AltME groups: search

Some odds and ends all of which can be found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_10/http://proton.cl-ki.uni-osnabrueck.de/*

Regarding Carl's blog about hiding rebol scripts in web pages, I've 
always wanted a way to directly execute a rebol script from the library 
from my rebol console.  I used this trick of embedding a rebol script 
between [ .. ] in my offline mail reader, and wonder if it can be 
used in the library as well.

From the postscript group - it makes more sense to bring the archive 
of posts made in web public groups into rebol.org

Graham -- nice idea, but I can see two problems:

[1] [web-public] is not a fine enough flag to control whether a whole 
group should be published publicly.

web-public needs a start date [or ranges of dates] to indicate which 
messages were posted while the group was not private.

Without that, we'd be republishing messages from a "secure and private 
world" (Altme's own description) without explicit permission from 
all the contributers.

Either that, or the publisher will need a list of which forums are 
public, and the date range(s) for which messages can be published.
That initial list would need to be constructed manually.

Thereafter, they could keep it up to date by watching for "[web-public]" 
to appear or disappear in group titles.

50mb and includes.. 


XMMS (MP3, CD Music, and MPEG), FTP client, Dillo web browser, links 
web browser, FireFox, spreadsheet, Sylpheed email, spellcheck (US 
English), a word-processor (FLwriter), three editors (Beaver, Vim, 
and Nano [Pico clone]), graphics editing and viewing (Xpaint, and 
xzgv), Xpdf (PDF Viewer), emelFM (file manager), Naim (AIM, ICQ, 
IRC), VNCviwer, Rdesktop, SSH/SCP server and client, DHCP client, 
PPP, PPPoE (ADSL), a web server, calculator, generic and GhostScript 
printer support, NFS, Fluxbox window manager, games, system monitoring 
apps, a host of command line tools, USB support, and pcmcia support, 
some wireless support.

Why Web Applications Can be Problematic and Unreliable
 -- http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=47364&de=1

Take a look at http://www.johnsons-web.com/cgi-bin/test.r.This is 
very bizarre! If you use netscape, you will see the entire usage 
message from rebol displayed prior to the mime-type header. If you 
use IE, it is likely that some but not all of these effects will 
be obfuscated, but you should be able

to see the entire output if you view the source. The sources from 
the script is being sent from a windows computer to a linux server. 
Now, if

I use a FTP client like WS_FTP which as a "ascii" mode, it automatically 
converts line enders to unix style, and this problem does not occur.

Holy moly, I just changed the rebol command line switch to -csq (q 
to suppess usage) and the problem went away. I will upload to

http://www.johnsons-web.com/cgi-bin/test1.rso that you can see the 
difference.

you need to run a web server .. and just opening tcp://:80 won't 
do it.

check out the web servers on rebol.org

I wonder when Dockimbel is going to release his Cheyenne web server 
... it was slated for a Dec 04 release according to his website.

HELP w/ web rebol associations AND Rebol-View.
Here is the story..


On my PC, I have View pointing to an index.r file on my web server.
Everything is cool.

When I open up Rebol-View and traverse to my index.r on the server..
it works.


Now on the same server, I change the IIS-Web associations so that 
I can do rebol CGI.
I create a 'main.r' in some virtual directory on the server.
Web-ing to this http.//myserver/mydir/main.r   works GREAT!
CGI is working.


However, when I now open up Rebol-View on my local PC and traverse 
to my index.r which is
on the server.. I get an error.


The problem is that before.. rebol-view was requesting a file-download 
and the server sends it.

Now since IIS is doing '*.r' CGI, when rebol-view requests for the 
index.r download.. the server is processing the request
and attempting to send back html.. not a rebol file.


Is there any way of fixing this other than..

* changing the CGI association from '*.r' to something else  (ie. 
'*.rr')

* changing all my view-apps on the server from '*.r' to something 
else   (ie. '*.rr')
??

I am trying to sort out what the POST data should look like coming 
to a Rebol web server from a browser after someone hits submit.

Steve, now i read your question again, you are writing a complete 
web-server? Why not looking at one available? Patch %webserv.r to 
probe a bit. It also splits the stuff into system/options/cgi, so 
you can study how to do that. Only problem is with post-data, its 
system/ports/input works a bit different to a real webserver. You 
need to look in /content-length and use a copy/part instead of carls 
loop. and sometimes to set the right port-modes by hand IIRC.

Anyone know a good resource on CHMOD and web folder permissions? 
 Covering eg. what world-executable rights on a folder allows?

Hello, I finally get FastCGI with rebol/cmd with Lite Speed Web Server, 
but not with Apache.

LiteSpeed and lighttpd are both amazingly easy to install and configure 
and works fine with Rebol/Cmd in FastCGI (both in compatibility and 
external modes). Furthermore, those web servers are much faster and 
reponsive than Apache 2.0 (2 to 6 times faster!!)

Hi Pekr, Rebol/Cmd works fine with lighttpd and LiteSpeed Web Servers. 
I configure succesfully those web servers to work with rebol/cmd 
as static server (i did not try as external server but this sould 
work too). But I did not succeed with Apache!

By static I mean the Web Server takes care to create as many VM instances 
as needed within the min and max nb of instances allowed by the web 
master.

You are right. So i will try on Apache Linux. It shoud work as I 
succeeded with both lighttpd and litespeed. By the way, these two 
web server are very good and so easy to configure (specially LiteSpeed)...

I see no reason why not to put it somewhere else, outside of web-folders.

Volker: but usually you don't get console access, only ftp to copy 
your web to ...

What's the standard HTML/web character set?  ISO???

And last but not least - Temple - system I liked most, although not 
finished, not documented. It was/is done by Gabriele and allows for 
complete separation of web designer and coder. Don't get me wrong, 
but I think that such system is better than typical templating aproach. 
If you will loose your GFX man, you will still be able to use it. 
OTOH without the intervention of programmer, GFX man can't change 
look with typical templating system ... my GFX guy made it clear 
to me - "I will not learn rebol, nor php, anything" - he is willing 
to understand modules and eventually to configure them ....

have you seen http://www.nvu.com/? Gecko based. They aim for something 
like Dreamwaver. IIRC, with dreamwaver, if you have e.g. some module, 
you can provide "plug-in", simply that web designer will parametrise 
you module using GUI and the rest is done under-the-hood ....

otoh most template system I looked into don't go Gabriele's route. 
They even do some kind of #include, so when you have e.g. footer 
of your page the same thru whole web, it is not necessary to be par 
t of each template page, but you can have it in separate page and 
only "include it".

Max has a web site builder .. don't know how much separation he has 
achieved though as he has never released it

Well, there are plenty of web site building tools .. and sometimes 
a huge learning curve to get what the demos show.

I'll zip it, post it on my steel site, and I'll actually give out 
the steel web site as an example to work from... note that it has 
VERY advanced capabilites within its retags, but I guess its a good 
way to show how scalable the engine really is....

To Web guru : is it possible to have a page without frame but with 
some content glued to the top or the bottom while the rest scrolls 
?

http://hyperworlds.org/rebolxanadu.htmla web page I did not run 
across before...

wow...that sounds like a GREAT QUOTE for a WEB PAGE ... LOL

I just noticed that we are in the web development room

for on topic, we started as keyboards hooked to the Internet / Web...

Yesterday I talked to one web designer, let's say he is not too much 
experienced - he is good in graphics, but not so good at understanding 
all webdesign/browser related tricks. However - he told what I am 
thinking for some time already and Chris will not eventually agree 
- css is fine, but why do all .css based pages look the same?

Other thing is - it is one or more layers (if more media is used) 
upon html, so it may not be so easy for average web designers to 
think about ...

Petr -- there is no design in non-CSS HTML that you can't achieve 
with CSS -- even if you need to use barebones tables occasionally 
to do column things.  The statement "why do all .css based pages 
look the same?" might as well say "why do all web pages look the 
same?".

The biggest restriction of CSS is you have to work harder to build 
layouts.  Otherwise CSS gives you *all* the control that depricated 
HTML attributes give you -- *plus more*.  So perhaps there is a dominant 
web style used by those experimenting with CSS (understandable if 
designers are learning from the same source, whether that is Eric 
Meyer, A List Apart, or WPDFD); but to use CSS as the excuse for 
this is a copout...

Nearly the only thing I did not like about Temple (well, except the 
lack of higher level dialect and docs :-), was that it uses two-phase 
process, and once you build web-page from rebol block structure, 
it knows nothing about original template formatting, I mean - html 
source code formatting, so you may end-up with ugly code, but that 
is not relevant to 99% of users :-)

Gabriele - that is good to know .... hmm, I just wonder what plans 
do you have on temple. The thing is - it is imo correct aproach to 
templating, if your web designer can't program. If you are web designer 
and coder at once, you might find another template systems satisfactory 
enough.

The name of this group contained the text [web-publish], I changed 
it to the correct [web-public]

Uniserve is very nice, I have been using it to prototype/test before 
I upload to actual server.  It broke my heart it was gpl.  BSD is 
very good choice.  Free software should not be restricted, and GPL 
has too many of those.    makedoc/spec is the killer app,  and in 
that intensional programming vein is coursing all the best documentation, 
and REBOL  does a fine job of documenting itself because it is so 
semantic by nature.  To understand how to use a moderately complex 
system like a full-featured web server, it is going to be important 
to capture the thinking of those who wrote the code.  REBOL parsing 
allows all information pertaining to the code to be right there with 
the code,  and a function of  DO -ing anything.  the standard documentation 
scheme should follow how REBOL [] headers work, and simply have the 
makedoc embedded within the scripts.

Well, you said "To understand how to use a moderately complex system 
like a full-featured web server, it is going to be important to capture 
the thinking of those who wrote the code.". and then you want to 
force your users not to look at it?

Worked great! Is there any way to pass AS vars to a rebol block? 
You must think I'm crazy but this is an amazing piece of coding and 
I am determined to use it. I'm curious but when you created your 
work for the incredible web pages you've done, did you make libraries 
or are they basically one large script?

hm, they are working here but not on the web.. will have to check 
it

If I can throw my two cents here. Terry is right to complain, because 
you can feel he cares, it's not destructive criticism. Pekr is saying 
he's a realist, but to me he sounds more like a dreamer (no offense).Flash 
is a Virtual Machine that lives in the browser. Rebol is a VM that 
lives on several OSes. Flash VM is present on 99% of the browsers. 
Rebol VM is not present  on browsers (plugin doesn't count because 
last time I tried it wouldn't install, and last version is more than 
a year old), and it is present on OSes of a small number of creative 
developers and hobbyists. If I had to develop a commercial app for 
the web, Flash and Flex give me extensive documentation, and a whole 
framework. Rebol can't compete with Adobe, and should not. Last week, 
I developed a GUI in Rebol and Rebgui that would have taken me four 
times longer in any other graphical toolkit, and I had a knack at 
it. But this app is for internal use. Rebol is a great language, 
and I would like to see it evolve as a computer language, not as 
a throw it all in kind of gizmo. It should go Open Source, because 
RT doesn't have the means to provide versions for all platforms. 
Where is the rebol for NetBSD? Last version is 2001. If RT hasn't 
the resources, let the developers do it. I want to run rebol on an 
internet tablet. I had wanted to run rebol on a palm (not anymore 
because Palm is deas, sort of). But the Nokia tablet run debian linux. 
There is no reason for the unabailability of rebol. It is just a 
matter of building it and packaging it. Who has the time for this? 
Plenty of people, they're just not at RT, because there people are 
busy with more important things (like developing the product).

Thanks Gabriele and Carl.

How about web publishing the answers somewhere, so the millions without 
Altme can see them?
Perhaps as a weekly blog?

web-public already

Web-public already ---- True, but only for a month or three, depending 
on the Q&A rate.
http://www.rebol.net/altweb/rebol3/chat390.html

shows only the most recent 300 messages.....Many web-public groups 
have "lost" a lot of valuable discussions that way. A more permanent 
and Google-friendly home is needed for much of this.

I wonder if there is a C dll somewhere that would give unicode support 
to the SDK. I have been searching the web for one, but haven't found 
anything yet. I hate the thought of going back to C, as I haven't 
programmed in C for a long time.

It's not going over very well with my five web-developer colleagues... 
they are saying he has been infected by the Rebolla virus and getting 
a very good chuckle out of it!!!

(The old group was a bit to OT for web IMHO)

Apple keynote begins in 27 minutes... http://www.macrumorslive.com/web

what about running a web server ?

I plugged it into my Mac yesrday, and went portrait with it, it is 
pretty amazing.  you see twice the hight, and web pages look like 
they are meant to.  also being DVI makes it really crisp.

yeksoon - the PSP (although I don't like it) has a larger screen 
and the same wifi ability - and many of it's games already have web 
browsers

Maybe something for Rebol as well:


dsandler writes "Researchers at Rice University have just released 
version 0.7 

of FeedTree, a peer-to-peer system for distributing Web feeds faster. 
Instead of 

polling feeds independently, FeedTree users cooperate to share news 
updates 

using multicast in Pastry, a scalable p2p overlay network. FeedTree 
reduces the 

update delay for existing RSS and Atom feeds to a few minutes without 
putting 

extra stress on the webserver (anyone who's ever been temporarily 
banned by 

Slashdot's RSS feed knows this is a real concern). Feed publishers 
can also 

choose to push digitally signed updates for immediate, tamper-proof 
delivery to 

subscribers. The client software (download) runs on Linux, OS X, 
and Windows, 
and works with any desktop feed reader." 
 
http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?m=3816

maybe have rebol in the plugin download a license from a web server 
or something like that.

Only when that service is running on a different server than the 
web server the script was served from. A user's data can be sent 
over the URL that requested the script, or an AJAX connection. A 
certain amount of network access is assumed.

Konfabulator widgets are more comparable to regular reblets running 
in View. Just because they are implemented in XML/CSS, doesn't mean 
they are held to the same behavioral standards as web pages.

1) Release a new "ID" for the plugin, so 1.3.3 would install side-by-side 
with 1.3.2. The problem with this approach is that the user now has 
a new plugin object in their Downloaded Program Files for every release 
of the plugin, which looks strange....not to mention problems such 
as: "does this web site support plugin version 1.3.2 or 1.3.3?" how 
do I know which version I have installed?

Well here's a side-by-side problem scenario. Grandpa doesn't know 
anything about anything, other than how to check his e-mail. He comes 
to web site 1 which auto-installs (with his permission) REBOL 1.3.2. 
Then he goes to web site 2, which needs REBOL 3.0, and it auto-installs 
side-by-side. Then he comes to a third site, which tells him it requires 
the REBOL/Plugin. How does he know which plugin it needs?

Further, let's say he decides to clean out his computer. If he removes 
REBOL 1.3.2, seeing that it is an "old" version, he will inveitably 
break the web sites that rely on 1.3.2.

Sure, I understand that makes sense for developers, but I can see 
real confusion. Since when does a web site tell you that it requires 
Flash version 3.0? All Flash scripts run in the latest version of 
Flash, so if you have Flash 8, you're all set on any Flash web site 
(I think...someone correct me if I'm wrong).

Our original thinking with the plugin was as follows: Web site is 
responsible for everything. If web site requires new version of plugin, 
it specifies a new CLSID and forces the user to download it. The 
problem is, then you have 5 "REBOL/Plugin" objects in Downloaded 
Program FIles. Thoughts on that approach?

Website out on the web should have *no* control over decision making 
- only suggestions.  Website on a corporate trusted LAN should have 
heaps of control.

What are we developing for first ? I think it is the "wild web" first, 
isn't it ?

Yes, we're developing for the wild wild web.

Here are the scenarios with resolutions in boolean logic as I see 
them right now:

 1. web_site_required_version not found on users computer -- download 
 required version

 2. web_site_required_version = version_on_computer && security_min_version 
 > version_on_computer -- popup, request download security update

 3. web_site_required_version = version_on_computer && security_min_version 
 <= version_on_computer && latest_version > version_on_computer -- 
 not sure

Yes, we're assuming that the web site has no control over the security 
check, nor the security_min_version (that would come from RT)

Well, that's a good question. I'd prefer the "wild web" version of 
the plugin to be restricted to the browser client area. (popups are 
evil). But the question is, is it possible to resize the client area 
in the browser ?

Volker, that is true. But the problem here is not COM interface/version 
compatibility. The problem here is: "Which REBOL binary to load?" 
Very simply put, if a web site relies upon plugin version 1.3.2, 
we must make sure that 1.3.2 -- or a later version backwards-compatible 
with 1.3.2 -- loads on their computer. At the same time, we need 
to deliver critical security updates and other non-breaking updates 
to users in a seamless manner.

I think there's no need to inform the user, unless a web page needs 
it.

Pekr - "1) UI - we are not Flash player, we will likely produce real-life 
apps. So - do we give up right mouse click for configuration options?"


I have no idea what you just said here.  Flash is used to make billions 
of dollars worth of complete stand alone product, as well as complete 
websites and small stand alone application that are delivered over 
the web.  


And they can completely control the right mouse button's access to 
a menu.


So, actually, we are JUST like a flash player.  In fact "flash player" 
is a misnomer, since it moved way past "playing" and into complete 
UI years ago.  Rebol and Flash really could not be any more similar.

Q: go, find whatever website flash plug-in part of website, press 
right mouse - you will see menu for controlling flash script itself 
... that is what I am talking about -

A: That is a choice of the developers.  The fact that people leave 
it as "default"


Q: Reichart - and you imo overestimate Flash's importance - they 
can be milti-whatever company, yet I would have to see some noticed 
real-life app someone uses in corporate sphere :-)


A: "I" over estimate Flash?  Uh, er….you mean like how Yahoo over 
estimated Flickr (front end is Flash), and bought them?  


Or, while you might not like it, if you are looking at an animated 
ad on the web, there is a good chance it is Flash.  That would be 
a 500 billion dollar industry that is using Flash as their delivery 
mechanism.  That is the app, animated content with games and click 
through.


And if you use T-Mobile, then you are using Flash.  Yup, it "is" 
the interface for their cellphone content provider.



Pekr, I'm not a fan of Flash, or Macromedia…I'm simply stating that 
Rebol should consider Flash's model as a pathway to a clean install 
and plug-in interface.

In other words, while they are about 2.5% world wide (4-7% in US), 
of personal system choice, they represent between 7% and 15% of individual 
software sales.

Wow!

I would not want to turn that market down. 

And……………my friends…………….the web is the great equalizer…

As far as web stuff goes, my customers want the "real life" apps. 
 Security needs range from completely disabled to something like 
java's, but being able to save files locally (save-as requestor).

For information about the plugin, and to install or upgrade to the 
1.3.2 plugin, please go to the following URL: http://www.rebol.com/web-plugin.html

I know we talked about it a while ago, but those discussions are 
long gone from REBOL and from the web......I apologize, I should 
have archived them. Can you repost your thoughts on the default security 
model, in *concise* posts please? thank you!

I'm sorry, those discussions are long gone from AltME and the web 
archive, that's what I meant to say.

A couple of quick thoughts:

[*] Don't allow reading/writing outside of a local sandbox......That 
includes not allowing access to URLs elsewhere on the web.  permitting 
wider local access and permitting wider web access should be separate 
security settings
[*] Disallow send by default

Looks like Volker covered the security issues I'd note.  About Rebol 
as a COM server process--I would think that would be the way to go. 
 Pretty sure that is how Acrobat runs, too.  Basically, the first 
time you run into a PDF on the web Acrobat32 starts, and handles 
all instances.

With exe people run rebol intentionally (although /desktop goes in 
the other direction). With plugin user goes to a web-page and webdesigner 
turns that into a rebol-page without notice.

Will "Mike, I started using Apache and rebol as cgi, this is not 
suited for performances as on every call to the cgi, a new instance 
of rebol is  initialized, run and closed.

I thought about using fastcgi, but never came to a working solution.
Now I use uniserve as main webserver, here some advantages:

-it is fast! On my local machine I get +- 600 req/sec for static 
pages and a max of 160req/sec for dynamic rsp pages

-it is written in rebol, I could easly(less than 10 lines code) add 
a rewrite engine

-child process are persistent, this mean you can keep state of your 
web applications, implement caching, keep a pool of connection to 
databases open (in apache + rebol/cgi you'd have to open and close 
the connection for every request)
-it is written by Dock whom I may be the biggest fan ;-)

btw I'm running an unreleased version (have bought commercial support) 
 that support http 1.1, stuff like If-Modified etc..

If you have more specific questions, I'll be glad to try and answer."

I'll add a remark module for it  :-)  its adds dialected tags to 
html, sort of a functional approach to web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_servers
Cheyenne missing here :)

Doc, I am also one of your fans. I've been going to your web site 
regularly to see if Cheyenne was released. I was excited to be able 
to download it. But I have a problem. Cheyenne loads fine, but when 
I try to test the links on the index.html page they fail. What am 
I doing wrong?

For the RSP WebApp test I get:

 The page cannot be displayed 

The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site 
might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to 
adjust your browser settings.

Does Cheyenne have an option to limit which network adapters it will 
serve to? For example, I have 5 adapters on this computer (ethernet, 
wireless, 2 VMware, Hamachi), maybe 6 counting localhost, and I would 
like the web server to only be visible to the virtual adapters, not 
even opening a port on the physical ones.


I remember this being difficult in REBOL, that REBOL would always 
open server ports on all available adapters, so you would have to 
inspect the incoming connections and filter. Have you come up with 
a better workaround for this, or a way to do it properly?

Can that be hidden as well to use Cheyenne as an embedded web server?

I've been cranking hard on Framewerks, and a beta is coming soon. 
We've completely blurred the line between desktop apps, and web apps, 
and I'm looking to EASILY sell 100,000+ copies of Cheyenne as soon 
as it's ready.

I want to set up a cheyenne web server that is secure.. ie. protected 
by ssl.

this web server is for local intranet .. but sometimes allow users 
to browse from outside via ssl.

can I use http://sourceforge.net/projects/sslexplorerto set up a 
ssl vpn so that the remote user logins via the vpn, and then accesses 
the intranet's web server?

which also means I could grant untrusted users temporary access to 
the web server.

maxim: why do you think nobody's reading it? because your web's bandwith 
wasn't wasted in ten minutes and there are no ecstatic reactions? 
;)

actually I've read it, but have no time right now to try it. I'm 
still looking for some web managment so I can rework my web, but 
the time...that's the problem :) I'm using just "all groups" and 
check red groups for anything interesting :)

I did so for my own server, which is an http web service:

Sure, Cheyenne is the foundation tool for all our web projects (customer 
or internal projects). So I have to make as good (means here fast 
and reliable) as possible.