this 
often, but that seemed excessive to me.

Hi. I have a 2-VID-windows program and I want to modify the layout 
(e.g add images) of the first window by clicking on buttons of the 
second window. How can I do that please ?

:-) Now, is there any shorter/smarter way to do it?

particularly string parsing needs to be improved. the above code 
should be simpler to do.

but i'm waiting for R3 stable to do so in fact ... as i'm sure parse 
in R3 will be much better than in R2

and once R3 is out i will do the efffort to restart from scratch 
this project and do it 1 pass pure parse

but rebol is easy you don't have to practice it 10 hour a day to 
be able to do insane things with it

That may not be, what you want. I haven't figured out yet, what you 
want the function to do. :-)