AltME groups: search

and language components - do you remember? It was there just to distract 
ppl from R# back at that time imo, it was even removed rom announcement 
page later ;-)

Pekr, what is proper marketing? Its a very difficult issue.. but 
you know that i assume.. I dont know what the difference is between 
europe and the rest of the world but I do know that it succes depends 
for 90% on "Accepted Vision of the product!" by the public (Public 
can be anything..) One thing is sure , Rebol is still its time ahead 
with many things and thats a disadvantage currently because of the 
mis-intepreted use of Rebol by the rest of the world. (thats what 
i think). Still i think the RT is overflowed by exciting and needed 
to publish towards the community "some" release. But i could be very 
wrong here as well because i only observe Rebol marketing from a 
birdview..

proper marketing

 - I too don't know what to do exactly, but I do know, that such things 
 do take time. I would start defining - WHAT I want to say, to WHO 
 I want to say it, and I woudl start with new website ...

but we have time ;-)

Well thats good. So now you reverse that it determine what key words 
someone would search for so that Rebol websites would pop up. Some 
how I don't think you'd look for "vision" or "ahead of its time", 
but you would want to zero in on "rapid development multi or cross 
platform development internet protocols messaging " etc ... and start 
feeding the Search engines these sites linked to these words. If 
you go to rebol.com and do a "view source"  see how many hits you 
get on those words.

Sunanda - those a good points. So search the rebol web server log 
and see what the key words were that got hits from the SE. Start 
building pages that maximize those key words, have links back to 
your main Rebol sites and feed the SE with these links. Its an interative 
process that takes time and effort. At the moment all we see is time 
being spent.

I.e. the problem with introducing REBOL into a BIG software development 
compagny is that the developers are always willing to try a change! 
but the total package of moving from 1 development enviroment to 
the other is far to complicated and expensive to do it.. So they 
stick with what  "others" use  and do, without thinking through the 
whole picture.. Its a pitty but a fact though.. Still if a development 
compagny would start directly (or on a new project) with i.e. REBOL 
the change that it will have success if far greater. Well....getting 
to that stage is difficult because REBOL is unknown... Its like "air" 
to the people, so you have to put time into it.. (There is no time 
inside big compagnies..there is only time in technology enhanced 
compagny's that do research. So you miss a market...) Anyway a nice 
topic which keeps me sometimes thinking about "Who promoted the Wheel.. 
;-)" It was an evolution... And indeed Internet promotion is part 
of this evolution so please continue ;-)

Carl I give your information on mac OSX to french community here 
they are waiting for a mac OSX version since long time :)

for example here in france macs are pretty well implented in university 
because they are simple to manage in hight number. In hoght schools 
you get windows but you get lesser computer to manage (In my hight 
school in 1997 they was only 30 computers equiped with windows with 
a controled acces for the students you can use it only on certain 
days of the weeks durring a gived time. When I ingress to university 
they was 200 macs for every one  to use every time 100 windows pc 
to be used on restricted time and 20 Alphas/linux debian + 10 Sillicon 
graphics 02 with IRIX + 3 data severs (2 sun ultra 1 (X11 sharing) 
 + 1 dec 50 (NFS, mail, web ) + 40 Xteminal box for former computer 
ingeneer  ) MAc and PC was used for office application LINUX/UNIX 
computers was used to form computer ingeneer .This shows pretty well 
I think the world clivage in informatic :)

My old time friend, who tried to use rebol some few years ago, left 
it because of following reasons - weak View documentation, incomplete 
styleset, occassional View crashes. He complained about missing styles 
mainly, as as a newbie, he was not able to produce his own styles. 
He tried to look into styles source, but all those mysterious "init" 
and other things, you will agree - are not for newbies to start with. 
Then I digged out one old doc from my archive, basically describing 
View-without-VID - faces, events, their description etc. He then 
started to create his own styles, without VID. Then he left rebol.....

I'm glad you've got it working, Graham. But for me it's really time 
for bed now (2:30 am here :-)

It's hobbistic only. And it took quite some time.

yes. but they had that all the time. timers are related to gui, and 
that is different on OS/X.

9 month time to invent some toys with embedded rebol? networked teddybears 
etc?

After baby is there, there is no time for inventing for some time 
:)

There's not much time for sleeping either!

Thats the time usually used for inventing ;)

Sounds very cool Ingo! Won't have time to play for a while, but thanks!

REBOL [
	Title: "Local Index" 
	Type: 'index 
	dynamic: true 
	plugin-pane: 0.5
]

title "Local Files"
app 0.3

group "A" effect [multiply green] 
			 
group "B" icon %action.png

action "a\gitarre"    do [explore %/f/gitarre/]
action "a\view-root" do [explore view-root]
action "a\hamster"   do [call "H:\prog\Hamster\Hamster.exe"]

action "b\Internet" do [
	call "H:\Programme\offline-proxy-mm3\MM3-WebAssistant.bat"
	call "C:\Programme\discountsurfer\discountsurfer.exe"
	call "H:\Programme\Mozilla\Firefox\firefox.exe"
	call "C:\Programme\Opera75\Opera.exe"
] 


action "b\Firefox" do [	call "H:\Programme\Mozilla\Firefox\firefox.exe"] 
icon %web-surf-action.png

action "c\desktop"   do [editor view-root/desktop.r] 
action "c\imap"      do [editor %imap-handler.r] 

file "Info" %info.txt
file "T\Test" %test1.r 
file "T\Test2" %test2.r 
file "T\Test" %test3.r

; this is composed ----
file (form now/date) %dummy.r

action "Click me" #clickme do [
            alert "hi"

            [Text "This will be displayed within the desktop" [alert "ho"]]
          ]

action "Click me 2" #clickme2 do [
            alert "hi"
			; no return value, so nothing displayed in the desktop
          ]

action "PRINT" do [print "^/^/----------------------^/^/^/"]
action "prin somethin" do ["yea"]
file "t\Test" %dummy.r

; this will draw the plugin
app-draw [face /local cl-size][
   cl-size: to pair! reduce [face/size/x 50]
	face/pane: layout/offset[
		at 0x0 
	   text "00:00:00" cl-size center 255.155.40 with [
   		font: [size: 24]
	   	rate: 1
		   user-data: none
   		feel: make feel [
	   		engage: func [face action event i] [
		   		if user-data <> now/time [
			   		i: form user-data: now/time
				   	if 7 > length? i [append i ":00"]
					   face/text: i
   					show face
	   			]
		   	]
      	]
      ]
      text "TEST" 
		button "hi" [alert "you!"] 
   	button "CLOSE" [unview/all] 
	] 0x0 face/size 
]

; if you need to redraw after a resize, not yet used
app-resize [new-size][]

Graham -- sorry to hear about your injuries.

I can put the opposite case: my cycle odometer says I'm just coming 
up to 5,000 miles this year. With zero accidents or injuries; zero 
time stuck in traffic; total annual running costs of around USD150 
for servicing and parts; and a lot of health benfits.

I would use seperate sizes for media and script. script maybe 8k? 
its a demo, and a month. media should be more. because one feature 
is, take a photo and do crazy things with it. a photo in 32k is not 
much. a script of 32k takes some month work (its a demo, so it should 
be "this does in 32k what others do in 32k*8, and that kind of compression 
takes time)

I think that is the beauty of this challenge.


How little time (and code) allows u to create something wonderful..

I think there are better things we can do with our time.

btw - what is the status of OS-X version? IIRC it was high on priority 
list and it is long time since View was released last time. Is that 
so big problem to not implement timers for OS-X in half a year or 
how long it is since View release? ;-)

If you're already feeling anxious, Kru, more time just makes it worse 
! :)

Can do once I get some time.

I overlooked that aspect., the group is web-public. As you infer, 
a group can easily be made web public at any time so it's better 
not to trust AltMe's privacy except within private conversations.

If you allow more than one refinement at a time, an approach is to 
build up the code in a block, depending on the refinements (using 
if), and then evaluate the block at the end of the function. Example:


f: func [/a /b /c] [blk: copy [] if a [append blk [print "ref a active"]] 
if b [append blk [print "ref b active"]] if c [append blk [print 
"ref c active"]] do blk]

>> f/c/a
ref a active
ref c active

BenK, I waited a real long time to purchase Pro/sdk but glad I did 
as I had a project come up that required binding my app into a simple 
to use .exe.

I'm new to REBOL (discovered it by accident searching for internet 
operating systems) and was pleasantly surprised to discover this 
powerful language/environment with an active/passionate community. 
I'm not a programming guru, but would like to understand the language/environment 
and the types of applications it is good for (and not good for). 
So would anybody be able to point me to the "idiot's guide to REBOL"? 
Does REBOL provide architecture documentation/guidelines and/or frameworks 
for the development of scalable, fault tolerant, manageable, with 
hot code swapping for soft real-time 24x7 applications? Thank you 
in advance for your recommendations.

Well, you joined our community in the correct time, for us we are 
close, actually very close to change REBOL millenium. 1.June there 
will be REBOL 3 released to selected developers. REBOL 3 is BIG change 
in architecture, for the good of course!

For things that do exist:

Resources:

- http://www.rebol.com- corporate site, you will find docs linked 
there

- http://www.rebol.net- developer's central. Sadly site was much 
more rich, but there was a server crash some time ago. But - still 
valuable rources - test releases, Carl's blogs, RAMBO bug database 
etc.

mostly a spare time, but look at Carl's presentation - he sumes it 
up there too. There are few developers, doing REBOL full time:


- few top developers present here work for RT on contractual basis. 

- there is a company called SafeWorlds (Reichart's company) - he 
employs tens of ppl IIRC. Their new system is http://qtask.com, 
front end is web 2.0, but whole back-end is REBOL based.

- few developers working on their own - Henrik, Ashley, DocKimbel 
(mySQL, postgress cool protocols, Uniserve, Cheyenne)

It seems that the the time might be right to develop a "killer" application 
that leverages the power of REBOL3 ;-)

Does REBOL provide architecture documentation/guidelines and/or frameworks 
for the development of scalable, fault tolerant, manageable, with 
hot code swapping for soft real-time 24x7 applications?
 


Petr already covered the basics (Thanks for doing that Petr!), so 
I'll just chime in with opinions. 


I've been using REBOL since 2001. No tool is perfect, and REBOL is 
no exception, but there are only a few things I think it really isn't 
suited for even in its current form. It was not designed for programming 
in the large, but that's a benefit as much as a drawback, until you 
start building larger systems. IME, REBOL does require a different 
mindset if you want to get the most out of it. You can write code 
as you would in many other languages, but you won't see the big benefits 
REBOL offers if you do. It's still a good tool, even used that way.


The docs and tools you asked about don't exist in official form, 
but there are a lot of "pieces" in the community. I'm working on 
something now that has those same goals.

Louis: it's possible that there is some incopatibility with the newer 
versions of rebol. I only tested it with at most 1.2.10 so far. I'll 
see if i can find so time to update it for 1.3 (the code needs to 
be changed for the new image datatype, for example; as a side effect 
it will be much faster with images, though).

other fonts: that's not really trivial. would require some work... 
i'm not sure if i can find the time for that.

Gabriele, I'll look foreward to the update.  Actually, I use pdf-maker 
all the time.  This is the only time I have experienced a problem.

1) no; 2) no. Sorry. Supporting other charsets requires changes to 
the code AND to the font metrics data. About pdf-tables, never got 
to document it at all. i don't have any simple example either, except 
from some i provided here or on the ml long time ago.

Gabriele, just tried out pdf-maker for the first time yesterday. 
Very nice and quite useful.

i think TeX has a very good hypenation algorithm (at least it was 
the best at the time)

initially i was first attempting to break lines with the normal tolerance, 
then increasing it if that failed. the problem with this approach 
is that the time needed by break-lines grows quickly with the tolerance; 
if we want it to never fail, we need to give it an infinite tolerance, 
which means considering all possible breaks, which takes forever.

So an application would operate in simple" mode most of the time, 
but final render would use the expensive algorithm that requires 
n passes.

Mmm.. I can't think of any particular need for tabs off the top of 
my head, but I remember a situation a long time ago where I was editing 
text, tabs were not implemented and I missed them. I'm sorry I can't 
be more specific than that at the moment.

about time.  It's a nightmare trying to clean spyware off ....

graham i agree with you that"s why i use opera 90% of the time

Sunanda: I quote you from another forum: Tim: A general purpose uploader 
would be very useful. I'll drop you some notes privately on some 
ideas for what it should/could do.....Looking forward to it! My idea 
is of a cgi upload script that for any cgi script, first checks a 
web site and compares timedate stamps, checking to make sure that 
dependencies are current and if not, makes them also available for 
upload. BTW: Some time ago on the rebol ML,

there was reference to an enhanced FTP module. Does that ring a bell? 
<grin> or was that you?

that web site reports the time in GMT

(I hope this is the right group to post this in.)

I have a problem, when reading a file on another computer thru a 
shared drive. I'm sitting on a Windows client, and the file is on 
a UNIX server. First time I read the file, it's ok. Then if the file 
is updated on the UNIX server, I still get the old version on the 
client.

I've tried the read-thru/update command, but it doesn't solve the 
problem. Maybe read-thru/update doesn't work with shared drives? 
My code looks like this:

read-thru/update %/u/adv71-20/data/invoice.txt

Any ideas?

(It's possible to distribute a sync from the server to the client, 
and then I'll get the new version of the file. But I'll like to be 
able to get the new version from the client.)

Good suggestions, Anton! Yes, I'm pretty sure, it's outside REBOL's 
control, as I sometimes see strenge behaviour (for example regarding 
file locking) in other programs. The intra-network, I'm doing those 
things in, is a combined Win98-Win2000-WinXP network with a few UNIX 
servers present. The way, we share drives, is the standard Windows 
way using the SMB protocol (using Samba on the UNIX servers). I've 
for a long time suggested, that they do it the UNIX way and install 
NFS clients on the PCs in stead. I tried to install some ProNFS client 
yesterday, but couldn't get it to work (probably because of some 
lame Windows authentification, maybe also encrypted passwords).


It could be interesting to see, if the cache problem dissappear when 
using NFS.

Geomol - there is nothing like "connect". If you have a free bit 
of a free time, I suggest you to download Winpcap and Ethereal - 
they are both free and you get cool network monitoring tool. You 
can learn a lot ...

ah, proxies ... in our company, although we use Squid IIRC, we have 
following problem - we found out, our admins use kind of load balancing, 
but they are not able to solve session afinity right now, so eg. 
ICQ disconnects after some time, as it can get packed routed using 
different machine and it imo causes communication to break ...

Sorry Geomol, I've mixed your post with Flemming's. Must be time 
to go to sleep :)

you're right.  worked first time today.  I had encountered it again 
through someone else's site, but when I went through rebol.com, it 
worked fine.  very good.

I've been in awe of it since I got it working.  IE has been my primary 
platform for a long time now.  Spent quite a bit of time building 
a working asynchronous http client with IE's xmlhttp, but now am 
wondering why I bothered.  Rebol makes me nervous and excited about 
the implications.

Some weeks in real time or some weeks in  a test environment.

I log every action and message of my servers, so that I can play 
them again in a shorter time, but in the same sequence.

Weeks in real time.  I had not thought of logging every action .. 
though I do run a log for some things.

same idea, same time typing :)

I expect Temple being on-hold for quite some time, right? I have 
some 0.1 version from last January ...

it is long time ago I looked into Temple - did not remember you can 
find also by name etc. options ....

Kaj, it depends on how many FCgiServer you define. The more you define, 
the more concurrent requests you can serve. But be carrefull: many 
FCgiServer means many open db connections, which needs more resources. 
FastMagic! keeps in cache applications and db connection. Indeed, 
opening a connection is time consumming as well reading files on 
the drive...

With Cheyenne, I share a single db connection with all instances, 
and keep it open all the time.

This is interesting indeed, but this means you can serve one resquest 
at a time... But I guess it would be easy to manage a pool of connection. 
Where is cheyenne available? I would like to adapt FastMagic! on 
it with a DB pool and use it for the Rebol Directory

It seems that somebody deleted the old Announce group.


Terry had posted three or four announcements. Next time I looked 
there was a single announcement from Terry, all the old announcements 
were gone.

I've created this new clean Announce group.

In order to make the best use of everyone's time, please remember 
to stay on topic in groups. If you don't want to be bothered with 
a particular group, feel free to remove yourself from it. And remember 
that you can create private groups as well, though the topics should 
be REBOL related. After all RT is hosting this world for our use, 
so let's not abuse it.

Let me try this again. 


RT hosts this world for REBOL discussions, and they graciously don't 
complain that we have a lot of off-topic channels, probably because 
they understand that's how people work. It is for the REBOL community.


There aren't any set rules here, nor do I think we need them. I think 
that, as a community, we need some non-REBOL channels, just not so 
many; and not so "loud" (i.e. active) that they consistently shadow 
the REBOL content. If each of us "self monitors", there should be 
no problem. i.e. if you find yourself writing a lot more non-REBOL-related 
messages than REBOL-related ones, consistently over time, think about 
whether that's adding value to the world.  


I disagree somewhat with the view of "let them opt out of a group 
if they don't like it", because that puts the power in the hands 
of one group to drive others away. That's just me.


To me, a group belongs here, and a conversation has value, if it 
is of interest to the vast majority ofere people who are part of 
it. 

Here are a couple suggestions:


1) Don't post a long stream of uninterrupted messages. If there's 
a subject on your mind, post a message or two on it, and see if anyone 
responds. If not, don't keep posting more messages on that subject.


2) If a non-REBOL conversation involves only two or three people 
and/or is argumentative in nature, go private or off-world. Again, 
this is not our world; let's not abuse RT's storage and bandwidth.

Thanks!

wikiDOC 2005-06-16 (doc parser similar to dokuwiki) released 
http://rowery.olsztyn.pl/narg/rebol/wikiDoc/
no changelog at this time

Be aware, if you have a lot of free space on the media (i.e. dozens 
of gigabytes), it could take quite some time to complete.

The way it works is it overwrites all the free space on the disk 
with different binary patterns.  It will not affect your active files, 
except possibly if there is a problem with the directory structure 
of your filesystem.  Therefore, it is suggested to run Scandisk or 
Chkdsk to correct any directory structure problems first.


Obviously, this program is written to run on Windows and will not 
work on other operating systems at this time.

sorry carl i think vacations are just hiking around the mountains 
or relaxing along the beach =) and yes i think everybody deserves 
some time off even CEO's.

Images from Apollo Missions


The talk about language niches and "Lightweight distributed computing" 
in the "Io" group made me remember a REBOL program, I did last year. 
It takes images from www.apolloarchive.com and present them in a 
REBOL program, where it's possible to zoom, change light and contrast 
and others. Get it here:
http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/apollo.zip


First run the script "makeidx.r", which will build image indexes. 
Wait until files from "apidx_11" to "apidx_17_b" are build. Then 
run the program "apollo.r". Instructions in the first window. It 
takes time to get thumbs and images the first time, and the program 
doesn't have a load indicator, so be patience and wait for window 
to open after activating a control. It's possible to swtich between 
windows.

Have fun!

Oops.  Sorry about the post in the wrong place, I'm in a far off 
lnad right now and response time is a little slow, so I hit send 
to fast.

The Gripe:


Go here www.Rebol.org, then go here: http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/, 
then here: http://java.sun.com/, hell even go here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/, 
now go back to www.Rebol.com


Even if you don't know what the language is or does, do you want 
to go to Rebol.org?  The main page looks like the last page in the 
basement of a website.  Almost like an "error page"

O There is no single location for all Rebol information.

O Rebol.net, Rebol.com, and Rebol.org are spread out and run by RT. 
O There is no pizzas!
O I don't "feel" community when I visit these sites.


I know I'm not talking to my audience when I say; "think of this 
like a night club" but this is what this is all about.  People want 
to "be where the fun is happening."  Even programmers.

My Suggestion:

O We need a site controlled by the developers.

O We need a forum where people can bitch and meet each other, and 
feel welcome.

O The site needs to have a consistent dynamic attractive template.

O The site needs to be a clearing house for all other sites.  Teach 
and directing people to all the resources.

O The site needs to paint a picture as opposed to describe everything 
with a thousand words.

What is entailed:


O Start a new site, I would propose "RebolCentral.com"  I'm willing 
to pay for it, but I don't want to be in charge of it, I suggest 
we make it a committee.


O The main page should cover every topic and reason anyone would 
come to the site.  This means we support every country and other 
site.  The idea here is a clearing house of centralized information. 


O News: The site needs to gather news worthy information and post 
that at the top.  The site is not alive unless people have a way 
to post their information.  This means that there needs to be at 
least one editor, if not several that share the task.  Every time 
a product is updated, the new features are mentioned.  When Carl 
updates his blog, it gets a single sentence directing people there, 
unless it is news of a release of something.  Etc.


O Product Reviews:   This is key.  Products need to be rated, reviewed, 
categorized, voted on.

O Video Archive: All the videos of all the talks ever given   


O Tutorials:  there are a lot of tutorials out there, but which are 
best?  We need to review the tutorials, rate them by Beginner, Intermediate, 
Advanced.  


O Forum: Start with major topics, and then break it down.  The forum 
needs to direct people to other countries, or support the other countries 
right in the forum.  Great simple forum: http://discussion.treocentral.com/index.php?styleid=1


O Respect the real estate.  The #1 mistake people make is treating 
their websites like just pages.  This is just like real estate, location 
location location.  We need to place the content based on where people 
are going.  So you build the basic site, watch it for a couple of 
weeks, then shift things around based on where people are actually 
going. 


O More art, more photos, more community.   It needs to feel inviting: 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/

Stone soup:


I will pay for, host, and supply a fast linux system (w/archive). 
 

I will help design the templates, and provide (and buy if needed) 
great art for the site.

I will not run the site, nor control the content, but I expect there 
to be in place all the items outlined above, set up in a manner that 
it a) runs itself, b) puts the power in the hands of the developers.

Apollo 1.4.0 released: http://home.tiscali.dk/john.niclasen/apollo.zip

A lot of new pictures have been released since the last version of 
my Apollo program 2 years ago. Unpack the zip archive and start apollo.r. 
The indexes for apollo 7-17 missions doing the years 1968-1972 will 
be created, the first time, the program is started. The GUI has been 
updated and new features include option to update the indexes at 
any time by the click of a button. The pictures are a collection 
of the pictures released on the website: http://www.apolloarchive.com/
Have fun!

Just announcing that I am alive and well and just flat out busy, 
which has reduced my chat time, but the good thing is I am doing 
more effective business development AND technical development in 
REBOL.  Didn't want anyone to think I was gone or hibernating.  Since 
I work in specific, proprietary vertical markets, my stuff generally 
goes where the sun don't shine...;-)

...but thanks to those who ask me if I am OK...just spending more 
of my time with more e-Fish-Ant-Sea!

It is my pleasure to announce, that Cyphre was contracted to bring 
what I regard latest limiting factor for RebGUI database experience 
- a grid. The grid should support following features - visible/non-visible 
columns, both vertical/horizontal scrolling, keyboard support, programmable 
navigation, tri-state columns sorting, possibility to put other styles 
in cells. Expect it being in the middle of capabilities of RebGUI 
table, and Henrik's grid. The grid should be also easily portable 
to VID. The license - BSD.


Other things Cyphre will look into with regards to Rebgui is, how 
to make RebGUI a bit more pretty, centralising other things or simply 
allowing gradients for tabs etc. That is subject to change.


On non RebGUI front, we should have better sys-tray support under 
Windows, probably via .dll ....

The time-frame is three weeks from today. Stay tuned!

rebol [
Title: "Stopwatch"
    Date: 23-Mar-2005
    Version: 1.0.0
    File: %stopwatch.r
    Author: "Louis Turk"
    Purpose: "Simple desktop stopwatch."
]
kbhit: does [
    con: open/direct/binary/no-wait console://
    until [wait con]
    choice: to-char pick con 1
    close con
    choice
]
forever [
	prin "Hit any key to start: "
	kbhit
	start-time: now/time/precise
	print [start-time]
	prin ["Hit any key to stop : "]
	kbhit
	end-time: now/time/precise
	print [end-time]
	print [newline newline end-time - start-time newline newline]
]

forever [ask "hit to start" t: now/time/precise ask "hit to stop" 
print now/time/precise - t]

rebol [
Title: "Stopwatch"
    Date: 19-Sep-2006
    Version: 2.0.0
    File: %stopwatch.r
    Author: "Louis Turk"
    Purpose: "Simple desktop stopwatch."
    history: "v.2 works across midnight thanks to Gabriele"
]
kbhit: does [
    con: open/direct/binary/no-wait console://
    until [wait con]
    choice: to-char pick con 1
    close con
    choice
]
forever [
	prin "Hit any key to start: "
	kbhit
	start-time: now/precise
	print [start-time]
	prin ["Hit any key to stop : "]
	kbhit
	end-time: now/precise
	print [end-time]

 print [newline newline difference end-time start-time newline newline]
]

HTTP Tools. A small script containing a few functions to read the 
HTTP header of a webserver. It doesn't do much, but the main purpose 
is to determine which scripting language is used on a specific webserver. 
I use it to upload ASP and PHP scripts to various webservers, without 
having the user needing to know the scripting language in advance. 
It's not very strong yet and some servers will not reveal this information, 
but I hope it can be built into a reliable tool for determining scriping 
language over time.

http://hmkdesign.dk/rebol/http-tools/http-tools.r

Example:

>> server-type http://rebol.com
== "Apache"
>> x-power-type http://www.hmkdesign.dk
== "php"
>> x-power-type http://www.microsoft.com
== "asp"

during a bath, I thought up a Grand Master Plan:


1. Build a dialect that could handle scientific/symbolic math on 
the hard core level

2. Make it possible to take an equation and draw it up correctly 
with DRAW, a pretty print equation display. The same dialect would 
be used as above.

3. Use that to display pretty equations inline in makedoc2/3 documents!

4. Some people are working on a postscript dialect which hopefully 
eventually will be able to use DRAW blocks as an input, thereby allowing 
you to create equations on the console and convert it to DRAW or 
PS at the same time as having the ability to do calculations. That 
would be powerful.

Say:

calculate [2 [m] / 3 [cm]] ; would return the result as needed
calculate/draw [2 [m] / 3 [cm]] ; would return a DRAW block

postscript calculate/draw [2 [m] / 3 [cm]] ; would convert that DRAW 
block to postscript

Maxim, now's the time to fix some things, no ?

(I seem to remember this very discussion some long time ago...)

Carl... your speeding in your Blog REBOL 3.0 ...Give us time to think 
through your idea's ;-)

From the Roadmap: "Greater Locality Support 

It's time for REBOL to do a better job at supporting native languages 
and character-sets. Our goal to expand support with locality and 
unicode enhancements. In addition, it is a goal to release 3.0 with 
French, Italian, and perhaps one/two other languages as part of the 
standard distribution."

Is anyone intersted in improving the library interface in R3? I have 
a lib dialect (just posted to REBOL.org), and some notes I'll post 
here. Is it worth some time to put suggestions together for RT, or 
is everyone OK with the existing system?

The current library interface is servicable, but could be improved.

For example, char arrays in C structs are a real pain to deal with,

there is redundancy if you're importing a number of routines, from 

the same library, and extra work is required to deal with pointers
to values.

The biggest issue for me seems to be that I have to use COMPOSE 

heavily to get the results I want, or there's a lot of duplication
in struct and routine defs.

--- Easier Routine Declarations

The only thing I've addressed in my lib interface dialect is
making it easier to declare routines. I posted it to REBOl.org
for discussion:


http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=lib-dialect.r

--- Pointers


This is maybe a bit of an extreme example, but I had to do it, so 
it's not purely theoretical.

    LPINT-def: [value [integer!]] none

    LPINT: make struct! LPINT-def none

This struct shows where a nested struct is needed.

    _FAX_JOB_PARAM-def: compose/deep/only [

        SizeOfStruct    [integer!]      ; DWORD structure size, in bytes

        RecipientNumber [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to recipient's 
        fax number

        RecipientName   [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to recipient's 
        name

        Tsid            [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to transmitting 
        station identifier

        SenderName      [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to sender's name

        ;SenderName      [struct! [value [string!]]]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer 
        to sender's name

        SenderCompany   [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to sender's company

        SenderDept      [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to sender's department

        BillingCode     [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to billing code

        ScheduleAction  [integer!]      ; DWORD job scheduling action code

        ;ScheduleTime    [struct! (SYSTEMTIME-def)]        ; SYSTEMTIME  
          time to send fax
            wYear       [short]
            wMonth      [short]
            wDayOfWeek  [short]
            wDay        [short]
            wHour       [short]
            wMinute     [short]
            wSecond     [short]
            wMilliseconds [short]

        DeliveryReportType  [integer!]      ; DWORD e-mail delivery report 
        type

        DeliveryReportAddress [string!]     ; LPCTSTR   pointer to e-mail 
        address

        DocumentName        [string!]       ; LPCTSTR   pointer to document 
        name to display
        CallHandle          [integer!]      ; HCALL reserved
        ;_PTR   Reserved[3]  [integer!]      ; DWORD must be zero
        _PTR-0  [integer!]      ; DWORD must be zero
        _PTR-1  [integer!]      ; DWORD must be zero
        _PTR-2  [integer!]      ; DWORD must be zero
        _PTR-3  [integer!]      ; DWORD must be zero
    ]
    _FAX_JOB_PARAM: make struct! _FAX_JOB_PARAM-def none
    _FAX_JOB_PARAM/SizeOfStruct: length? third _FAX_JOB_PARAM

    fax-complete-job-params: make routine! compose/deep/only [

        JobParams     [struct! (LPINT-def)] ; ptr to job information struct

        CoverPageInfo [struct! (LPINT-def)] ; ptr to cover page struct
        return:       [integer!]
    ] winfax.dll "FaxCompleteJobParamsA"

So, the API call returns pointers to structs containing the 
data we want; to get it we need to dereference the pointers
after the call.

    complete-job-params: func [
        /local
            params-ptr cover-ptr    ; API return pointers

            params cover            ; REBOL structs with data from API
    ][
        ; allocate return pointer structs for API call
        params-ptr: make-LPINT
        cover-ptr: make-LPINT

        ; make the API call

        reduce either 0 <> fax-complete-job-params params-ptr cover-ptr [

            ; get data from pointers returned by the API

            params: get-dereferenced-data params-ptr _FAX_JOB_PARAM-def

            cover:  get-dereferenced-data cover-ptr  _FAX_COVERPAGE_INFO-def
        ...



Getting the de-ref'd data is the real pain, and seems like it might
be unsafe in the way I did it, though it worked.

    get-dereferenced-data: func [

        {Given a pointer to memory, copy the target data into a REBOL struct.}

        pointer [struct!]   "LPINT structure whose /value is the data pointer"

        struct-def [block!] "The struct you want returned with data"
        /local struct data orig-pointer result
    ] [

        struct: make struct! compose/deep/only [ ; make wrapper struct
            sub [struct! (struct-def)]
        ] none

        orig-pointer: third struct              ; store original inner pointer

        change third struct third pointer       ; change inner pointer to 
        ref'd data

        data: copy third struct/sub             ; copy data from the inner 
        struct

        change third struct orig-pointer        ; restore inner pointer

        result: make struct! struct-def none    ; make result struct

        change third result data                ; change data in result struct
        struct: data: orig-pointer: none
        result
    ]


--- char arrays in structs, or as routine parameters

You can't just declare a fixed size block or string to do this, 
you have to (AFAIK), have individual elements for each item.
That's a huge pain if you have a 128 element array, so I end
up generating them dynamically. I think that was Cyphre's idea
originally, but I don't have notes on it.

    make-elements: func [name count type /local result][
        if not word? type [type: type?/word type]
        result: copy "^/"
        repeat i count [
            append result join name [i " [" type "]" newline]
        ]
        to block! result
    ]

    GUID: make struct! GUID-def: compose [
        Data1   [integer!]  ; unsigned long
        Data2   [short]     ; unsigned short
        Data3   [short]     ; unsigned short
        (make-elements 'Data4 8 #"@")  ; unsigned char
    ] none


--- MAKE-ing structs

How do other people make structs from prototypes? 

    make-struct: func [prototype /copy /with data] [
        make struct! prototype either copy
            [second prototype]
            [either with [reduce [data]][none]]
    ]


--- BSTR type

I've only needed it for one project, but it might be worth 
finding out if it would be worth adding BSTR support for
Windows, as a routine datatype.

closures help when you want the function's context to be valid for 
an indefinite amout of time.

don't closures also help with the copy problem?  where each time 
you run the closure, a series is indeed new?

brian I agree completely.  I love REBOL's ultra consistent reference 
mechanism.  on the R3 blog, I noted how python copies everything 
and how it becomes tiring to upkeep all the time.

and for the record, I hate the fact that I have to return first reduce 
[value value: none] all the time.  its slow, ugly and its a BIG memory 
hole in view and something within the stylesheet system.

You need to change all of the
    insert tail result
to
    insert tail :result

to keep the result from being converted from a lit-path! to a different 
path! every time.

I won't waste my time then :-)

Someone mentioned Ladislav's build dialect, and look what happened 
to it... ;-)

 - it was me who mentioned it, but this is about the third time I 
 mentioned it here as well as on the ML, so it is not as efficient 
 as Brian suggests :-)

Well I was joking, but yeah, the community-as-optimization does depend 
on the community having time and attention to spare...

Most of the time I use it like an assoc, or like a fully indexed 
table.

I would be interested...I'm having a hard time keeping track of my 
project..its my first major/large/encapped project so I'm still tying 
to find my groove with this versions thing

ok, I will try to get the basics done before going to bed, I took 
time off to go see star trek (it rocks, if you overlook how badly 
some of the movie-specific physics/astronomy ideas are approached)

I would be also interested, I don't have a lot of time to devote 
to it, but I would try to find some