[REBOL] Re: REBOL, Flash and Browsers
From: bry:itnisk at: 12-Mar-2003 10:07
>> There doesn't have to be only one way, and the above suggestion
>> doesn't require us to persuade RT to do it - as long as 'browse
>> works on all REBOL/Views. And if nothing else, a half-way usable
>> web-browser would be a good demo of what REBOL's capable off. (I'm
>> now wondering just how big (small) such a script would need to
>> be...)
As an aside on this and the subject of office integration, some months
ago I was talking about having an app(asynchronous pluggable protocol)
implementation with Windows. Most windows protocols are in fact passed
as apps, an app is passed via the command line to an exe, in the example
I gave the exe would be rebol.exe with it's own command line to load a
script for interpreting the arguments passed to it. This works fine,
although I have absolutely no idea what such a protocol should do. The
benefit is of course that this protocol can then be executed from any
windows object that can pass a protocol, this includes: any browser,
Microsoft office documents, Open Office documents, explorer web views as
represented by a .htt(in windows 98 and up the appearance of a folder is
actually determined by a specialized type of html document called a
.htt, you'll find a number of these in the web folder under your system
folder, open them in a text editor you'll see what I mean), shortcuts,
and windows dialogue boxes accessible via the context menu.
>A version 4 browser, (say of the functionality of an Amiga browser),
>would be a good starting point. They're still okay for basic
>surfing, just not all the bells & whistles that are mostly provided
>by plugins.
If there was this then I suppose there would be the possibility of a
rebol plugin architecture?
> I am afraid,
> looking at W3C's site, that something is wrong with so called
> "standards" :-) Lot's of stuff which can be actually combined onto
> page to make certain functionality working, so what to implement and
> what to obey and still have usable webpage navigation? I think it
> could become tricky.
There's lots wrong with W3C standards, this is the area in which I have
some expertise.
Since most W3C stuff is xml based now the solution is to have a coherent
xml strategy, I think RT has voiced the attitude that Rebol is also data
and this seems to have led it to look down on xml. Rebol may be data but
it is not the data format that the rest of the world seems intent on
supporting.
>> I would really like to see ability to have link on my
>> website, which would bring in rebol player and run the package ... I
>> am not sure it is doable without RT's assistance ... do you think it
>> is?
>No. Well, I don't know, but I'm assuming it isn't. And don't forget,
>they had it working in IE, but then something changed in IE and it
>didn't work any more. (If I remember correctly.)
RT may have had this problem but as I discussed above a propos
asynchronous pluggable protocols this is highly doable. There are some
windows versioning problems with this, mainly as to where in the
registry such settings have to be made.
>Another alternative is to invent our own, REBOL-friendly markup
>dialect and write browsers for that. (Maybe it could be a subset of
>HTML so standard browsers could surf it too.)
I could help a lot with this, much of my work revolves around designing
markup languages, etc.
