AltME groups: search

Strange it works here with my RSS reader (not a browser based one). 
You can find a direct link at the bottom of this page http://trac.geekisp.com/orca/timeline

It's great to find out about this project. It would help a lot if 
any of you know the developers of the two previous related projects 
(sievertsen.de - freebell.sf.net) and (softinnov.org - dockimbel 
- r#) and get them to contribute to Orca. It looks like orca is very 
close to getting some momentum !

Perhaps we can find some open source chat software somewhere.

Just one way to find out

I was pleased to find that none of them are showstoppers, though

But we'll find out for sure soon, don't worry.

When I use FIND with CHARSETs it ignores the /TAIL refinement. Is 
this a bug?

;with charset
>> find/tail "abc" charset "b"
== "bc"
>> find "abc" charset "b"
== "bc"

;with string
>> find "abc" "b"
== "bc"
>> find/tail "abc" "b"
== "c"

be aware, that find with charsets behaves differently in more ways
>> find "abc" charset "db"
== "bc"

Combination of find/tail and charset looks like a bug to me.

sqlab, a charset is not a string its a bitset, so it will search 
for ALL the characters in the charset at each byte...   also note 
that when using find, charsets are case sensitive (and very fast).
the bug with /tail is pretty surprising, I never noticed it.

I know that charsets find the first occurance of any of the chars, 
but maybe Endo knows that too. So I should probably not remind.

I was hoping that such library would use the FPU for low-level maths, 
but can't find any info about that.

I can't even find the download. Is it BSD?

I'm looking into the linker to find the cause.

ASLR: I suppose it's required, but I can't find any information from 
an official source explaining the exact requirement for ASLR on Windows 
(except the additional flag to set in the executable header).


While searching for that, I found this interesting reading about 
PIC: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/pic-internals.xml#doc_chap7

(Take that with a sufficiently sized grain of salt, as I don't know 
anything about how ASLR on Windows works. But I find it hard to imagine 
how they would get away without PIC :)

Good job! It's nice seeing Red/System implementation near R2/R3 ones. 
I'll need to find some free time this weekend to start playing with 
0MQ and Red/System.

Uniqueness would be nice, but it's very hard to find a unique language 
name, that is short, doesn't sound bad, have a meaning, etc...Also 
having a common name has never been a problem for Perl, Python, Ruby,...

Well, you have to think a little bit if Red is the same as those 
when it comes to searching. Perl is actually unique since pearl is 
the spelling of the oyster product. When it comes to Python, I can 
tell you that in typical English language use, the frequency of the 
word python will be relatively low, so you won't really pollute search 
results for the language which has a relatively large use in the 
IT community. Ruby is somewhat similar in that you won't find too 
many uses of the singular word ruby used by the general population 
- at least not to outweigh its language name frequency. When it comes 
to Red, I can guarantee you that red is quite a common word.

Oldes: I find that irritating too. From now, I'll just answer in 
english only in the blog comments ;-)

After re-reading the new specs draft, I noticed a few errors in the 
pointer! examples. Also, I think that having struct! passed as value 
by default was a bad move, it makes the "passed by reference" case 
too verbose (requires to declare a pointer! [struct! ...] and a get-word! 
syntax). I think that I'll revert default struct to be passed "by 
reference" and find a special syntax for the extremely rare cases 
when a struct needs to be passed by value. I can't remember any OS 
API nor mainstream C lib that require passing struct by value (anyone?).

No, you would qualify for the mentor part. So you'd have to find 
students willing to write open source Red code, and then you have 
to mentor them

Questions about the declarations.  

1-  why are you using this syntax for *all* declarations? : 
word: [datatype value] 

ex:
my-val: [integer! 20]

woudn't just this do ?:
my-val: integer! 20

I find its a hell of a lot easier to read,


and when you add type detection, its back to 

my-val: 20   


meaning that the integer! word really is just a typecast operation 
here.

User-defined operators are really nice, I think. Being able to write 
things like:

remove 42 from [1 2 3 42 177 280]

where FROM is just a simple FIND.

To make a FROM op you would need to make a FROM~ wrapper function 
around FIND; you wouldn't be able to make an op from FIND directly.

If you find the link, please post it :)

The latter won't find the 0MQ library, but will show how that works 
on Syllable

I can't find the source document anymore, I remember that it was 
the standard Linux way (pre-SYSENTER).

So, how about a way to always keep a list of external used functions? 
This make it simpler to make Red totally stand-alone later. The hard 
part to get rid of all the lics & OS stuff is, that you have to find 
out, which functions you have to "clone".

I find ALLOCATE and FREE using c-string! unintuitive

I can't find an equivalent in UNIX world.

the main issue is that I had to find out, how to print integers:) 
Kaj's C-library is not working on windows.

Took me some time, had to run all the tests suite several times, 
refactor the code and find a meaningful commit log message. ;-)

But REBOL users might find it a bit misleading.

Actually, the link I gave to Apple's docs does not cover syscalls...I 
couldn't find any official Apple doc about that. MacOS X seems to 
conform to BSD syscalls calling convention.

About calling functions in shared libraries and calling conventions, 
there seem to be differences between CPUs and compilers across operating 
systems. There's a lib, called libffi, to help with this, and it 
has bee widely ported.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libffi


Why isn't a lib like libffi used in Red? Is it because of overhead, 
making it slower? Or maybe using such a lib makes little sense the 
way Red is implemented?


When looking at the host-kit for R3, I see functions to open, close 
and find functions in DLLs, but I don't see the calling of those 
functions. Shouldn't that be part of the host kit?

R3 does not have such ability, so I'm confused by your "When looking 
at the host-kit for R3, I see functions to open, close and find functions 
in DLLs, but I don't see the calling of those functions."

I once offered a little glowing "code protecting" angel statue to 
one of my developers. It was supposed to keep devil out of your code 
if you kept it close to your screen. Can't find it online anymore, 
maybe that would help...:-)

Maybe you could find out what is causing that in Syllable and fix 
it?

Probably. I was recently looking for the compiler version, but couldn't 
find it

Red/System uses stdcall too internally, so forcing user to use a 
cdecl attribute for Red level callbacks is not natural. Need to think 
more about it to find a better option.

Anyone knows where to find exhaustive lists of invalid UTF-8 encoding 
ranges?

I finally find some time to read Red/System doc, and I have a novice 
question - what is basically the difference of cdecl or stdcall? 
Respectively - when wrapping API stuff, how do I know which one to 
use? I expect this area is for more skilled C developers, than occassional 
interface users?

what is basically the difference of cdecl or stdcall?


See this wikipedia page for some basic info about calling conventions: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86_calling_conventions


Respectively - when wrapping API stuff, how do I know which one to 
use? 


When you're wrapping an API, you should find out how the library 
was compiled, and infer from that what calling convention is required. 
Most of C libs are using cdecl, while the Windows win32 API uses 
stdcall.

So I need to find a suitable ARM emulator now to be able to finish 
the ARM port...

Let me find that...

QNX: if you're thinking about BlackBerry support, why not. But as 
BlackBerry has a decreasing market share, I am not sure that would 
be a relevant target to support in a year. Anyway, iOS is second 
on my list of mobile OSes to support (if we can find our way through 
that "fortress").

Looks interesting, Steeve. Be sure to post what you find out about 
Textadept in the Editors group.

as for CASE - I could not fin it in the Docs, in the section talking 
about eventually planned features. I could find there only SWITCH 
directive :-) Maybe that section could be revisioned, to let us know, 
what is eventually planne, and what is not ....

I do agree that it is a bit hard to find specific things in the current 
manual

Specification: I agree that find the native function is not handy, 
I could remove the "API Reference" level to make it easier to find 
from TOC.

find => finding

Just because it looked good to me when I had to pick one. But since 
then, Andreas made me realize that it can be problematic for derivated 
works because of the "prior written permission" part. That is why 
the current Red runtime source code is licensed under the Boost License. 
I think I'll just re-license the whole source base under BSD 2-clause 
when I'll find some time for that.

Can't find the links about that anymore, I wonder if I haven't confuse 
that with another board?

The only drawback for now is that 64-bit values break the typed/variadic 
stack layout (meant for 32-bit values only). I need to find a workaround 
for that.

Yes, [lf] is really not that long, so it's hard to find a good shorter 
alternative. In many cases you'll need a block anyway, so it's just 
" lf"

I also find myself using PRIN regularly (i.e. much more than 1% of 
the time I _don't_ want to print a newline right away).

Pekr: I fully agree with the 80% (or 99%) usage argument, the issue 
is not there, it is in finding a suitable name for "print-without-LF" 
if PRINT is used for printing with LF. Last time we tried that, we 
didn't find any good solution, so we ended up with a single PRINT 
command to cover all use cases.

There are two additional assertions in the float-partial branch that 
you might find useful Oldes. They aren't in the documentation yet. 
They are:


--assertF~= which takes three float!s, it compares the first two 
to be equal within a tolerance supplied as a third argument. The 
tolerance is both an absolute and relative tolerance. So, a tolerance 
of 0.01 would return true if the two floats were equal + or - minus 
0.01 or within 1 percent.

I have used a tolerance of 1e-12 in testing.

Ah, old question :-) There's a ticket about that opened by Rudolf...let 
me find it...

Oldes: can't find the ticket anymore, but in a nutshell, datatypes 
should be unaffected by such declaration, they are not part of the 
same namespace as variables, so to answer your question, it is allowed 
but not recommended (there are warnings against that in the specification 
document).

done.. you can find complete diff for the pull request here: https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/pull/201/files

Kaj: I cannot compile GTK+ examples anymore using the latest GTK+ 
binding version...Where can I find the missing GLib.reds file?

My conclusion is, that VLC does not fit my requirements needs, and 
that's all. No wonder, that if you look into their website, trying 
to find projects which build their solutions upon it, you find only 
few projects actually. mplayer is much better in that regards. Dunno 
why though, as both build upon ffmpeg, so I expect their core having 
similar features, and API wise VLC seems to be ven better (LUA interface), 
but mplayer seems being more popular indeed.

I very much like the Heroku style: http://www.heroku.comIf I could 
find a similar blogger theme, I would switch at once.

I am trying to wrap our LED screen control dll. I am not sure how 
well it is defined, as LED Studio and surrounding SW is rather weak 
and sometimes crashes, but I tried in R2, thinking I again reached 
some R2 DLL interfacing limit/bug, and am trying now in Red/System. 
Well, my first attempt to wrap some DLL functions here. So - I can 
turn-on/off led screen, even if I don't set COM port, open-sending-card, 
etc. But when I try to call functions to get e.g. brightness, contrast, 
it crashes. Those funcs are defined as e.g.:

typedef int	 (WINAPI *LSN_GETBRIGHT)();       // 0..100
typedef bool (WINAPI *LSN_SETBRIGHT)(int);
typedef int (WINAPI *LSN_GETCOLORTEMP)(int);//ScreenNumb

typedef bool (WINAPI *LSN_SETCOLORTEMP)(int,int);//ScreenNumb,nColorId 
0,1,2,3


None of above functions work for me, although above code is from 
sources to LEDSet application, where those funcitons work, those 
are just being set via dialog boxes (which I can invoke even from 
Red/System, so those are part of DLL ...

My definitions are:

      led-get-brightness: "LSN_GetBright" [
         return: [integer!]
      ]           

      led-set-brightness: "LSN_SetBright" [
         brightness [integer!]
         return: [integer!]
      ]

      led-get-color-temperature: "LSN_GetColorTemp" [
          screen-number [integer!]
          return: [integer!]
       ]                 


etc. So what coul be causing run time error? I am running on a PC, 
where I don't have internal LED screen communication card. I thought, 
that DLL functionality might check for the screen, can't find it, 
and so the app returns error, which does not fit return value - e.g. 
some error code/string, or a dialog box. But moving the exe to the 
PC where the card is, it i just the same - some functions work, I 
can see LED screen being turned on/off, but those brightness etc. 
don't ....

I tried stdcall and iirc even cdecl. How do I find out?

However, the functions may also be exported the normal way, in which 
case you wouldn't have to use the pointers, but you would have to 
find the names of the real functions. For fpGetBright I would look 
for GetBright for example

You should bind the GetProcAddress function (I think there are already 
Red/System Windows examples floating around that use it), find out 
how to get the value of the g_hLedCtrlInst library handle, and use 
them to load the functions like the C code does

If you can find the functions you need in there, it shouldn't be 
necessary to load them manually. If so, something else keeps your 
functions from working

I can't find anything in the C++ code, though, that would necessitate 
manual loading. It looks like the regular #import should work. What 
errors are you getting exactly from those functions?

I find a code with preprocessing TERRIFIC, AWFUL, and TERRIFYING. 
It slows down compilation to orders of magnitude.

I was not using preprocessor in my Rebol/Flash dialect and I must 
say, I find the Red/System way useful. It may be true, that additional 
pass may slow the compilation a little bit, but it also provide additional 
features. Also I don't expect that it will be used in some huge projects 
with MB of sources so if it's a few ms slower is not a problem. And 
as Red/System is open, everybody can provide own version:)

After using `??` a few hours, I realized that it was a mistake to 
use it as a shortcut for `print-line`. It is readable when used on 
a word, but with a block, it looks too esoteric and hurt the feelings 
of old rebolers that see it as a syntax error. So, I want to get 
rid of `??` but can't find anything to replace it that would be both 
short and consistent with `print`and `print-line`. I think that I'll 
just deprecate `??` but won't remove it for now as some of you are 
heavily using it.

Webkit: can't run it on Windows, I was able to get a suitable libwebkit 
but it fails to find some functions in the dependent DLL. Trying 
on Linux.

It seems that the issue is caused by FPU control word settings used 
by Red/System that make webkit crash. I need to find a common setting 
that would work for both.

Yes it is possible to test for a warining message. assert-msg? simply 
does a find on the compiler output for the supplied string.

Kaj: where can I find the source code for __libc_start_main using 
Syllable online sources browser?

I am pretty sure that we will find some ways to combine Topaz and 
Red at some point, once both get more mature.

I find this better:

x  =>  string!



->    looks more like a "move to here" (which is why they used it 
for C pointer struct dereferencing IMHO)

=>   having an = symbol, looks more like a "make into"  (for which 
"to" is a synonym).

I don't find C's precedences to be that far off the mark of the most-commonly 
usefull pattern.  I don't have to write parens nearly as much in 
C than I have to in REBOL, its like a 10 to 1 ratio.  Do I feel like 
precedence is actually helping me.


its also a problem to me that rebol's clean syntax gets bloated by 
all those (relatively) useless parens.  


Add the fact that Compose will often bite you in the arse because 
of these (I do a lot of run-time code building and compiling in many 
of my apps) and its just gets really complex for nothing.

The issue of parens: i think that no matter what the precedence rules 
are, you'll find cases where you need parens.


Now, one of the things I want to try doing in Topaz is TCO, so maybe 
parens will have less overhead in the future than in REBOL, but it's 
hard to predict whether this is possible at all in the interpreter. 
They will probably not have significant overhead if you compile.


I vote we worry about readability first though, there's always going 
to be alternatives when performance is required. (Eg. the fact that 
something is available as an op! does not mean that it is not also 
available as a regular function; like in REBOL you have both AND 
and AND~. In fact, Topaz requires that you pass a function! or native! 
to make op! - so such function version has to exists anyway.)

Max: if append a  "ouch" =  append b "ouch"

I wonder how would you ever find that readable.

Nice find

Graham: you have 24h to find a webcam. :-)

Gabriele, as Henrik said, pick a date and let's go from there. What 
has happened in the past is that I find out too late that you have 
had your Red/Topaz meetings.

Teaser 8: User defined operators ....

Instead of: 

insert next find block 2 "blue"

you write:

insert block after 2 "blue"

Q: Will this language be an open or closed source project?


A: Long answer: The plan is to fully open source it at some point, 
when version 1 is ready. Host depending sources are open in the alpha 
release, and it may make sense to open source more and more along 
the way, like sources for the different datatypes. The IT world is 
constantly changing. My nephew just went to the Devoxx Java conference 
in Belgium. Everybody had portable Mac computers. That was very different 
just a few years ago. Who knows, what devices we'll use in 5 years? 
I like to bring my software with me to new platforms. To be able 
to support new platforms faster, open source is a good thing. But 
some things needs to be fulfilled, before I'll open source it all.

1. This isn't a hobby project. I've invested a lot of time and work 
in this project, and I need to find a way to get something back from 
all that. One option is to have a good manual ready for developers 
to buy, open source it to get a lot of developers interested, and 
make a profit that way. There may be other ways (like someone or 
some company paying me to open source or make projects in World).

2. I need to know more about the consequences of open sourcing it, 
so I can avoid any nasty surprises. Knowing more from other similar 
projects could help. I need to figure out a proper license.

3. Even if I keep the sources simple and clean, I would like to clean 
up even more, before it can be open sourced.

A: Short answer: Currently it's partly open source.

Q: What is the main target?

A: The World prompt is a very powerful tool. Being what is known 
as "network transparent" helps in the era of the Internet. Server 
scripting and client scripting are obvious uses. The ability to easily 
make dialects makes it possible to wrap the language around the problem 
instead of trying to change the problem to fit the language. Interfacing 
with other technologies ... see "Introduction" on http://world-lang.org
in a few days.

Q: Is it closer to R2, R3, RED, Topaz architecture?

A: World run its code within a custom made virtual machine (VM). 
Compiling in World compiles World sources to this VM. This happen 
when source code is run or if explicitly compiled. REBOL is always 
interpreted (AFAIK), so that's different. I'm far from an expert 
in Red and Topaz, but as I understand it, Topaz is compiled/translated 
to JavaScript. So the JavaScript engine can be seen as the VM in 
World. And Red is compiled to native code, so that's different too. 
As I see it, all these languages work differently and can complement 
each other. (Help me here, if I'm wrong in any of this.)

Q: What was the main motivation, aka - why yet another language?

A: After I've learned REBOL, I find it frustrating to program in 
most (all) other languages. The difference is like when humans moved 
from carving words in stones to using a printing press a la Gutenberg. 
Then I found, I couldn't complete projects like my Canvas RPaint 
program on all major platforms (Win32, OS X and Linux), I couldn't 
run my code on new portable devices, and I needed better performance 
with scientific applications. With my background in graphics, music 
and science, I expect the language to develop into those areas.


Q: If (you) don't have any other target, why don't you work on Red? 
Or fork a project from Red?

A: I started initial work on World in late March 2009. The first 
post in the Red group here in AltME is from 27-Feb-2011. At that 
time, World was more than 7'000 lines of C.

Because thing shoul be easy! And if Geomol points us to the link 
he posted, I will not look around to find some mysterious zipball 
...

Peter, the directory launch problem, you see, is because it can't 
find and run cortex.w . I'll fix this. You can run it manually though 
with: do %<directory>/cortex.w

re bug tracker: i think we can just use github's issue tracker [1] 
to _record_ issues we find, for now. so just so that there's a single 
place to collect them.

[1] https://github.com/Geomol/World/issues

I see your point. It's not easy to find a good way, that is sure 
to cover all future possibilities.

SWITCH is a mezzaning in World (see cortex.w) and just uses FIND.

I get a malloc error under OS X (64-bit), when redefining a function 
with code like:

f: make function! reduce [pick :f 1 pick :f 2]


I didn't find the error, so I tried it under WinXP (32-bit), and 
the error isn't there!? Any suggestions?

People trying out the routine! implementation, please speak up, if 
you find anything strange, so I can fix it, while it's fresh in memory.

Difference: Based on a virtual machine, that source can compile to. 
Many different design decisions, but many of those can be redone 
to be REBOL compatible by defining words. This is what %rebol.w is 
for.


Improvements: Faster in many cases because of the VM. I try to make 
it better in all those areas, where I find REBOL not good enough. 
Datatypes like complex! and more in the future. I also try to cut 
into the bone and only create that at the core, that is really needed. 
I see that as an improvement.

It will be the basis for World Documentation. You are a programmer 
and you know how much important is this aspect. I am sure we will 
find someone which could create the official World Web Site.

I need to find a balance with World for how much should be tested 
for. I'm after good performance.

Under OS X, I get an empty binary, which is expected behaviour. Under 
WinXP, the process hangs here. The OS X and Linux version of World 
use standard BSD networking, the Windows version use MS networking, 
where an init is needed. You're welcome to suggest changes to the 
host specific sources. At this stage, I won't use a lot of time on 
Windows specific sources, as I don't use that platform very much.


I consider using cURL for networking, as that could give a lot of 
features fast. If I find, it adds too much to the overall size of 
World, it could be cut along the way by moving features from cURL 
to World sources.

Geomol: is your freelance work using World-lang, just wondering if 
you find it good enough to do work in yet