[REBOL] General REBOL questions
From: bgs:tas:verizon at: 15-Jun-2002 17:03
Hello,
I've been looking into REBOL/View recently and it looks really terrific.
I have some generic questions if someone knowledgable has a moment:
1) As everything in REBOL is compiled into a single executable (no
seperate modules) and as more and more protocols, language enhancements,
etc. are added, will the single executable ever get to the point where
it's too large? Just keep getting bigger and bigger. At what point
would it become too large and cumbersome?
2) How are obsolete features/protocols being retired? e.g. if REBOL
supports a protocol that no one uses enough anymore to justify it being
in the executable, will they keep it in there indefinitely for backwards
compatibility or are they removing/retiring those types of features with
new versions?
3) When I fire up REBOL it brings up the REBOL desktop. I assume the
desktop is a REBOL script, but is this script imbedded into the
executable itself? If so, what if you want to modify it? Shouldn't
there just be some kind of default startup-script defined and the user
can make that whatever they want without burdening the executable with a
built-in script that they may not want to use anyways?
4) I did a search on Dice.com and didn't find 1 job for REBOL.
Hopefully their new licensing terms I read about in the archives of
this mailing list will change that. More Java-like licensing where
REBOL still controls the design but developers are allowed to use it
freely for commercial purposes. REBOL would then make their money
licensing REBOL and associated applications to larger corporations for
commercial purposes.
FYI - REBOL/View is already pretty tiny, so for the fun of it I
compressed it with the UPX executable packer and it shrank significantly
more! It shrank from 503KB to 313KB! (38% smaller!) Here's the
address for UPX: http://upx.sourceforge.net/
Thanks!
Brian
