AltME groups: search

related to what? Rebol? Well, there were those times, in 1996, when 
Carl tried to resurrect amiga at Viscorp ... then he left, I read 
his paper about "dream system" - first scripting, then OS, and I 
believed into it. Well, we are a bit late with the original plan, 
but I still try to believe :-)

How far are we from AltME for OS X? I'm only on this PC for about 
an hour a day, and I'd love to spend some of the other time on AltME.

Hey, all I want is resizable text in the client. And maybe an OS 
X client. Everything else about AltMe has been roses. I haven't even 
seen the issues or bugs mentioned by other folks.

We have one guy running OS X in our World. So far so good. This morning 
we saw a message that he wasn't a member but I restarted the World 
and all is well. My thought is that this was caused by my computer 
going to sleep sometime during the night. I get other issues with 
other programs so that's probably it.

what OS are you using? No single problem since new altme versions 
.... I suggest you to remove old version, and install from scratch 
... new altme releases completly removed otherwise frequent crashes 
here ...

Hmmmmmmm.....what OS are you on?

That looks to me like your OS was locking a dir or file and so we 
could not get to it.

also not to make assumptions about what default fore/back colors 
should be.  paying attention to OS defaults can help there.

My second feedback/request was asking to only have to type in user 
credentials once per AltMe session.  I don't auto-populate my userid 
and password as this computer is a multi-user computer that doesn't 
take advantage of the built-in OS multi-user features (setup as single 
user).  So, switching between Worlds requires me to login each time 
I visit worlds I was already logged into.

i guess he simply uses an os-call to launch the right app. Where 
the app is choosen by the os, based on filetype. And a *.bat runs..

is it rebol on os x or altme, pasting code into altme doesn't keep 
newlines and tabs, if it is an altme issue then a fix would be very 
welcome 8)

Tried cr lf crlf, not sure if the clipboard get modified automagically, 
but can't paste with newline. Maybe some other os x user can check. 
No problem with tabs..

How safe is catch?
	

I have some rebol applications serving message communication (around 
1000 to 2000 messages per day mostly) running for more than half 
a year on Windows2000 Server without interruption since the last 
update of the OS for security reasons.

Recently I had to add some message splitting:
one-message -->  [message-part-1 message-part-2 message-part-3]

I used a construct similar to this

forever [
	until [new-messages-available]
	foreach message new-messages [
		catch [
			if not important [throw]

   do-some-heavy-message-processing-and data-completion-using-odbc
			if some-tests [throw]
			message-parts: split-messages message
			until [
				catch [
					message: first message-parts
					do-more-conversions
					if other-tests [throw]
					deliver message
					emtpy? message-parts: next message-parts
				]
			]
		]
	]
]

Now I saw two crashes in one day.
I was somehow able to reproduce the crash 
Invalid data type during recycle
 

by playing again the history of one to two weeks. But the crash happened 
always processing another message.

Ammon, rebol sound system needs overhaul anyway. But rebol implements 
sound/volume by just setting the host os system volume. A bit naughty, 
perhaps.

the point is that making bridge  betwen rebol script and librari 
in the way it is actually done is good for tiny simple library but 
very a tremendous work when it touch to heavy complicated library 
that intent to abstract from the os consept and give the same way 
to code on any OS/material. Mostly Opengl and GTK for example. Both 
libraries are heavy (lot of libs lot of struct lot of types lot of 
dependencies that needs a bridge too). For OPENGL you have two way 
to work or you make a OS based I/O and windowing system example gdi32.dll 
user32.dll for windows or xlib.so for Linux and  then exploite gl* 
function that are stored in the openGL.so/dll  or you use the related 
to opengl portable set of libraries to handle window drawing and 
Mouse/Keyboard events glut.dll/so. The fact that a librarie portable 
must be a library the abstract from the OS dependencies make them 
very complicated to handle. AS we don't have the same coding effort 
on library bridge coding than other language because many reasons 
in witch the fact that library loading is a Pro functionnality and 
maybe too because the system is not enought developped. It's easier 
to make a library bridge for a language when this language allows 
type creation and have based type in this language that feets with 
the one in C/C++

I am not sure it is the reponsibility of write to check if there 
is available space, but it maybe nice to have it. This usually falls 
on the domain of the OS.

Ingo: on the 'system port, no official doc. Some info:
rebolist thread (rebol.org) :

    http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-thread.r?m=rmlMYFJ
'signal demo script :

    http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/ml-display-thread.r?m=rmlNFFJ
drag-and-drop demo script: 

    http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=sys-port-drag-accept.r
systray demo script:

    http://compkarori.com/vanilla/display/System+Tray+Functionality

It's different for each OS. For MS-WIn, there is:
    get-modes system/ports/system 'system-modes
    ;== [window winmsg tray endian]
where:
    'window : REBOL console window handle,
    'winmsg : OS message block,
    'tray : systray definition block
    'endian : CPU byte order ('big or 'little)

For Linux:
    get-modes system/ports/system 'system-modes
    ;== [signal read-fd write-fd except-fd signal-names endian]

No. You will need something in the os.

Geomol, that way of locating user.r on Windows is really for the 
best. Windows is a multiuser OS after all, and the APPDATA directory 
on Windows is used roughly the same as the home directory on Linux. 
Global settings can be loaded from rebol.r in the same directory 
as the View executable.

This reminds me of Tao Elate. In that OS, all library functions are 
small VP asm files on disk. So if you use e.g. printf, only that 
function and not the whole stdlib is loaded in memory. The same function 
is also shared among all running programs minimizing memory overhead. 
Genius, as I see it!


Something like that can be implemented in REBOL with the use of objects 
in objects (that are not multiplied in mem). It's the way, e.g. the 
feel object is implemented in View. To be really efficient, only 
the functions (in the object) needed should be included into mem 
from disk.

well, no news on OS-X for how long? One month? Things really go way 
too much slowly .....

genesis - this medical firm is in search for an os, isnt it? its 
small, efficent, amiga-like? and ppc is a good embedded processor? 
Just thinking loud :)

I should remember that the doc of the original functions are in source-destination 
order, so for me is a good idea to make the same in Rebol,  there 
a direct map of OS function and OS doc on rebol functions

What is the OS of your web server ?

Moreover REBOL is using some high level OS keyboard handling routines 
so if you have setup key repeat delay too long on your system...this 
will affect your control in Rebol app too...so if user wants to go 
left he press the left-arrow but the 'repeat' events are sent after 
the delay (from os setup) so the action is delayed..very annoying.

I can see, it must be hard to support these features on all platforms. 
It's rather deep down in the OS.

I always hear that if you need to use a UNIX OS, you need to learn 
them. So far I've done fairly well without them, but have been configuring 
procmail once, which was a complete nightmare. :-)

so there's going to be one rebol3.lib for x86, usable on win, linux, 
syllable, aros whatever plus some open sourced OS wrappers?

not sure - but one lib for certain OS. There can be dependencies 
- library format for Windows .dll is surely different from .so from 
Linux, even if both do run on X86

but new aproach should imo help to get rebol ported to new platforms, 
because RT's responsibility will be to get their OS agnostic library 
ported ...

Rebolek: that would be more or less correct, however the format of 
the library usually depends on the OS, so it can't be the same file 
in most cases.

I've always liked the linux'es since (although they have been more 
prone to flake out with certain hardware configs) when the os crashes, 
I can think to myself...At least no one got paid.  :)  Not like the 
old and getting rarer 250 billion dollar blue screen of death.

The current port seems to be waiting on the Garnet OS group.  The 
Palm will all be running Linux soon.  Yeah soon.  Whatever that means.

actually, some of my rebol apps might take more ram the the os  :-D

Linux has been there for so many years, so I don't see that happen 
in the future. Some of the code might be emigrated to other OSs with 
other designs, but then it isn't Linux anymore. As I see it, Linux 
as a desktop OS is a dead end.

Anyone knows if rebol will run on the maemo OS as used by the Nokia 
N800 internet tablet? It is a debian-based linux derivation, so chances 
it will run.

Hi guys, I've tested today latest REBOL View on a Eee PC with the 
default Xandros OS, it works flawlessly so far, except for the usual 
small glitches with some default fonts.

Here under OS X, <Home> returns #"^A", so I can do this to use it:


view layout [key with [keycode: #"^A"] [alert "Home was pressed"]]

I just sstarted downloading this ubuntu linux OS.  I don't know much 
about it.  My last venture into Linux was REDHAT 5.2 which was sometime 
ago.  Can someone tell me how ubuntu compares to other linux flavors 
and if it is pretty standard.  If I'm going to learn linux I would 
rather learn what is the most useful set of commands that enables 
me to use the most distributions of linux.

Are you sure OS-X is better than Vista? OS-X is friendly Linux, no? 
Why not e.g. Ubuntu? :-)

to better support OS-X? So Internally you will switch to VM? Well, 
sorry for such questions, it is not just my level of knowledge - 
too low level :-)

I just ran Cyphre's Dotflowers at 1600x1200 and it ran pretty good. 
 it ate 75-99% of my CPU but it worked.  While it was running though 
it messed up the OS's window layering somehow.  When I click on a 
window in the background it does become the active window but is 
not brought to the top of the window stack.

http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/

it could be the basis for rebol/OS standalone appliance.

As far as I know R3 Task! are going to be base in OS threads, they 
will not have shared state, but nothing has been said about how they 
will communicate with the environment, or how is the order of execution 
going to be guarantee.

hehe, they want internet to become OS .... and PC OSes to become 
just - commodities - non-important in its own, just a layer for internet 
networked apps :-)

RE: Google...I want internet to become OS as well.

Geomol - just be sure you send enough data for OS to send two packets 
at least, or you will notice 200ms delay imo ...

I am not sure it is true anymore, but we noticed it developing our 
ccd camera few years ago ... OS simply waits with ACK defined period 
of time or simply to receive second packet, then it confirm both 
.... Ethereal will give you an answer :-)

Apple closes down OS-X - http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/17/78300_21OPcurve_1.html

Closes the source of os-x

Jaime, writing to files is something for the os to handle, not the 
language. what happens if you write from rebol on a file you're writing 
from another app?

Gabriele, I don't think is an OS issue only. Once you introduce tasking 
would could write something like:

do [
    task [write %file "Hello"]
    task [write %file "World"]
]


The question is what is the result of such computation. Without any 
further mechanism it can produce as minimum two different results. 
"World Hello"  "Hello World", discarding posible contention errors. 
So how does R3 will manage such issues.

What sense makes perfect determinism with multiple physical inputs 
, like sensors or people entering data? The entries and their order 
is slightly off anyway

 You can still have deterministic computation even in such situation. 
 We do have that today with any multitasking OS. Or would you like 
 to have your programs to produce any random result?

I never said that you need or not a general purpose language. As 
matter of fact, I don't think being general purpose has anything 
to do with concurrency. What I understand is than any new features 
that add concurrency  to  a language should do so in a manner that 
avoid non-deterministic results. Some languages have already accomplished 
 this goal, usually avoiding  threads. Threads operate more at  the 
OS level than the language one. So I hope R3 bring us good concurrency 
features, that ensure that our programs are deterministic, otherwise 
we could be shipping programs that at first glancelook correct and 
 will work, but could  fail later in production as the paper points 
out.

I want to cram a small skype os into this.. 

http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/Port-O-Rotary/portable-rotary.htm

pekr, the drives themselves are OK, but the OS'es handle them badly. 
If I under MacOSX store some files on the drive and eject the drive 
as I properly should, the files are just not present on the drive 
according to WinXP, as if the ejection procedure didn't sync files 
to disk. Half the time, they don't work under Linux without hours 
of fiddling and most win98 machines won't handle them at all. Data 
transfer between machines is probably successful about 50% of the 
time.

An internet connection is, for me, a much more reliable way to get 
data onto a machine. It's probably the syncing aspect that makes 
them so unreliable.

as far as my experience goes, WXP was never problem - plug-and-play, 
never lost single file. The problem is valid for W2K, but it is how 
they did it .... one of my friends told me (not sure it is true), 
that W2K first caches files, and unless of some size, it is not being 
written to target USB device. So, if you unplug it and not by using 
OS disconnecting facility, such files are not there ....

pekr, I can't just ask a customer to throw away 10 win98 machines 
and go spend thousand of dollars on XP licenses because my little 
pen drive does not work on them. the fact is that I work in too many 
different OS'es that USB drives can work reliably across. had I been 
working in XP alone, there may not have been a problem, but this 
is not the case.

Toyota developing their own OS
http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/neasia/004276

IIRC there was a BMW that was involved in accident locking its passenger, 
later it was discover that the problem was due to a change on the 
controller OS to windows embedder. So I guess now BMW are using something 
else.

F-Script - scripting OS-X - http://www.fscript.org/

I thought next surprise will be OS-X switches to REBOL :-)

Reichart, the automotive terminals they are talking about in the 
Toyota article will be installed in the dashboard of the cars. That 
means quite a bit more than 10,000 terminals here, and a much smaller 
comparison price.


Pekr, they do mention Windows Automotive OS, which is derived from 
Windows Mobile.

another hidden benifit to having your own OS is your employees can't 
spend the day surfing or playing solaitair if you have not ported 
the programs

Could those examples be better addressed with an appropriately designed 
Reblet?  (I guess I make the reblet/widget distinction as 'reblet' 
= 1. behaving as a traditional application within the OS, in that 
it appears in the taskbar/dock and can be alt/cmd-tabbed to and 2. 
contained within an OS window, opaque though perhaps containing custom 
styling)

Again, not a rhetorical question -- I see both as filling a similar 
space, I think Carl described it as 'disposable applications', easy 
to author, easy to use.  Widgets look good, but break the windows 
metaphor, substituting gimmicky aesthetics for consistent user experience. 
 I'm not sure there is value in the effort to emulate them over 1. 
making it easier to communicate with the services that drive them 
(better XML handlers, more flexible HTTP protocol, I18N, whatever), 
2. making reblets more accessible (within the OS, not the browser), 
3. providing an effortless base for making reblets look and feel 
good (still a chore, despite the capability of the view engine).

On point 3, I know that is a goal of RebGUI, but the project underlines 
that it is not trivial to set up a UI of OS/typical Ajax quality 
out of the box.

NetKernel OS - anyone heard of this one? http://www.1060.org/

Tao is really powerfull.  being a real time OS it can do things like 
guarantee bitrates and synchronise parrallel processes on two different 
machines!

I'm not so sure about that. I think, you were right the first time, 
Maxim. Tao Elate is a realtime OS, so is QNX.

The OS that Apple iPhone uses is MacOS X. Does that mean our REBOL 
programs can run on iPhone?

Louis: if you are on os x, this one work pretty neat http://www.hexcat.com/deepvacuum/index.html
, it will dl the whole site and rewrite urls to make them relative, 
or you coud try with acrobat pro if you want a pdf version of the 
site

1.0.4 available at: http://www.dobeash.com/download.html


Mac OS X version 10.4 support added as per http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/AppTechnology/chapter_5_section_20.html

you can, by creating some code to do so, not by simply looking into 
the directory and using default OS facilities.

I'm on os x 10.5.2, sqlite.r works fine with system preinstalled 
sqlite which is version 3.4.0, but doesn't work with latest version 
3.5.7 (installed thru macports), is this known or os x specific?

1.0.5 available at: http://www.dobeash.com/download.html


Mac OS X now uses the v2 API and newer dylib path. SQLite/version 
now contains version number as a tuple!

Versions 3.3.9 (first released 4-Jan-2007) onwards. Mac OS X used 
to ship with a really old version (3.0.8) dating from late 2004.

Volker - sounds good idea. The thing is - that control panel - is 
that rebol script/UI or some native stuff? And also - Java has icon 
in control panel, how such aproach is solved eg. on OS-X, Linux - 
do they share similar concept of having control panel facility in 
OS?

We should actually make contact with Opera's team directly.  They 
might be just as interested in Rebol as Rebol is in them.  I do not 
know anyone there ( I do know some of the FF team).  But I was planning 
to contact Opera soonish because I'm interested in working on a relationship 
where people buy a thintop (I'm coining this word for now) which 
is a super simple laptop with maybe a 1 gig sim card for memory, 
a keyboard, LCD display for lets say $100 bucks.   Has nothing BUT 
a browser (no OS….no M$ in other words).  I imagine this shipping 
with Opera built in, and I want it pointing to Qtask out of the gate.
 

So to answer your question, I think we need to get someone at Opera 
to take interest in Rebol, and help us solve problems.

Win 2000 Pro OS btw if that matters.

Henrik - why should it? There is no IE to support on other platforms. 
And imo other browsers on Linux/OS-X use NS compatible plug-in. And 
imo it should be even compatible API wise.

For NTLM authentication, isn't there some OS API to do that ?

I can't imagine that each program using Internet has it's own NTLM/Kerberos 
authentication scheme!!

Yes, I'm looking into both OS API and native methods.....

Question: On these systems that need full proxy support, are you 
running the latest OS? (i.e. WinXP SP1+, Win2k3, or WIn2k SP3+)? 
If so, there is OS support in those systems that may make this significantly 
simpler...

With this approach, we're not building full auto-config/NTLM/Kerberos 
proxy support into REBOL, rather we're utilizing the OS API resources 
to do it all for us.

Well, you tell me. Here are your options:

 1. Minor fix to get-net-info that reads correct registry values. 
 Does not handle auto-config, NTLM, or Kerberos.

 2. New refinements to 'read and 'write that use Win32 Internet API 
 to download and upload HTTP/FTP files. Uses whatever is supported 
 by the OS, including auto-config.

Would you prefer (1), (2), or both?

I would prefer os-level reading. That may also fix Brianh's problems 
re illegal downloads, i guess this data is cached in browser-cache 
of ie. Maybe read-thru could be changed to use that instead of sandbox. 
Easier to know what is on the system.

Said it wrong. os-level means #2,

Yes, I understand. But we're not talking about OS-level reading on 
Mac or Linux.

OS/X would be more important. But i guess it has similar apis too.

another challenge, which would render this plugin really useful, 
and exploitable on public sites, would be to get also the versions 
for linux and mac-os.

Should it be "application data" rather than "application settings"? 
I don't have the latter, so maybe an OS version difference.

Well it is more like [AltME]->[OS]->[Chrome] right?

So isn't the question, why does your OS still tell AltME about FF 
(which used to be IE when you first got it)?

Perhaps it is [AltME]->[REBOL]->[OS]->[Chrome]

Is it possible that you changed the default after the system was 
running, and AltmME (and therefor REBOL) don't know about the change 
yet?
This "feels" like another level of caching...

Note to self: when designing an OS, don't create a registry!!!

OK, I give up. I am in waiting mode, studying new GUI, in order to 
be able to catch few bugs for Carl. I reall wish host codes would 
be uploaded, so those of us interested, could start porting efforts 
to Os-X, Linux, Win Mobile ... and plug-in :-)

Righ, gobs being lower level would require less work to map to OS 
Printing API.

Well, if you are using the OS's facilities for printing you are using 
the API version of the semantics, not necessarily the source. What 
really matters is the semantics - the source is just a generated 
representation.

For information, I've successfully tested direct printing in Linux 
and OS X using PostScript format documents and CUPS as backend. I'm 
currently trying to implement a Draw dialect compiler targeting PS. 
Unix and OS X support wasn't needed for my project, but I couldn't 
resist to give it a try ;-).