[REBOL] Re: No Don`t Leave Re: Re licence.key for SDK
From: moliad::gmail::com at: 4-Jun-2008 22:34
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 2:04 AM, Srini Iyengar <idsrini-gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi MAx,
>
> Thank for the info.......
>
> --rich clients--
> --Rebol has a rich client version for embeding into web pages.
> --basically its the whole of rebol/view (non pro, can't remember exactly
> --what version) which resides within a embed/object tag, like you'd do
> --with flash.
>
> Are you referring to the Rebol Plugin ? If so, I suppose development is
> fairly straightforward....
yep, like any rebol/view app. The only detail is where is puts the
user
files which are normally cached in your user dir.
with the plugin version, its deep within the internet temp dirs.
> --web--
> --People keep forgetting about REMARK, and I find this really annoying.
> --Its one of my tools and has been in production use for a few years.
> --It is based on a html/rebol hybrid markup language, where you define
> --custom HTML tags which are defined as dialects.
>
> I visited the remark site, and did not see any downloadables there. However,
> the custom tags - RTAGS - are quite good.
I wonder how you missed it, hehe, there is a download link on the main menu:
http://www.pointillistic.com/open-REBOL/moa/steel/retools/remark/downloads.html
the whole engine is in one .zip file, with the online help given as an
example source site.
all in all, it should take less than half an hour to download and complete
the dynamic tag tutorial, and rebuild your own version of the help
files on your system.
> I quote from the site documentation "They[RTAGS] are the core api of the remark
> engine. All custom tags are implented within the engine as RTAGS. Adding new
> tags is trivial, coding smart tags is a great deal of fun. There is
> theoretically no limit to what an rtag can do,
[...]
> In such a case, surely intelligent tags can be easily written to make
> development of web pages a breeze, rather than the current painful approach
> generally. Could you throw more light on this....
yes, you simply create new pseudo HTML tags (rtags), which parse their
content and
return new (html) content.
since you can return dynamic rtags within this new content, the parser
checks to see if the new content has to be reparsed it does so persistently,
until there are no rtags left.
be carefull not to return yourself within your content, or else,
parsing will never end.
> Remark, as I understand it, is a tool to create and maintain web sites - A
> web site management and admin tool.
pretty much. you can parse a whole site, it detects what pages have
changed, and you can also xfer the whole site to a remote ftp with one
click.
you can also do stuff like erase the remote site prior to uploading
the new one, in order to prevent stray pages.
> However there is need for integration
> with CGI/FASTCGI to make it a tool for developing web sites with access to
> databases, etc. I may be completely wrong here.... please feel free to
> correct me.....Possibly need access to CGI thru Custom Tags to ensure that
> the data sent to the user is dynamic and latest.....OR Possibly use it in
> conjuncton with regular CGI and throw HTML code using Custom Tags by
> preparsing the tags .......
yes, and remark v2 is aimed at adding dynamic parsing of pages via cgi,
and later on apache & cheyenne modules rather than preparsed.
currently, you could still simplify your development, by creating tags
which will return rebol CGI code instead of html. basically, this
would allow you to embed your cgi within a cleaner layout which deals
only with html. ex:
<cgi! trace-access: on
<HEADER!>
<SUBMENU!>
<TITLE! login:>
<FORM! %login.r
<COLUMN!
<FIELD! "Enter name:" user: "Srini">
<PASSFIELD! "Enter password" password: "">
<SUBMIT-BUTTON!>
>
<FOOTER!>
this would return a rebol cgi file, which has things like the shebang
on the first line, the cgi! tag could also put error recovery code,
form data preflight like post-back loading.
the form tags could then add their data to the html (not printing
anything until the page is done), verifying post-back in order to set
values instead of using the defaults (which are specified above using
set-words:). the form filepath would be resolved according to
cgi-bin automatically, etc.
this is just an example of what you could build up.
in the next version of remark, instead of prebuilding your cgi files,
the above, would be run on the fly, and no "intermediate" rebol file
would be generated.
I've already got the basics done, I rebuilt the basic parser and its
10 to 50 times faster and is much more robust.
Its now a library which can be embeded in any code.
It also allows one to replace custom tags on the fly, even while
a page is parsing. This allows you to switch sets of tags on the fly,
rather than checking for options within each tag (faster generation).
This is especially usefull when only look and feel change (printable
version, different languages, etc).
> And while we're at it.... Are there any charting tools available for Rebol
> (commercial and/or free) ? ...In today's world, presentation and
> visualization of information and data are increasingly playing an important
> role and such tools go a long way in enabling businesses take decisions
> quickly or at least help them identify problem areas.....
not sure, you'd have to check on the rebol.org, there might be stuff.
I know some people have tackled this, but I don't remember what is
available, or noteworthy.
> And MAx - what's the latest on STEEL and the SLIM library.........., if I
> may ask......
well, slim has been working for years, providing module management
without issue for all of my codebase.
STEEL is a collection of tools, so they are in perpetual flux, but
since most of what I do in REBOL is hobby, the web site has very low
priority.
I even have many tools, which have never been released publicly, for a
few reasons. The rebol community is a strange one, usually prefering
their own tools, its part of being a reboler I guess. Documentation is often
raised as an issue, but remark is a good example that this isn't
always the case.
I always wanted the STEEL stuff to be collaborative, with a few people
updating, documenting, improving the code, etc, but such collaboration
is rare, sparse and usually related to specific projects. I just have
too many huge (and some conceptually complex) APIs and libs for me to
be providing full featured docs and tutorials on my own. I get so few
real requests, that putting hundreds of hours into it is not worth it.
I seem like I'm complaining hehe, but I'm not. I'm just relating
actual experience. This being said, I have some users here and there,
and I support them directly when they have issues.
If you'd like to try out remark and have some questions while doing
so, please send them via this list, it will help raise awareness about
remark.
have fun!
-MAx
