[REBOL] Re: Cookbook submissions idea
From: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 12-Jan-2004 18:06
Hi Gerard
> I didn't find any info about this REBOLDOC project on Robert's website
(Saw an
> OpenDOC entry but nothing else)
...perhaps this explains
http://www.rebol.net/list/list-msgs/30437.html
Regarding Vanilla. First, good idea to post Vanilla questions to the
dedicated
list "vanilla-pudding". Little traffic, but makes Vanilla
study easier for oneself and for others who come behind because they don't
have to filter out Vanilla posts from zillions of other rebol ones.
I think everyone who knows Vanilla from hands-on experience subscribes
[all ten of them]
Link for vanilla-pudding are here
http://www.vanillasite.at/space/documentation
> In this case I would prefer to install a plain wiki I got many years ago
that worked
> well here locally the first time I tried to install it - remember it was
not the same at all
> with Vanilla.
There certainly other wikis one can use. All are probably more fully
documented and have larger user communities. But since this project is about
REBOL and about learning it, may be best to make small initial sacrifice of
convenience, and use a rebol-based tool. Once Vanilla is installed and you
start to understand its design, you'll appreciate how cool it is ,
how much fun it is to modify, and at times also how frustrating it can be
there are not
more people using and developing it [deja-vu?].
So deciding to using it is a symbiotic strategy --
helping rebolers and at same time helping vanilla grow though that..
> However if someone desires to host me for this project and give me some
access
> to his own Vanilla operated site, I'll be glad to accept his invitation.
> What do you think about ?
I am willing to host a fresh vanilla-site on one of my dreamhost.com domains
and give you
full access you'd need. It is not the fastest because I don't have fast-cgi
running nor a
dedicated server. Can't justify that server cost yet.
> Don't forget that the main points here are simplicity, visibility and
sharing of ideas
> and code.
And its about learning REBOL right?
Best way to learn rebol is to use it...
Vanilla just needs more hands and eyes on it. A very important task is
documenting it from developer perspective. Vanilla is easy to use.
Clear documentation may almost be the best reason to do this project
together
using it, because it will naturally encourage us to create something very
valuable which the community lacks.
I n addition to virtues, I am enthusiastic about Vanilla also because it is
one
the most sigfnicant Application written in Rebol that I know and could be a
nice poster child for Rebol web apps, even though it is just a cgi
application at this point. It would not be hard to create many useful
non-cgi rebol tools for shell and /View designed to work with Vanilla in the
background. File uploading, peer-peer, site, updating and transfer,
site-site features, remote site management. One dream is to build in
a publish-to-Vanilla button for easy-vid.
It useful to look at Dave Winer's Manila and Radio Userland products when
considering full application possible with Vanilla
I have a big to-do list of projects for extending Vanilla. Most focus on
improving its capabilities for collaborative art and educational uses, with
better implicit support for graphics, dynamic flash, auto-upload, sharing,
permission, groups and access management. Almost all involve writing tool
which exploit custom snip metadata.
I 'd also like move vanilla's code to Leo to help documentation and to
manage and merge
developments, but simple basic documentation comes first.
A few very simple things I have done already: custom
metadata, interactive calendar, template selector.
- Adapted the default calendar in Vanilla. For example see
http://tranzilla.net/vanilla.r?selector=display&snip=2003
Uses CSS now. I like the year display because it is a nice overview and edit
interface in one.
- Added better templating
The default 'selectors' are 'display', 'edit' etc. I added one called
'display-template' which let's one define the template skin no the fly via
the url. To see what I talking about, click the snip=2003 url above, then
try
the various links in at-a-glance - - DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR and look at the
url they produce
Then click the 2003 and you'll see it is set to define its own template
http://tranzilla.net/vanilla.r?selector=display-template&template=tiny-template&snip=2003&template=vanilla-template
The first param call: "template=tiny-template" is the which default I set
display-template to use and display
But the second template call overrides the first so
template=vanilla-template
If you change that to vanilla-template2, vanilla-template3,
vanilla-template5 you'll se how easy it is to change the entire screen.
My demo could; be much better because I've not done anything graphically
interesting yet with them. Vanilla templates are actually an editable
vanilla
'snip' or element. And they can dictate what components an functions will be
on the page and also define CSS file link.
So there are now several levels one can use to change vanilla look'n'feel
very quickly via a url :-)
An important to-do feature for the templating is to have an auto-template
option. Then 'snips' could define their own preferred template by storing
its namevalue in their metadata. If auto-templating is
enabled then the page will just switch to use that. All snips in Vanilla
have their own private associated metadata files. This is the killer
feature in Vanilla. There are system-wide metadata fields, but its easy to
add and use custom ones.
once a metadata field is added to a snip its value can be accessed and
displayed with
{.metdataname} for example
{.name} ;this snip's name
{.last-editor} ;the id of the last person who edited it
At the bottom of my pages you'll see a form which lets one create custom
metadata [permission required]. A few more metadata management tools with
form interface are top of my to-do list
> > http://compkarori.com/vanilla/display/rebol-main
> >
> Thanks. It's been a too long time I didn't visit Graham's site. Last time
I
> think it was not operating a Vanilla site at all.
No its running. Not much traffic - that's a risk of all these new rebol
forum/site experiments. Graham did some hard fast study getting up to speed
with
Vanilla. See the clump of his valuable posts in the vanilla-pudding
archives. I
remember one important thing he did early on was to make it friendly
for displaying rebol source code.
Anyway, I just downloaded the latest version of Vanilla [0.6] . I need to
create a fresh site with it then and figure out how to include in my
earlier customizations. So hopefully soon we can experiment together and you
can see decide whether or not you like it. AI have to do this anyway so no
problem if you opt to go some other route. It'll still be there anytime and
can be linked or copied.
I think vanilla-vanilla communication woudl be really cool. Plus being able
to generate an entire vanilla site from a script or export from some other
app. That could save a *lot* of time and be an intrinsic part of site-site
iport export and mesaging as well as publish-to-vanilla feature of Easy-Vid
Thats inspireed by my experience with Zope where you can import and export a
site or branches of it via a single cross-platform .zexp file. Its beautiful
to see in action
hope this makes sense
- Jason
