AltME groups: search

that is what I read the first time I looked into it anyways

I can see it reducing latency [head movement time] but rotational 
delay is likely to be the same. You could optimise for that, but 
that would need tweaks to the file system.

Maybe they got the inspiration from 1950's drum storage -- one head 
per track :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory

Of note, about 20 years ago I wrote up a paper to build a camera 
with a 100x100 CCD that could capture huge images by vibrating the 
aperture (which would be small than a standard pin hole).  The speed 
of your CPU would control the time it took, thus faster computers 
= higher ISO values, that simple.


You would also be able to point it at something far away, and tell 
it to focus on that region, thus getting a clear image even at a 
very far distance.


This is still worth building today.  A $10 camera that takes 10Kx10K 
image in about 1 second, not bad.  Through software you could remove 
things that moved as well, for example cars that park over night, 
people walking around, etc.  Over several days you would end up with 
a crystal clear image of anything that was not moving.

Opera Unite: a Web server on the Web browser


With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, 
radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses 
the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all 
of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer 
at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way 
we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.

Yes, death of kodachrome is terrible. I've just ordered the last 
5 Kodachrome 64 films from the danish Kodak company. I hope, they 
get more before end of year, where it's finito. I plan to take a 
lot of time off to go and take photos with this film in the autumn. 
Next year I may end up selling my film camera and go with digital. 
Nah, probably not. ;-)

It's like the danish "Ellert":
http://www.ellert.info/


I see them a seldom time on the danish roads. They're not a big success.

real time tracking in 3d space, real-time color-keying.... simultaneously!

taking over the web  one browser at a time ;-)

Beside a bunch of other problems coming up. But maybe they have really 
made it in which case we should see a bunch of announcements in a 
short time.

Another new Mobile OS - this time from Samsung. The OS is called 
Bada - http://www.osnews.com/story/22476/Is_There_Room_for_a_New_Mobile_OS_

A lot of negative talk about too meny mobile OS's already but the 
phone market is a lot different than PC Market...with contracts every 
one or two years most people trade in their phone at most every 2 
years and each time re-evaluate the field (some of anyway). This 
gives new guys a chance to enter the fray. If you got somethng unique 
you may gain share quickly.

You talk about the protocol all the time, I talk about generally 
Google submitting another thing and world swallowing anything they 
drop onto us. The protocol might be actually good. I just hate things 
being accepted just because they are provided by the "beloved one".

Graham - Google & co are teh mafia :-) There is no cloud, and there 
is no Chromium OS - they are just fooling us with marketing ;-) The 
cloud is - internet, and storing my data not on my device. Once there 
will be a time, when whole that cloud crap collapses, and you will 
want your local storage once again :-) And Chromium OS? What is that? 
Linux and Chrome browser on top of that ...

To answer your questions towards REBOL browser plugin:


- we don't know, if they will allow plugins, do we? But if they do, 
we can create one, why not?


- Josh disappeared long time ago, security doc he was supposed to 
work on, was never finished. But most probably non-ability to properly 
secure browser plugin was one of the reasons why R3 effort started 
...


- with browser plugin, you better don't allow call to local system, 
nor any call to system API. So the question is - what happens to 
'call and 'extensions? Even if you would display security requestor, 
it might be considered a threat, as users are kind of dumb, and many 
will click YES anyway. So the only chance probably will be to build 
special Hosts, including everything we need for a plugin


- there might be some special version of plugin, with signing and 
certificates, so e.g. RT would inspect the extension, and claim it 
being secure. But I still don't know, if it is going to be enough 
...

Geomol - sometimes I wonder about your ignorance(?), sorry. You are 
very clever guy, so I really wonder, what is the reason to hear argument 
like in point 2) Henrik is right - who is more informed than the 
community members? I remember the time when Carl invited me to R3 
GUI world. You all gurus were there, yet he had to invite person 
like me (causing a noise many times), because of lack of input. So 
what are we complaining to? Replies to blogs are similar matter. 
Just don't tell me, you are not informed.


Te link to beta project plan - http://rebol.com/r3/docs/project.html
was posted here, was posted in November status update IIRC. Twitter 
message says, Carl is working on Host code NOW. Yesterday we posted, 
that Carl reported on R3 chat succesfull separation of Host vs kernel 
and that he is working on MinGw support. The host code is being worked 
on NOW.


So how can you post argument like you posted in point 2)? Isn't it 
a bit ignorant and disrespectfull to those who care to work on R3? 
How much support do you expect? I do care to remind Carl to update 
blogs, we do care to spread info even here, yet you claim "do you 
expect ppl to wait forever?". 


And even more so - do YOU expect anyone to wait for mysterious ORCA 
like project to be closer than R3 is? ORCA actually IS open sourced, 
for many years. How is that it did not bring competing environment 
to R2 at least to date? (not to mention its architecture is arcane 
compared to what R3 provides us?)


We are really small community. Everyone of us, can weight his own 
free time. So now decide for yourself, where do you put your free 
time REBOL wise. Boron, or R3? As for me, the answer is clear - my 
energy goes to project, which currently has chance to be completed 
in close future. Splitting our efforts at this stage can't bring 
anything usefull imo ...

I can only speak for myself. I found lots of the discussion in R3-Alpha 
good and giving, but I also found the actual progress unstructured. 
I saw it like building a very tall building (like a skyscraper), 
where you work on all stores at the same time. I prefer to start 
from the ground, make every store solid and finished before moving 
on to the next store.

This is the first time I hear there was a development reset. Why 
was that?

Pekr, please. Log into R3-Alpha and look in the old talks (also before 
you were invited there). You'll find many posts from me. I often 
choose not to talk, when the noise level go up. When you entered 
R3-Alpha, the noise level raised a great deal, so you will find fewer 
post from me at the time forward.

Henrik - I don't even have problem with existence of a clone (if 
such clone would be clone of the interpretter and used Host code, 
so that we could have swap-in solution). I don't have problem with 
things being open-source at all. But - what I am looking for is - 
project management. It is not enough to just state - let's support 
Boron, cause it takes too long for RT to finish the project.


Things should be balanced. Hence I ask only for one things - someone 
stating A (e.g. Boron), should be able to also state B (many questions, 
as - 1) why do we expect the project will draw any attention, even 
even Orca did not succeed here? 2) where are our resources available? 
Who is willing and has enough of time to contribute, so that we don't 
wait another 3 years for such a solution? 3) Will it be 100% compatible 
to official future product - R3? If not, isn't it a risk? We already 
face R3 vs R2 incompatibility. Do we need another layer?)

Geomol :-) There were two worlds - R3-alpha - crowdy, lots of talks, 
there was really much of noise (not just by me), as it was the period, 
where Carl e.g. disappeared for some period of time. But then there 
was another world - VID3.4 related, called R3-GUI, there's just 9 
ppl ...

First thing is, that Commodore went under. Carl, in one interview 
at the time when he joined Viscorp in order to ressurect it, said 
that innovation has stopped. So the first aspect was, that what caused 
Amiga to be succesfull, started to stagnate. The product was mostly 
repackaged upon the time, but not much technologically advanced. 
Here I can't see any parallel to Amiga, as R3 is development without 
compromise. We are even sacrifying compatibility, and trying to get 
the design right this time ...

But - in Amiga case, you CAN'T see any single activity, any vision, 
any leadership. Amiga means many things to many ppl. In such a situation, 
it would be probably better, if some time back in 2K, the AOS sources 
were open-sources. It would probably stop clonning efforts (MorphOS, 
AROS, Anubis), and community would not fight for which one is better, 
there would be no split ...

I wonder if an adequate history has been written. Amiga users generally 
agree that Amiga was innovative and was ahead of its time. However, 
assessing which elements made it innovative and how to resurrect 
it, at least in spirit has long been an emotive issue, particularly 
with those invested in remnants of its legacy.

In fact, what Geomol and some other ppl claim is - that we wait very 
long, at that it would be nice to have some other option available. 
They are right in following aspects - we can't still help much with 
R3 development. So far it is still done by Carl.


But, that is not 100% true, just some 90% - we can help writing VID, 
networking protocols ... yet noone did it.


I can understand Geomol - when R3 was announced, it was supposed 
to be out in few months, whereas we are something like finishg fourth 
year of its development. It was promissed long time ago, that there 
will be most of the R3 to be open-sourced. It did not happened yet, 
and some ppl might question, if it will ever happen.


The other group, properly and daily following R3 development, asks 
for patience, as we are really close. Latest Twitter message as well 
as month update shows, that Carl is working on Host code, in order 
to be released to few developers. Carl also reported succesfull separation 
of kernel and host two days ago.

So ... make up your own conclusion :-)

Chris - yes, we missed probably many oportunities - no apache module, 
'call and 'dll not being in free versions of R2 for so long time, 
slow development, bad deployment to other infrastructures, no open-source, 
bugs ...

Anyone is free to do what he wants, I am supporting only the official 
distro. In current situation it is the only thing which makes sense. 
There was several cloning attempts in the past, some of them raised 
some expectations, and they failed to be finished/released. I don't 
know why I should waste my time with another clone. I mean - each 
of us have our own jobs, and if I have some free time, I am going 
to devote it to official distro ...

I was part of the school board for the elementary school where I 
live in and this kind of project would have been refused at the school. 
 its wrong in every respect.  every school is missing some amount 
of money, and when 5 million in cash is spent in such a random manner, 
unfortunately, kids loose in every way.  


this kind of drastic change  requires a top-down revisit of policy, 
structure, curriculum, teachers professionals, etc.   people don't 
realized that individual schools often have to pay for a lot of details 
which school boards don't readily acknowledge.


who pays for the (usually costly) full/part time technician at every 
school.  what happens in class when some laptops die, etc, etc.  


One (rich) school in montreal did something similar by purchasing 
a (real) laptop for every 5th and 6th grader.  Although the computers 
where school property.  


By the time they arrived, they where integrated into every aspect 
of the school's daily operations.  paper for all assignments was 
made illegal, educational games where pre-installed, and complemented 
the curriculum, every student was given training on some word editor, 
email, how to get, send assignments, and IIRC there was a school 
portal for the program, where kids could get/provide all they needed.

My daughter has a part time job at the city library shelving books. 
 She's the fastest shelver the library has .... they have to shelve 
all sorts of book sizes.  I told her its because she spent years 
practising with tetris :)

Clearly skills that require training improve with time eg. programming.

Someone at Mit has obviously too much time and Cpu power..  Wouldn't 
something like Arexx do the same a lot easier :)

http://sikuli.csail.mit.edu/

or if you've got too many to do it that way, disable everything but 
S3 organizer and see if it works by itself - if it doesn't then you've 
saved some time testing

Gregg: Hmm.. That could work. Arexx is from the time nothing was 
secure (since security was not needed) but since Rebol has all those 
neat cryp-libs in it (even the Free View version) it should be possible 
to make an port system that would be both easy and secure.. (either 
as a fuction calls like Arexx ort LonWorks stype net-names)

My favorite quote about the whole Google Buzz issue:  

This whole buzz thing is the first time I’ve seen google look desparate. 
It’s like watching Jennifer Aniston get old.

NoSQL is for people who need speed rather than acid.


I worked on stuff in the 1980s and 1990s that sacrificed guarantees 
of data consistency for higher rates of throughput. At the time, 
it was the only way to build those systems as we did not have the 
raw machine power needed to run large-scale real time systems.


These days, the same may still be true for some huge write-heavy 
applications. If so, people will do what they can get get the performance. 


But most applications need data consistency more than raw performance.

I say kiosk...I just mean dedicated computers running some rebol 
apps that I have at the firehouse....

A mapping app that locates fire boxes with directions, and a notification 
system for messages to members to their email and phones via text.

Not ready for prime time...hense the quotes.

Haiku raises some funds, contracts full-time developers - power of 
open-source? http://www.osnews.com/story/23121/Haiku_Hires_Several_Contractors_Pushes_for_Alpha_2_Beyond

Perl 5.12 available....Better UNICODE, extensions, time beyond 2038.

http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2010/04/msg158820.html

Reichart...I agree. I do not understand with the millions, maybe 
billions lost in time, resources etc why there is not some  agency 
set up to get this type of scam....they are hiding in plain site.

on the other hand and just to make it complete,


the media industry gave so much love for free, I can't say how much 
I appreciating this.

they teached us don't spare to much on using love, there are important 
items for us which deserve it, really! 
like to love a cheese? no problem, now we can...
like to love a new flat TV? no problem, we can now also...

like to love a fatty, stinky, unhealthy burger? well this was difficult 
but now...guess!


and the real benefit we have with this fantastic memetic innovation 
is a nice usefull inflation.
(yes, as mentioned this works on words too).

we are now in the convenienced position to use this word daily without 
the risk of any deeper meaning

and the best of all is, the more we are using this word for all these 
other important things, the lower the 'ancient' value by time.
btw I love you all...(this is real progress isn't it? :-)))))

any extreme action triggered by motion could be confirmed by having 
to input a password within a certain amount of time

yep since itas a gyroscope, the orientation is perfect and accessible 
in real time, much better than an accelerometer.

and I don't have feedback on my mouse gestures either - yet I use 
them all the time

One where it makes perfect sense is a sleep application, where I 
place the iPod on my bed and it passively registers motions I do 
throughout the night and then records them. Based on the motion it 
wakes me at the correct time in the morning. This requires no feedback 
to the display, so it makes good sense here.

view [btn "Button with a very long text"] works perfectly here. also 
notice that if you set-face the button with another text, the size 
is adjusted in real time.

well, Carl was clever this time around, so if 40+ platforms aren't 
supported by the end of 2008, it's entirely your own fault. :-)

About plug-in...I need to change my mindset about it. I always avoided 
thinking: "Nobody wants t have to download a plug in o use your site. 
But I find myself needing to do it all the time and some of these 
new technologies like silverlight, require a download of some sort. 
 Rebol plugin downloads so fast it really is a minor annoyance. WE 
just need it on more platforms and browsers.

btiffin, I agree. Clear and complete documentation is essential. 
Few people will take the time to study source code. No matter how 
great a language is, it is useless unless people can easily use it 
to do what they need to do.  An inferior language that is documented 
well is very likely going to attract more users than a great language 
that no one can figure out how to use.  Core is fairly well documented 
I think, but I have never been able to get past problems in View. 
 I'm really hoping that the docs for REBOL3 will fully explain View 
and give lots of examples, especially showing how to interface view 
with databases, etc.  But writing good docs is very difficult, because 
the creators of the language know it so well that it is difficult 
for them to put themselves into a beginners shoes.  It is easy for 
them to assume that the beginner already understands things that 
, in fact, he doesn't understand at all. Anyway, I have high hopes 
for R3.  And I can do more with R2 than I ever dreamed possible, 
so I really can't complain at all.  That doesn't lower my hopes for 
better view docs though. That is the way we humans are: the more 
we get the more we want.  :>)  They call that being spoiled.

probably some time early 2008. maybe earlier. :-)

Sure, I'm familiar with how it works in big projects. The point is 
that the only ones who can give try to give meaningful estimates 
are the ones doing the projects, and we all know what dates were 
promised over time

This has been going on since time immemorial. Can you blame anyone 
but the foolhardiest fans for walking away?

I can understand your situation and it's an unfortunate thing. The 
only thing I can say that might help, is that there have been suggestions 
about a plan to extend the alpha to the users in this world, so experienced 
REBOLers can take a look at it and "kick the tires", so to speak.


The problem with doing that is that it creates talk. Lots of talk. 
"why is this there? why does this function do that? I don't like 
this!" We have had a TON of discussions over the design of VID3 on 
how to do this and that, and we're not done with that yet. It's very 
time consuming to do that, when one man (Gabriele) wants to sit quietly 
and work out the design on his own until it's ready. It's just faster 
that way in the long run. Every time a new guy comes in, 500 questions 
need to be answered and it's usually the same 500 questions as the 
last new guy. :-)


Ideally, no questions should be asked until after about a week of 
use and start testing it right away. If there is a problem or a bug, 
consult the bug tracker or the documentation database, look at the 
discussions and the design documents and keep out of particularly 
Carl's, Gabriele's and Cyphre's hair until they crawl out from their 
holes on their own.

I use R2 in all my products. Sure you can use it. I have no plan 
to move to R3 until a good time after R3.0 is done, perhaps for R3.1.

You're not amused, because you made a plan around what Carl said 
(and again, I think he really shouldn't have said). I agree it's 
not funny, and it may put your reputation on the line, but use it 
as an experience in when to plan around an alpha product the next 
time, no matter what the manufacturer says.

Since we're still in the alpha state, it'll probably be ignored. 
RT has no time to talk about R3 right now, so as a countermeasure, 
I and a few others do that.

I guess I'm more "fortunate". All my projects are R2 only and there 
is probably 2-3 years of work left if I would have the time and money 
to pursue them all. For me there are many things left to do with 
R2 that will be useful for R3 later, such as native Windows printing.

For me, I have been rescheduling to other things for a long time. 
If I can't start working on R3, it makes most sense to work on non-REBOL 
projects

I did. It doesn't seem to be time yet, so the matter comes back to 
planning

And you should also know, that for few days, I am creating strong 
push to take different strategy. I already proposed it to Carl, talked 
privately with him. Gregg seems to agree with me too. I suggested 
to create CONCRETE release strategy and product feature freezing 
plan. I think, that psychologically, userbase will accept e.g. Christmas 
time with R3/Core like release = nearly R2/Core compatible product, 
no modules, no tasks, no unicode, but ppl could bet it would come. 
From that point, we could continue ...

Last time I strictly expressed my opinion on RT's not sufficient 
communication skills, it nearly felt as I ordered Carl to update 
his blog. Reichart jumped in with disagreement, only stating the 
group is doing good progress, and then he left this group. But once 
again - I will not move a millimeter!

People come back in droves all the time. Look at Apple how they lost 
themselves in the 90's and now are back again, more popular than 
ever. A Danish IT company here was widely criticized for extremely 
poor customer support and lost a lot of customers. They turned around 
and people came back.

Look at Linux. Maybe you won't install Ubuntu as your main desktop 
this time around, but maybe in a year. It's lurking in the background 
and you'll make the jump to it when you want to.

the only time I would really worry, would be if Carl just stopped 
developing R3. that would be a terrible thing, but that would be 
the only risk of losing it. it won't get cut by a clueless executive 
or if there is no money (because there appearently is).

So, from the practical core like usability, it is missing some very 
important things. So my suggestion was - finish schemes, update/improve 
dll, describe embeddability and porting, if time permits, add own 
console and rebservices (not necessarily)

If a release happens to this group, people will have to understand 
that it's a work in progress and commenting on design decisions and 
general behavior after limited use is not recommended. Spend time 
in the docbase and on the bug tracker to see if an issue has been 
discussed. Current VID3 bugs are not in the tracker, due to its incomplete 
state, so there are probably 50 of those lurking.


If you find a bug that causes a crash, i.e. WinXP's bug report window 
and it isn't in the tracker, then it should of course be placed there.

petr, what would having pop or imap change? (btw, ftp... that's a 
mess of a protocol. find someone wanting to write that one :P) i 
really don't understand the point. pop and imap are "trivial". VID 
is the focus. i can't wast time on pop now. that can be done later 
on. i must spend my time on what's important - VID. having an R2-like 
R3 is just crazy. R2 is already here.

Yes, at some time the decision has to be done, but I don't think 
we're talking about a developers release now. A developers release 
won't happen in the timeframe you are wishing for. So what we're 
talking is trash release (or pre-developer - by pure conincidence 
some things might work ...) so there's no need to add anything to 
this release just to give it the look of a developer release.

Pekr, you can say that about many things. There are many protocols. 
Which one should go in first? HTTP was logical here. Now which one 
goes next? If Gabriele spends time on FTP and not on VID, I can't 
work on skinning. It could be other things, but VID is far more important 
right now than FTP, because FTP is probably fairly trivial to do, 
but still a one-man project that should be done when Gabriele can 
be free to do that.

I agree completely.  Let's push to get more people included.  There 
are people here who have put in the time and just deserve an open 
door, or at the very very least, a window seat.

petr: no matter how much time does vid take, either we release in 
whatever state it is, or we wait until it's finished. inventing something 
unrelated like adding pop just takes time from the end goal of R3, 
and does not help anyone. people want a toy to play it? so, let's 
just release early and often, no matter how badly it crashes or how 
much it destroys your hd - we put a warning in there. people want 
a finished product? then, just wait until it is there, and don't 
tell me you want a date for it, because noone in the world is able 
to give you one.

And from time to time the roadmap should be updated to the reality.

I'd rather have a polished R3/core sooner than later, same goes for 
R3/View. I don't have any inside into the current development state, 
so I don't know how much it will take to get a polished product ready.

On the other hand, I feel it is really important for the community 
to see _something_. To be able to adjust, learn, be ready.

Maybe some people will see the the current state, and think that 
this isn't worth their time, but nowadays people should know about 
alpha, beta, pre-alpha, development ... versions.

On the bright side, the R3 coders won't have time to delve into Syllable 
Server ;-)

Pekr, I'm not saying you will be able to code anythiong worthwhile, 
but you _can_ code it. You have all the tools. But there are parts 
in Rebol where you _can_not_ because you don't have access to the 
code. 

I just feel that those parts, which build the foundation and need 
access to the closed C implementation of R3 should get the most attention, 
at this point in time.

anyway - this discussion has nothing in common with initial ideas, 
so regard it just being a normal chat, not that I try to suggest 
what is more important. Once again - my mention of protocols was 
there only for the case, if Carl would not agree to "full" release, 
so I just mentioned it, what could be completed in some sane time-frame 
and released e.g. for Christmas, nothing more. That is no more valid 
or so it seems, but we will see what next week brings to the table 
:-)

I think we have two competing goals, quick path to real beta and 
community access and education.  Both are important but for different 
reasons.  It is self defeating for us the community to slow down 
the final goal but at the same time we can't plan or begin the ramp 
up while there is nothing available.  I am still willing to wait 
for the open beta but by the same hand I would also welcome an open 
alpha and understand that we have to take it as it is.  This means 
not pushing on the real team with "noise" of whatever type as to 
distract them.


I worry though that the ramp up is important - if you look at rebol.org 
and scripts it seems so much of it is old, years old, or ancient 
in internet time.  That has to change as well as the wealth of documentation 
and articles has to expand drastically.  The only way that can happen 
in a timely fashion is with community access.  I'd be very willing 
to help on those fronts as best I can.

it would help if the developers all wanted the same things in the 
same time frame ... but they don't ;)

BTW, I have no interest in testing R3 .. no time. I'm playing the 
devil's advocate here.

I should note that it is a bit preliminary. RT did not accepted me 
as a community representative. It is just that I chat with Carl from 
time to time and he seems to listen to some ideas. Not just mine 
ideas, but from other ones too.

I spent a long time learning the intricacies of R2 (aside from basic 
primers, it was my first language).  I don't suppose it will take 
as long to pick up R3, but hammering away at the console, figuring 
how different approaches work, interact, all the subtleties -- it'd 
be useful to learn sooner than later.  And given that R2 changed 
constantly as I was learning, I have no problem assuming R3/Core 
now may not be R3/Core of the actual release.

Chris: that's exactly why i've been saying all the time that we should 
just release whatever the state, instead of doing a feature complete 
"core" for xmas, which would only hurt RT and not help people here.

I've been studying some books on software engineering, and the more 
I learn the more I like rebol. As hard as it may be to be patient, 
I'm for not rushing RT.  Let them have the peace they need to devote 
themselves to producing the cutting edge technology we expect from 
them.  Let them do the work in the order they know to be most logical. 
Regular updates on progress would be encouraging, of course; especially 
for the pros here that need to be able to give their customers valid 
facts in order not to lose them.  Also, putting the major emphasis 
on a simplier, more capable View is great as far as I'm concerned, 
as View is what I've had the hardest time learning, and is also what 
I think will make the greatest difference for RT's success.

ah, put test in console twice, sorry for that. The first time 10 
sec was too short for me to type another print statement, so it is 
intermixed ....

Not my Firefox that is hanging my machine all the time for a while

Petr, I can't say I disagree with much Henrik put on his blog -- 
I have been advocating something similar for some time. It sounds 
consistent with the intent behind CSS, thus I'm curious exactly what 
aspect of CSS Gabriele and perhaps Henrik take issue with.  imo, 
the concept of a visual language that is hierarchial and context-specific 
is sound.  The actual implementation of CSS is kindof ugly..

Chris - I know, I remember your position. Was it REBOL2 or REBOL1 
world we were discussing that? VID 1.3 time. I too, asked Henrik/Gabriele 
about CSS. Because it would be cool, if we would be close to standards. 
Not because of standards themselves, but because of easy of deployment. 
But, as far as I understand the situation - Gabriele understands 
CSS, and so far, VID3 seems more flexible. If it would be upon to 
him, he would even more separate (completly) app logic and user interface.

Petr; A lot of this comes down to what is going to cost the REBOL 
evaluator.  I don't know, but have a feeling that a lot of intermediate 
results are discarded.  Could be wrong.  But if so, I wouldn't push 
for anything that will slow down current execution speed.  If the 
values are there on a stack today, great.  But II'd guess that only 
the last may easily (and zero cost to current run-time) accessible. 
 And with some fancy expressions, what goes on the stack in what 
order may be optimized differently than reading code left to right. 
 I'll ask while pointing out the interest that has been shown here 
by the group.  If coders want a pickable list of expressions today 
we have reduce and friends.  I'm more aiming to get at the last result 
from the console as I'm always forgetting to put a var: in front 
of test code, especially code tthat returns an object! that I'd like 
to probe.

Or, are we going to have to run our own timers and count the time 
ourselves?

I used Bo's cron script some time ago and that seemed to work ... 
I'm just interested in knowing how the timer events will work.

at 4:12 my local time DevBase went online

at 4:57 my local time the first change was carried through in the 
source tree

'alter is short for  'alternate (ie alternate between two states).

It's a shorthand way to add an item to a series if it is not there, 
or remove it if it is.

I may create strange data structures, but I use 'alter all the time.

no, it is just some kind of slow-down period. Activities around R3 
should be renewed as we speak, it seems Gabriele and Cyphre will 
be back on R3 full-time soon. There is also draft of release strategy. 
It seems RT decided (upon suggestions) to divide R3 release, so we 
should see Core like R3 alpha in one month, View will come later 
(2 - 3 months)

As I think I've mentioned (a million times) I would want those estimates 
never to be published. They are wrong 99% of the time anyway.

Kaj, the annoying thing is that unrealistic time tables were published. 
We could see that immediately that it was too little time to do this 
work. I don't feel there is anything being postponed. Everything 
is going according to plan... just ignore the time tables.

I said the previous time that I don't blame any of you. I'm just 
trying to get a straight answer to a simple question

We've gone over all that last time

not according to the plan. however many parts of View and graphics 
aren't ready yet either, so they will probably be ready around the 
same time.

I am also sure that people waiting R3 with good motivations are legitimate 
of complayning but the other don't and they should be more patient 
and give the developers respect for the "free" time they give to 
the project.

Please read back in this thread. The problem is not that R3 takes 
time. The problem is that promises keep being made and broken

... the next time Carl will write "this is the release date" we will 
answer him that the release date is not important but having a good 
language is.

Now it is time for me to sleep. Here in Italy it is 5 to 1 am. Good 
night !