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Just a remider that boron is an fully open-source REBOL-like evaluator 
built-in C. It has 23 datatypes and more than 100 "native" functions. 

The Boron homepage is at http://urlan.sourceforge.net/boron/

I really don't understand the licensing issue about Boron. Java is 
GPL licensed and it doesn't stop people usng it. Boron is licensed 
under LGPL.. What is the impediment to adopting Boron?

Maybe it's that you can't look at the source and then work on a comparable 
non-*GPL project?

Java's a special case: It got popular while it was proprietary, but 
open source people wanted to use it too but they couldn't. So they 
cloned Java under a Classpath license, which eventually led to Java 
itself being GPL'ed, which may have led to Sun dying (hard to say, 
but it did kill Java's value to the company). Still, it's mostly 
the proprietary versions of Java that are in use, and the business 
model is mostly based on proprietary restrictions to the use of the 
code.

note, I didn't want to start a licensing discussioh, it was just 
an observation based on my perspective as a "curious outsider"  of 
the Boron project.

As the only comparable projects to boron seem to be REBOL and World 
(both of which are closed source),, I can't see the "not being able 
to look at the source" issue being a problem. I don't think that 
boron's licensing has anything to do with its level of popularity.

Agreed. People who can't come to terms with the LGPL, which is everywhere, 
will have to be content with REBOL and stop complaining about Boron

They should probably also stop using Chrome, Safari, OpenOffice, 
GCC, Linux and the like

And if GPL is really like that, it is in fact denying a freedom of 
choice. BSD like licences are the way to go.

All the ones I mentioned are LGPL and GCC and Linux are even worse: 
GPL. So if you don't want to use Boron because it's LGPL, you can't 
use all that other software, either

So my claim is not fanatical, the claim that Boron is unusable is

Sorry, Peter was wondering why people in the REBOL community didn't 
adopt Boron. Aside from REBOL being good enough, licensing was why. 
I have no reason to not use a *GPL product as a black box - it's 
looking at the source that can be a problem.

Not really. The main way that I learn a programming platform is to 
view the source, though on platforms where the source is not available 
(as for proprietary platforms like Delphi) or too complex to be of 
use (C++ compilers, office suites, most operating systems) then I 
try to go by the docs and experimentation. If I want to contribute, 
I need to see the source. However, if I learn anything by looking 
at the source, I have to be careful about how I apply that knowledge 
elsewhere if I might violate a license by doing so. So I use Linux, 
Java, OpenOffice and GCC like they are black boxes with no sources 
available, only because they are useful enough to be worth using 
without really learning from them. I wish I could contribute to Boron, 
but it might interfere with my ability to contribute to REBOL and 
Red. And I already have a good enough semi-black box in R3.

What would it take to change the license or Boron from LGPL (which 
has linking restrictions) to Classpath (which doesn't)?

Keep in mind that something like encapping is the closest that REBOL 
has to linking. Is there something like encapping for Boron?

Boron is a library, so encapping would be writing your own host for 
it, so the LGPL library stays separate

The library is always linked dynamically, as with R3 hostkit apps?

Like REBOL without the source function or hostkit source, but basically 
yes.

The R3 host kit source will taint you more, because it's commercial

I never saw the REBOL mezzanines be declared PD, either

Nope, but I wrote most of the R3 mezzanines and all of the recent 
changes to the R2 ones, and my contributions were either MIT licensed 
or contributed under the condition that they be open sourced under 
a permissive license - no copyright transfer agreed to. And the host 
code is in the open portion of R3 - I haven't seen any closed source.

I don't have access to the r3lib source either for the same reason.

Looking at the R2 mezzanines has already tainted you, and the fact 
that you can see the source of the R3 host kit doesn't mean that 
it's open source - it isn't

Brian, you could always ask Karl for permission to look at the sources 
and not have you own worked "tainted" by doing so. Of course, he 
may say no. On the other hand, there is no harm in asking.

Brian, your "see the source" fear is silly. Sure, there's a lot of 
copyright terror in the USA, but the idea that the authors of Boron 
would sue you because you wrote similar code elsewere is ridiculous.


Also, copyright covers verbatim text, not ideas. You can use what 
you learn in any way you wish, this is not about patents.

Hi, I am interested into building an maintaining documentation for 
those programming languages based on REBOL.
It would be nice to have a DOCBASE for them.
What I search is:
- Someone ABLE to SETUP the Linux and the Wiki Software
- Someone which would share with me the cost of hosting.
Do you like the idea ?
Write me at [giuseppe-:-chillemi-:-eu]

I've upgraded Boron on http://tryrebol.esperconsultancy.nlto the 
latest 0.2.3

Fine... I just updated the Eric's version: https://github.com/Oldes/rs/commit/37c6e8e8bc316b06bf8eef1638225551421199b2

But it sometimes returns results which are not exactly identical 
like with the struct! version... like: #{BDCCCCCC} versus #{BDCCCCCD} 
for -.1 
I guess it's because of rounding error in Rebol itself.

update: https://github.com/Oldes/rs/commit/19771ea6a7991dd6960ec8c9a1a2a2690c6cd527

fixed the rounding so now the result is same like in the struct! 
version and added real/from-native32

Hmm, you've transformed 'from-native, but as the real need was in 
fact to be able to get a binary! representation of a decimal! value, 
I tranformed 'to-native and 'split for that purpose. Has this IEEE 
library is quite rich, the need for the workaround of the intermediary 
string! representation is not needed anymore. Anyway, thanks for 
the update, I'm sure we'll need it at some point for float support.

I transformed both, to-native (the first link) and from-native (second 
one) although I know the binary to decimal version is not needed 
for the Red project... it was just to make it complete. Btw.. I think 
it could be optimised as logic operation are faster than pure math.

Thanks, I've missed that. In my version, I have removed line 389 
in 'split32 and added: fraction: fraction + 1 after 390. That fixes 
the "by one" inaccuracy.

In R2 you can't add words to an existing object, you have to make 
a new object (as you are above) and change the reference in the block 
to that new object. FOREACH gives you the object, but not the block 
holding it. FORALL will work for this. e.g. 

blk: reduce [make object! [ test1: 1 ] make object! [ test1: 1 ]]

forall blk [
    change blk make first blk [test-2: 2]
]

probe blk

Hi all, I thought that this one has already been solved... Apparently 
not:


The VALUE argument of the APPEND function is not defined as [any-type!] 
(in contrast to INSERT). I think that this should be corrected in 
R2, shouldn't it?

Wow. I think so. Not that I remember needing to append UNSET values 
but, if that's the underlying behavior, it seems APPEND should be 
consistent.

So there is a difference, if no type is specified and if any-type! 
is specified. Like in:

>> f: func [v][]
>> f
** Script Error: f is missing its v argument

>> f: func [v [any-type!]][]
>> f

HELP does display it differently. In the first case, it's:

ARGUMENTS:
     v -- (Type: any)

and the second:

ARGUMENTS:
     v -- (Type: any-type)


Subtle differences. And you're correct, Ladislav. Insert and append 
sould take the same kind of argument.

Is it possible to get function name from inside the function body 
while it's procesed?

So far I'm using this:
myfunc: func[
	"Defines a user function with given spec and body."
	[catch]

 spec [block!] {Help string (opt) followed by arg words (and opt type 
 and string)}
	body [block!] "The body block of the function"
	/local desc
][
	if parse spec [set desc string! to end][
		insert body reduce ['log desc]
	]
	throw-on-error [make function! spec body]
]

However, In R3, you can use the stack inspection native STACK for 
an approximation:
>> foo: func [] [print stack/word 1]
>> foo
foo
>> bar: :foo
>> bar
bar

In R2, use the catch-an-error trick

      a-function: func [][print ["i am named " get in disarm  try [0 / 
      0] 'where]]
      a-function
      i am named  a-function

Just remember that a function does not really have a name. Just the 
name, if any, by which you called it:

    b-function: c-function: :a-function   ;; one function, many names

    do reduce [:a-function]                      ;; one function, no 
    name

Interesting. I remember some talk about it in the past, but I thought 
it was fixed, or it was a different issue. I will try tomorrow at 
my work, our share is called "L:" too :-)

GrahamC, thank you for passing this around.  I did get part way to 
a solution, as noted on your site.  Strange as it may seem, I am 
able to get to the network drives if I run a copy of REBOL that I 
download and leave with the name it came with, namely rebol-view-278-3-1. 
 The copy of REBOL that was giving me trouble was the same rebol-view-278-3-1, 
but I had renamed it to rebview to make a desktop shortcut work. 
 I had the name "rebview" in the shortcut so that I would not have 
to change the shortcut if I ever got an upgraded version of REBOL 
with a different name, like maybe rebol-view-279.  So my first problem 
with WIndows 7, REBOL, and network drives seems fixed.  


I still am not to a full solution to my Windows 7 issues.  I have 
some REBOL scripts that use the "call" command to run powershell. 
 Powershell then runs a powershell script to extract stuff from an 
EXCEL spreadsheet, which then is manipulated by the REBOL script. 
 Actually it's a bit messier.  I run a REBOL program launcher on 
the C drive which runs a REBOL script on a network drive.  The script 
on the network drive calls powershell with parameters to make powershell 
run a powershell script.  The powershell script extracts EXCEL data, 
and the calling REBOL script then makes a report of the extracted 
data.  


When I try to do this, the result from powershell is that I am not 
allowed to run scripts on that computer.  I am aware of this feature 
of powershell, and I have done what has worked for Windows XP (set-executionpolicy 
remotesigned).  I can run powershell directly, and execute scripts 
located on a network drive.  When a REBOL script that worked on XP 
calls powershell on WIndows 7, it won't go.  I am not expecting any 
help with this last issue at this time because the "call" does work 
in some cases (call/shell "notepad") (call/console/show "powershell"), 
so I still have several things to try, and if none work I am plotting 
a work-around.

Also try to use the full path. Once I have faced a problem CALL with 
REBOL style file! value. It worked with a windows-style path.

And also have problem with /shell worked on my XP but did not on 
my customers W7.

I just tried:

do to-rebol-file "L:\some\path\here\test.r"


and everything went OK, Win Vista here. Console is being launched 
form the shortcut on start bar, pointing to renamed to rebol.exe

note: the reason I used to-rebol-path was, that directory names contained 
spaces ....

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"

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.

sorry for the color... It got stuck, I didn't realize I was in yellow 
 ;-)

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.

Thank you guys. I know the behaviour of charset in FIND. But I expect 
to skip the char that found, if I use /TAIL refinement as in using 
string.
Same for /LAST as Gregg said. It ignored for charsets. 
And also;
>> find/reverse "endo" charset "d"
== none
a bit confusing..

I've got a function that doesn't and I know one of you can explain 
why. 
foo: func [  /dothis anobject ] [
 if dothis [
  dosomething anobject
 ]
]

foo myobject


So the dosomething function does not work with the "anobject".  However, 
If I hardcode the "myobject" into foo like:
foo: func [ /dothis ]
[
 if dothis [ 
 dosomething myobject
 ]
] 


It works. So my questions are: Is it because "anobject" is a pointer? 
And what do I do on the calling/receiving sides to fix that?
Thanks in advance.

Hold on. I think I might be testing the wrong thing.

Nope, that wasn't it and I'm back to wondering what's the difference 
between the object and the passed object.

OK, figured it out. I had to pass the object as a 'word then "do" 
it in the function to get it to work.

You can pass functions as parameters, and then omit the 'do

In your example, you didn't spec the /do-this refinement on the call. 
Probably just a glitch in posting here though.

Thanks Graham and Gregg. The object that I was passing was a face 
and I tried different ways to get it to work and that was the only 
way it would work. I guess the question is how does one know when 
he is passing some value if the receiving function sees it as the 
writer is intending it to be seen. Anyway for now I am satisfied 
and have moved on to other issues. I appreciate your input though.

If the func doesn't take a lit-word/get-word argument, it should 
evaluate and pass as an object. Now, if you have a block of words 
that refer to list faces, and you pass that word, that's what you 
get. If your func has types defined for the args, that can help catch 
issues like this.

Gregg, thanks, it could be the func that's getting the arg, the "dosomething" 
in my example. I hadn't look at that though I was wondering still 
what the difference was with the two objects. Unfortunately it always 
seemed right even with the types defined because they were both objects. 
At least that's what type? outputted. Maybe it has something to do 
with the context they were bound to. Anyway, that's for another day. 
Thank you as always.

James, I think you are mixing up the word which refers to an object 
with an object value.  this is confusing in Rebol because words are 
not variables.  

it's happened to me a few times (especially in VID) that I mix this 
up in action blocks and VID dialect builders.

often, I'd build a block to be used and forget to reduce the block 
before appending it to the spec.  so what happens is that you receive 
an unbound word, instead of the data you assumed it should be refering 
to.

since I've been doing parse compilers for the last 2 months, I can 
say this have happened even more often lately  ;-)

you might also look up the 'COMPOSE word, it's very handy for resolving 
these kinds of issues (considering it's this kid of issue to begin 
with ;-)

Thanks. I wish there was a way to compare words like this so one 
could find out what the difference was. I suppose that is part of 
the bindology world. Glad to hear you are working with Rebol. It 
could be me but I haven't seen you around lately. Probably me because 
I haven't been around much here myself.

I've been working a lot lately, and haven't had a lot of spare time. 
 I'm actually working with REBOL full time at a company which is 
using it to get a significant competitive advantage over the competition.

I think people don't realize just how much power lies in parse.  
 Even I'm impressed with it right now.  I've been doing tests with 
really crazy stuff like two-cursor parse rules and run-time auto-recompilation 
of 400MB parse rules. 


 I've been doing things like parsing 100MB word documents and pushing 
 the interpreter to the limit ... reaching the 32-bit 1.6 GB RAM limit, 
 6 hour loop tests, etc. :-)

hum... either that was sarcasm or you mean, what is the company I 
now work for?

That's incredible Maxim. Good work. With what you do with parse, 
is the knowledge available online  in tthe form of the present parse 
documentation, or did you have to discover new techniques? I have 
to admit I just barely use it when I need to. Anyway, thanks for 
sharing your experience. I

learning parse requires baby steps and at some point, the decision 
to solve a real problem with it and force yourself to learn it.  
I didn't use parse for almost a decade until I started using it more 
and more to a point that currently I do more parse than any other 
coding in REBOL (but that's just because its idealy suited for this).


some little tricks accumulate with experience and eventually, we 
discover pretty wacky things, which allow us to use parse almost 
like a VM.

maybe the licensing talk kind of lowered enthusiasm

The last release was only a couple weeks ago.

Gregg - it is not about new releases, it is about caring about the 
product at all. So - Geomol announced World. After two months, my 
reality check is - NOONE is really interested, period.

And the culprit - the licence - the old song .... RT's path ...

I admit that I haven't made time to dig into World, but there is 
already a *lot* there from what I have seen. Personally, I am very 
interested. I am also very interested in leveraging community efforts 
in support of all the REBOL-like languages that are available.

As for me - I do care about the Red - I already donate, and I will 
do so in next few weeks again. In opposition to you, I don't care 
in ANY closed efforts again. I don't care about RT anymore. Carl 
is an ufo :-) I can't accept  ANYONE, behaving like he is. Weren't 
we supposed to know the resolution of our situation? This is total 
crap - Saphirion my ass - Carl is just making joke of us all ...

No, no need for me ... you are too think skinne. The reality check 
is rather harsh though ...

he had to do some work to pay the bills

I hope that he'll see the light about the licensing, he seems very 
reasonable

We were supposed to see an agreement between the Saphirion, and RT. 
And as expected - nothing happened. Perhaps, Carl is growing his 
wine :-)

Mchean - as for Geomol - I feel sorry for him - he is a victim of 
RT's treat of the community .... Geomol has clear view of how to 
put his project forward, but ppl don't seem to be interested - that's 
my impression at least ...

on the other hand I understand his concern about getting a return 
on his investment, and if world were

Then reality check:


This group was started 2 months ago. It's easy to go through it and 
look for my blue and yellow releases and notes. That's a lot of progress 
in 2 months. If you see it otherwise, then you're blind. The C sources 
of World has grown a lot in those two months, and it's quality work 
with few errors considering the amount.


You will most likely see the progress of World come in waves. I had 
worked intensely on it more than full time since before summer. Yes, 
more than full time (more than 8 hours a day, also week-ends), so 
that's a lot of man hours. The last month, I've done paid freelance 
work too. At the same time, for World I'm researching better networking 
(cURL), getting lib calls to work under Windows 64 using libffi and 
finishing the memory model, so circular references are coped with 
correctly. Why didn't I say so? Because I like to announce things, 
when it's done, instead of giving false hopes, but now I made an 
exception.


1) I'm not going to give my work away for free at this time. That's 
because I see no benefit in doing so.

2) World will not come in a situation like REBOL, with lots of errors 
for a long time and still closed source. If I wasn't able to continue 
work on World (to fix errors, make further progress or whatever), 
and if people relied on work already done, then I would open source 
it. As this isn't the current situation with World, this is no argument 
to open source it.


If you don't like my model, move on. Negative rants here are not 
productive.

That's cool! Then you can add explanations & examples to them, later.

And look at the "Note Window" under View menu, you can add notes 
to items. They will be exported to Flash / Javascript as Tooltips 
which is quite useful.

Thanks, guys. Easy to do with the right tool, and FreeMind works 
well for me.

The Map is the current picture of what's implemented, so it's not 
an image of all for version 1 of World. As I mention in the README 
on GitHub, date! and time! is only partly implemented, the rest is 
more or less completed for version 1.

I would like to improve the Map, so I'm working on that.

Gregg wrote in group #Red: "World has similar goals I believe."


Yes. To clarify: There is World and there is World/Cortex. World 
is written in C and the Cortex extension is written in World. It's 
a design goal to have as little as possible in the C part, but because 
it's also a goal to have good performance, especially with math stuff, 
some functions are native (written in C), which could have been mezzanines 
(written in World), like ABS, COS, SIN, TAN (all small functions 
in C).


But large functions like PARSE and SORT and many other functions 
are part of the Cortex extension, so they're written in World and 
is therefore open source.


With the good support for dynamic loaded libraries, good performace 
with heavier functions can be achieved that way.


And then there is the REBOL extension (in the World file %rebol.w), 
which is there to hold further extensions and definitions needed 
to run REBOL scripts. Those are not in the Cortex extension, because 
I disagree with some of the REBOL design decisions, and because I 
would like the Cortex extension not to be too large.


For me, World and Cortex has the higher priority, the REBOL extension 
the lower priority, meaning I use more time on finishing World/Cortex 
for now.

Geomol - could you please explain, how wrapping libraries in World 
are done? Call me dumb, but I can't understand it from a website. 
OK, found more in PDF docs. I just wonder, if I always should use 
typecheck? Eg. I wanted following function to return 0 or 1. I tried 
with variou int types on the C side, and integer! datatype on the 
World side. I was receiving very large integer numbers as a result, 
untill I put [typecheck] in there. Maybe I just had incorrect argument 
type on the C side selected?

led: load/library %ledctrl.dll

led-is-power?: make routine! [
   [typecheck]
   led "LSN_IsPower" []
   uint integer!
]

World is 64 bit. If you don't specify typecheck, it assumes the return 
value to be a 64-bit integer, e.g. sint64 or uint64 in C and integer! 
in World. If the return value of the C library routine isn't a 64 
bit integer, you need to specify typecheck to get it converted from 
8, 16 or 32 bit to 64 bit. If the return value of the C library routine 
is 64 bit, typecheck isn't necessary, but can still be used, and 
it will slow the routine call a bit.

I say C, but the library can be made with any language, I guess. 
It's just, that the C types (actually typedefs) are used in the explanation.

Well, a trade-off :-) It is about to get the most expected result 
preferably, vs your mentioned speed :-)

What about a compiler option to turn on and off the typecheck? More 
complicated, but we would have a chance to run in default (typecheck) 
and then test it without typecheck by changing just one option.

After I wrote the above, I considered it some more. Right now, most 
people will probably run into this problem, because most libraries 
return 32 bit values. But in the future, and with what World is very 
much designed for, namely science, 64 bit values will be used. So 
I'm not gonna change it.


Problem with compiler option is, that we then have two versions of 
World, and programs made for one won't run on the other.


Maybe better to make a World wrapper function with it's own routine 
definition dialect!?

But we should set the option in the (on top of) source code, not 
in runtime, so it should not be a problem having 2 versions of World. 
We can say "compile this source with "typecheck" options". No?

In the boot time of World compiler some functions changes according 
to some options. As in "Option Compare", "Option Explicit" options 
in VB6.

And to make is less confusing, the function description should probably 
read "True if a series isn't at its tail."

Working on the next release of World, I implemented coercion for 
words and datatypes, so things like block! = 'block! returns true. 
This lead to a much simpler implementation of SWITCH, which is a 
mezzanine in World, so it looks like I'm on the right track.

Update!


I'm implementing support for cyclic series in World these days. My 
initial research about freeing memory taken by cyclic series made 
me realize, that it'll hit performance, if every block and paren 
freed is being tested for cyclic references. So I'll implement a 
FREE mezzanine written in World, that can free such structures. This 
lead me to molding such structures, which is only partly implemented 
in current version of World and copying such structures. Those functions 
will be mezzanines too, as it's much easier to write the code in 
World than in C. So some C code will be removed in next release, 
but we'll have some more World code instead.

Maxim, the fix was requested for R3 but not yet implemented, or planned.

hum... strange I feel like it was fixed, since at some point, R3 
coudn't make objects which I required, then, when Carl did the whole 
copy/make makeover, I was able to start using R3 because of deep 
copying issues being resolved ... maybe it was not completely fixed.