[REBOL] Re: Dialect: graphics for Charts, Diagrams, Graphing ?
From: jasonic:panix at: 17-Nov-2001 15:50
> > No, I mean that most of the program samples that I saw on the REBOL
> > site have no comments at all in their code, to document what
> > *exactly* is going on.
>
> Ah, yes, I agree entirely. Just like my bar-chart script. (: There's
> the Catch 22 of being told "The script library is one of the best
> ways to learn REBOL" when you can't understand a script until you
> have a reasonable understanding of REBOL to begin with...
Titling and Commenting are fine arts unto themselves. Apart from much needed
in-line comments throughout the library examples, what would be really great
is more 'live' documentation like:
http://www.rebol.com/view/docs/../demos/easy-vid.r
Being able to click on the gray highlighted source code examples and have
the real results pop up like that while following a presenter's narrative
thread is something teachers and computer literacy evangelists and
developers dream of! REBOL could make itself incredibly attractive to
schools and others if it were developed just even a little bit further in
these directions.
My wish-list suggestions:
- shell integrated:
make it easier to keep one's place while trying variations live also
make it easier to more experienced Rebolers to add/edit comments
- comments allowed [with hide/show/edit/add buttons]
- publishing considerations [print to HTML, PDF, Vanilla {Snips} library,
REBOLeasy-? format]
- richer cut'n'paste features, for example the live gray boxes.
- syntax color highlighting
- "fold" option to expand/contract code the same way MS IE handles XML,
Mathematica Notebooks and Scintilla all use
- automatic hyperlinking of objects, code etc to allow one to explore code
and contents. Preferably as named buttons showing source, probe,
object-viewer info for whatever word is selected at the time button is
clicked.
yes one can fire up a test editor to get syntax highlighting and open
multiple REBOL sessions, type 'source 'probe etc. But one has lost the
presentation ability. I am looking forward to see how well Glass can make
what I describe above easier to implement.
I know the Python edu-sig folks are moving steadily down this road right
now.
They still lack the simple GUI though. They would die if they could see
http://www.rebol.com/view/docs/../demos/easy-vid.r in action. Especially the
clear hypercardi-sh structure it offers. Brilliant.
wxPython does this already and PythonCard is simplifying wxPython use.
But still a lot more code and obfuscation in the way relative to REBOL, even
though Python is truly one of the most *readable* fun powerful languages
anywhere.
- Jason
