AltME groups: search

yes, I can imagine that, especially for the calendar/time etc.

No such luck for me - still 53 empty conversations on my Windows/XP 
installation. Though I guess most of them haven't had a post for 
a long,  long time.

hum , if we all concentrate on one feature and bug R every single 
time he logs on... it will "Drive him crazy" ... ;-)  so lets choose 
our next wanted feature!!!!!

most of the time, except occassionally on late Saturday nights :-)

I'll third the second request, (which is now the "0"th) ... Don't 
loose any data!!!
and related subrequests ...

- don't drop me out of whatever I'm reading / writing, just because 
altme lost connection ... who cares? But I DO care, if suddenly the 
unread markings are lost

- If I start typing a message in one channel, then go to a second, 
clear the input field, and remember the message for the channel I 
started typing it, so that I can send it later, when I go back to 
that channel

- if I write a message, but don't have a connection, save it, and 
ask me whether I stil want to send, when the connection comes back 
(with a time threshold, send silently 5 minutes later, but not 5 
days) ( Yes, this is debatable, what if I realize, that I _wanted_ 
to send this to a different channel?

I would like the sugestons applied to altme instead of just  qtask... 
honestly.  at davis sugustions wer solicited brains were picked time 
and effort was spent to give input to inprove altme. but that capital 
was spent on qtask instead.

OK, it's time again for the twice weekly drive Reichart crazy competition 
to get your favourite bugs fixed ... ;-)

I'll just copy verbatim from one of my last entries ...


I'll third the second request, (which is now the "0"th) ... Don't 
loose any data!!!
and related subrequests ...

- don't drop me out of whatever I'm reading / writing, just because 
altme lost connection ... who cares? But I DO care, if suddenly the 
unread markings are lost

- If I start typing a message in one channel, then go to a second, 
clear the input field, and remember the message for the channel I 
started typing it, so that I can send it later, when I go back to 
that channel

- if I write a message, but don't have a connection, save it, and 
ask me whether I stil want to send, when the connection comes back 
(with a time threshold, send silently 5 minutes later, but not 5 
days) ( Yes, this is debatable, what if I realize, that I _wanted_ 
to send this to a different channel?

Not yet teamwork, but I _can_ be persistant ;-)

I keep mine down below 1k most of the time so I don't have a problem

but the final question is... but do we want Carl to put time on this 
or R3  ;-)?

I'm surprise "physical path to altme" -s "WorldName" -p Port# works 
for you on Windows, Brock. It did'nt for me - but it's been a very 
long time and I don't remember the details of that problem. I'm on 
Linux for my servers, Debian Sarge, now. Not going back.

however, unless you "buy" the name, it is kept only for a few days 
or weeks (i don't remember how much time), so if that expires, the 
password is not needed/valid anymore, and the name is free.

That was after a particular bad instance when this box updated, and 
blue screened after that.  I had to completely reinstall the OS about 
3 times, each time blue screening after an update.  Never again!

regarding security - can I somehow, for my client, generate .exe, 
which will have directly lowered security? We simply want to automate 
packing/upacking archives, to allow user to choose source and destination 
dir .... surely we don't want to answer security dialog each time 
...

The beaty of this is that you are able to change a class method, 
changing the behaviour of all instances at the same time.

yes - that's good now. I just have to try to access the object in 
malicous ways - if it's not possible then this is the first time 
I see (doesn't have to mean anything of course) completely hidden 
data of an object.

Good job. The property lost will be the ability  to change a class 
method and propagating the new behaviour to all instances at the 
same time.

>> time-block [CounterClass/bump] 0.05
== 4.234619140625E-6
>> time-block [ctr1/bump] 0.05        
== 1.17197799682617E-5
>> a: 4.234619140625E-6 
== 4.234619140625E-6
>> b: 1.17197799682617E-5
== 1.17197799682617E-5
>> a / b
== 0.361322409814242
>> b / a
== 2.7676113433266

Linksys have a tendency to revise their products over time, give 
them the same name, but with cut down hardware and software. therefore 
it's always preferable to get older access points

this might be something dangerous:

write %test.r "hello"
path: what-dir
remove back tail path
write %test.r "hello" ; this fails


problem is: what-dir returns directly system/script/path what seams 
to be used in order to resolve relative file values

I just recognized it using the request-dir from didec which was in 
the rebgui distro -038 (he's doing this in the request-dir function 
in the line with


if all [not empty? path slash = last path][remove back tail path] 


so question is whether this is a bug and belongs to rambo, is ok 
(I don't think so) or what else ?

might also be that didec changed this in a later version (script 
was dated 2003 and maybe at this time 'what-dir had a different behavior), 
but this doesn't matter regarding what 'what-dir returns

You need to decide if you have the time now to deal with the bugs 
people will issue.  If not, wait til it is more stable.

TEXT-LIST definitely has issues, but works well in many simple cases. 
I think we'd all love to have LIST-VIEW in there, though I have to 
spend some time with it to make suggestions, so it's good fit with 
other VID styles (client side, in VID). I think that's what has kept 
changes out of VID in general.

What about, if we started a project to closely investigate the behaviour 
of REBOL native!, action! and op! in relation to the defined datatypes? 
I did something like that in the IOS regarding minimum and maximum 
values for the different datatypes at some time. The idea would be 
to nail down bugs and misbehaviour and lead to a more robust language 
definition. After the initial investigation, the mezzanines could 
be looked at.

I'm thinking more like keeping track of a few things:
- Proper behavior, and version when such behavior was achieved
- Changes in expected behavior

So there would be two sets of versions, the versions of REBOL and 
the versions of the tests. Over time, both REBOL will be fixed and 
the tests will be fixed, refined or altered. This could get pretty 
big pretty quickly I suppose - it could use a database to store the 
tests or some such.

Geomol, every one has a different idea, as time progresses, as to 
what is the "reference" platform. Since it will be a collaborative 
effort everyone will be adding input from various sources. Some functions 
are only available on Rebol/Link etc..

Maybe RebDB could be used in this project? I've no experience with 
RebDB though, so I can't say, if it's suited.

I've done a relational database "NicomDB" as an education project 
2 years ago. It would be suited for this, and I've wanted to push 
it forward for some time. Maybe this is the opportunity? NicomDB 
is used on a webserver in a real application.

hehe, well. My problem is, I have so many things to do and so little 
time.

Having done that, I can't spend much time on it now ! :-(  But it's 
good to get some of these ideas written down, and a few things worked 
out.

(Or maybe a Lead such as Reichart needs to approve the task first 
? That might take some time...)

They can serve as a base to implement the full unit test for Rebol, 
and save time.

it probably should. could you put it in? I'm a little strained for 
time

yeah, this is from UNIX 'man cal':

The Gregorian Reformation is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on 
the 3rd

     of September.  By this time, most countries had recognized the reforma-

     tion (although a few did not recognize it until the early 1900's.)

well, that's pretty bad if you want to calculate astronomy stuff... 
maybe support for the julian calendar would be more appropriate for 
calculating extreme time periods?

is there a reason why 'NOW' does not have refinements for hour, minutes 
and seconds.?


I would have thought that it make sense to provide those refinements 
as well..since NOW will return a value that comprise date, time and 
GMT offset

Yes it is odd :
 now/time/second
** Script Error: now has no refinement called second
** Near: now/time/second
>> my-time: now/time
== 11:04:35
>> my-time/second
== 35.0

An inefficient workaround :
>> mod now/time 0:01
== 0:00:21

Oops forgot  a bit :
>> to decimal! mod now/time 0:01
== 32.0

How about:

	t: now/time
	first t
	second t
	third t

So he could use:
>> third t: now/time
== 56.0

thanks for the one-liner solution.. 


but I would also like to request for additional refinements to be 
added to 'NOW'...


it just seems more natural to me if we can use refinements for the 
time as well

Purely a matter of opinion.... or raather a couple of opinions...


Should now be immutable?  Of course not unless you want to reset 
the time on the machine for testing.


Can a timeone take the value 8:01 - not in real life at the moment 
- I  came across this odd behaviour when investigating the difference 
between mydate/zone: and to-date. I found out that there are a few 
:30 minute timezones and a couple of 0:15 (or 0:45) time zones, the 
rest were all hours.

it become 'confusing' in a way when you are dealing with 'time components

I feel that it would be a worthwhile improvement to restrict time 
zones to 15 minute intervals but the powers that Rambo didn't agree 
when I last auggested it.

Ladislav: I see your point about immutability.


I guess that point about zone boils down to one of  datatype. I had 
been thinking along the lines that zone was a special datatype but, 
after checking, I see if it is of type time!.


What has confused me is the additional validation on time/zone in 
to-date:

>> to-date 9-mar-2006/14:17:38+8:01
** Syntax Error: Invalid date -- 9-mar-2006/14:17:38+8:01
** Near: (line 1) to-date 9-mar-2006/14:17:38+8:01

I did submit the two "missing" zones to RAMBO some time ago. Understandably, 
it was suggested that as the two time zones were so obscure it wasn't 
worthwhile catering for them.

Actually when I checked the documenation it already  states :

The resolution of the time zone is to the half hour.


Perhaps the only clarification needed is that the timezone is always 
rounded down.

will not I loose data when 'wait is entered for the second time because 
of "if block? event [event: first event]"? Hopefully not ... or maibe 
wait without /all never returns a block, even if there is event on 
more than one port at a time?

I do not know if you will get your first port again as the first, 
if you did for example just copy/part from it.

But imagine, that you do a copy on it, and new data arrives at the 
same time. This will probably raise a new event on it and this port 
will probaby the last in your queue of waiting events.

Just what I think is a little bit annyoing, that sometimes you do 
not get the proper timeout, if you have a timeout value in your wait 
list  and many events.

Yes, I always thought that I got the ports ordered according their 
event time and not according their position in the event list.

I just tested it with awake functions and this gave me data from 
two ports alternately.  Thanks god, that I use this approach since 
I heard about it. Probably the efficiency and the time granularity 
there is higher.

I mean - when substracting two 'now values, the time is not being 
taken into account ..

it's a strange hack -- difference was originally for sets. So making 
it work for time is seriously non-orthogonal.

I don't like hacks, but the minus op is a very practical shortcut. 
Should it try to be smart and return days if no time exists for either 
arg; otherwise do the same thing DIFFERENCE does (and what time do 
you assume if only given for one arg; midnight UTC?)?

Oddly enough, *I've* never needed substring type functionality in 
REBOL. Might be due to the fact that REBOL's multitude of datatypes 
reduces the need somewhat (i.e. in another language you may have 
to manipulate numbers / strings to / from dollar / date / time formats, 
whereas in REBOL I tend to convert via the to-* functions).

Over a period of time, dividing by 365.25 and multiplying by 12 is 
pretty accurate.

The situation with REBOL is, that you can do almost anything with 
it. If someone should document that, she could start now and not 
be finish, before she turned 100 years old. I saw myself as a very 
competent programmer with many years of experience in many different 
languages, before I discovered REBOL. It took me a year or so do 
'get' REBOL, because it's so different. I could very fast write simple 
things, but to get in under the skin of REBOL takes some time. In 
some way REBOL is a bit hard at first, and it takes some time to 
'get' it, then suddently it become very easy.

never mind ... it is just it makes me think each time I need it. 
The same goes for float conversion to number based, not that 1-E 
ble format ....

...an example...


I build in lisp a latin-square example and rebuil it in rebol.. the 
bottle neck is not the random generator

but its for me the function called 'clean? (can this function be 
exchanged with a rebol buildin funtion? or
even be made smaler?)


; a latin square in rebol

random/seed now

clean?: func [ x /local bb i ][ 

 catch [ foreach bb b [for i 1 9 1 [ if = pick bb i pick x i [throw 
 false] true ]]]]

print "---- running ----"

T1: now/time/precise
insert/only b: copy [] random/seed [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ]
print first b

while [ < length? b 9 ][  

 if clean? set 'x random [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ] [ print x insert/only 
 b x ]]

print rejoin [ "Timed: " now/time/precise - T1 ]

wait 0:0:5
quit

Here are prototype funcs for SHIFT and ROTATE (plus a couple supporting 
funcs). Is it worth some time to come up with good ones and submit 
them for inclusion in R3?

this is probably outside of core and more at the OS level, but it 
would be nice to somehow check if a script is already running via 
LAUNCH, to make sure it's only launched one instance at a time. Is 
this possible?

right now every time it creates 100000 new nodes, my loop's speed 
steadily increases by about 0.065 %

well, limited by 64 bits of addressing at a time.

On the other hand, list nodes are allocated one at a time rather 
than in groups, so if you have a lot of small lists they may take 
less ram than a lot of small blocks. I don't know how many cells 
are allocated when the runtime (re)allocates a block - I think it 
is powers of two up to multiples of 128.

What I was talking about earlier was the allocation quanta. Blocks 
are allocated with the assumption that you will want to insert stuff 
into them without having to reallocate them every time. So by that 
powers of two to multiples of 128, when you want a block length 10, 
you get 16. When you want 129, you get 256, and so on. On that note, 
when you want 1000000, you would get 1000064.

wouldn't it make sense for SKIP to support hex values? I'm trying 
to locate a specific position in a binary and it's tedious having 
to convert to number! every time.

you might want to count how many there are first?  if only a few, 
maybe replacing one at a time will end up working?

I actually think that your best bet here is to pass the context you 
will be saving to the saving function as a parameter, like your original 
example  storage/save-record context-to-save  or if you really want 
to delegate you can assign the function as a member of context-to-save 
and call it like  context-to-save/save-record context-to-save , but 
then you are changing the context you are saving wih saving overhead. 
REBOL does direct delegation by default, rather than mixin delegation 
like Delphi, because REBOL doesn't pass the object reference as a 
hidden parameter like object-oriented languages do. Rebinding your 
function body every time would be time-consuming and either non-recursion-safe 
(bind) or consume a lot of memory (bind/copy) - just passing the 
context as a parameter would be quicker.

Hmm.. I don't know the correct terminology, so I can't explain what 
I mean very well...

>> smtp: open/lines tcp://bible-way.org:26
>> insert smtp "HELO Louis-here"
>> probe copy smtp
** Access Error: Network timeout
** Near: probe copy smtp


SMTP ports stay open while data is transferred back and forth.  Copy 
doesn't return until the port is closed - so in the above line, copy 
is waiting until the server closes SMTP, and the server is waiting 
for a command from the client.


It's the reason why (as I understand it) Grahams "pick smtp 1" worked, 
but copy did not - SMTP was still open, even though there was data 
for the client to read.  (I was stuck on that myself for a long time 
 ;-)

To test performance of some code, you can use this function:

time: func [:f /local t] [
	t: now/time/precise
	do f
	now/time/precise - t
]

Example:
>> time [loop 100000 [ch-db/2/drop <> "y"]]
== 0:00:00.34105

I recommend using time-blk.r from Ladislav it does multiple measurements 
until the measurement error is below supplied threshold.

the BCC header field is a field used by mail clients to let users 
type addresses that will *not* be included in the header. it is, 
basically, a user interface. back at the time mail clients did not 
have a gui, and just processed mail from a file or by letting you 
type them on the terminal

now, since this is a very common error among users, it may be useful 
to let send remove bcc. personally, i will vote against this, because 
i prefer educating users (documentation) rather than keeping them 
stupid and happy. ;) even in the case we do it, send is still *not* 
collecting the addresses from bcc anyway - so we're just wasting 
time removing something that someone wasted time adding.

come one Anton... you expect the mass to have time to read explicit 
out of language dry docs?

Is there a time when one doesn't want inner blocks to be reduced?

You could also "compile" the users data into something else one time, 
and have a better format in the loops?

And that of course doesn't work. The datastructure has to be like 
this in REBOL:

vdata: [	
	[- X 0.0 Z] [X 0.0 Z] [- X 0.0 (- Z)] [X 0.0 (- Z)]	
	[0.0 Z X] [0.0 Z (- X)] [0.0 (- Z) X] [0.0 (- Z) (- X)]	
	[Z X 0.0] [(- Z) X 0.0] [Z (- X) 0.0] [(- Z) (- X) 0.0]
]


Maybe it's time to make a new group about this. I'm not home the 
rest of the day (beer festival going on), but I should have something 
for others to try out tomorrow (those who's interested).

I'm announcing this because it took me a bloody long time.

You could fairly easily do your own recursive make-dir at the usual 
rebol level, but since the recursive mkdir is done inside the handler, 
the overhead of opening/closing/initializing ports is avoided.
Phew!  I'll publish that after some more cleaning and testing.

I dont look into the internallies all the time ;) On some occasions 
i am lazy and expect similar things to work similar.

Well, now is the time to lobby for such changes in Rebol 3.

Function locals are set to none for you every time they are called.

No, that's right. Contexts cannot be extended with new words (at 
this time).  I would pass a context to your function with the template 
and all the words in it. This context will have to be built at the 
beginning.

Yes anton, I will code it this way. I am worried that unbinding the 
words every time is a performance hit

You would have to define a function every time, yes.

yes, it's very fun especially when you are on a time limit :-)

Use do/next in the parse rule. (that's the reason I suggested the 
DO command for parse some time ago...)

This is IMO inconsistent and should be changed:

>> ? for
USAGE:
    FOR 'word start end bump body

DESCRIPTION:
     Repeats a block over a range of values.
     FOR is a function value.

ARGUMENTS:
     word -- Variable to hold current value (Type: word)

     start -- Starting value (Type: number series money time date char)

     end -- Ending value (Type: number series money time date char)

     bump -- Amount to skip each time (Type: number money time char)
     body -- Block to evaluate (Type: block)

(SPECIAL ATTRIBUTES)
     catch
     throw
>> a: 2.0
== 2.0
>> for test 1 a 1 [print test]
** Script Error: for expected end argument of type: integer
** Near: for test 1 a 1
>> number? a
== true


It should be possible to use decimal! as well. The interpreter should 
implicitly convert it to an integer!

To be executed, a script is loaded in a whole. So each values is 
loaded/binded and your error appears at this time, not while the 
expression is evaluated.

error? try [29-Feb-2006]

 is "word! word! [what-is-this?]". Reol has no idea what to do with 
 "error?" at that time.

you are not at interpreter state at that time. think of 'load finding 
an error at compile-time.

;To make the following work with a USB printer, do the following:

; 1. share the printer, noting the name given to the shared printer.

; 2. from the command line type: net use lpt1 \\laturk-ws-2\EPSONSty 
/persistent:yes

; 3. put said command line in autoexec.nt so you don't have to type 
it each time.

printer: func [
    "Sends text to printer on //prn."
    [catch]
    Text [string!]    "The text to be printed."
    /Page    "Append Carriage Return (CR) and Page Feed."
    ][
    throw-on-error [
        secure [
            %//prn [allow write]
        ]
        write %//prn Text
        if Page [write/binary %//prn "^(0D)^(page)"]
        Text
   ]
]

Ok, next time I have to try harder.

I was trying to print a table from two different sources, and trying 
to wrap the data inside the cells at the same time.  But I got it 
worked out now.  But was thinking that some type of sql join on tables 
would be good.

how to substract two date values easily? I simply have file date 
(get in info? filename 'date), and I want now - such filedate to 
return time difference including days .....

simple 'now simply returns complete date and time, so why rounding 
to days?

I've got error! all the time, cannot reproduce it. (number is converted 
to decimal!)

Ladislav made a small typo, getting a digit wrong in the number, 
the first time, and the second time he missed the variable (i).

Here you can find 3 process samples, I've done when the bug appeared 
and the CPU was at 100%, like if the process was waiting for something? 
a released file-id? Because the error appear in a crescendo, cpu 
100%, than ok for some time, cpu 100%, then work ...than stop working 
at all sometimes with cpu 100% sometimes CPU normal%, here the samples:
http://reboot.ch/sample1.txt
http://reboot.ch/sample2.txt
http://reboot.ch/sample3.txt

I wrote this a long time ago, but it should still be useful:

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [error? try [to-date "sss"]] now/time/precise 
- t
== 0:00:00.047

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [date? load "sss"] now/time/precise 
- t
== 0:00:00.016

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [error? try [to date! "sss"]] now/time/precise 
- t
== 0:00:00.047

I am just transferring many files via ftp to a FTPZilla on Windows.
Aftert some time the ftp hangs.
If I use one steady connection, it hangs writing.

If I use one connection per file, it hangs with the message connecting.
Anyone seen a similar behaviour ?

Graham: as I need the date conversion again, I found that to make 
it useful, you have to add the error check anyway so it's:

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [all [not error? try [d: load "sss"] 
date? d]] now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.031

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [all [not error? try [d: load "1-1-2007"] 
date? d]] now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.047

>> t: now/time/precise loop 10000 [error? try [to-date "1-1-2007"]] 
now/time/precise - t
== 0:00:00.047

I would not use loading. to-date is more clear, shorter and with 
same speed.