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[REBOL] Re: First attempt at Rebol - 16 hours later

From: greg:schofield:iinet:au at: 30-Sep-2007 11:38

Very kind of you Carl, For some reason my mail did not get through for days and since then I found some extra documetation on the GUI and have got things running. Anton's scripts have been heaven sent in terms of increasing my REBOL awareness. My only problem now is how to get a selection from a "area" and whether I can position "area" according to a line position. For long time I have been fiddling with LUA which is a fine language in its own right, but nothing compared to REBOL. Carl I have just read through your script. I think my main problem is not always seeing the relation between blocks clearly. I need to progress a few steps further before I can be clear about this, but it is something to do with blocks and words implying "sentences", when I tend to read them as different "commands" and get confused as to how the blocks relate to one another. I am using heavy handed comments at the moment to make things clear to me. With R3 it might be nice to have an editor which uses as an option alternate colours to make clear which blocks belong together syntactically. I think this may be a major newbie problem, but I am not sure yet. In terms of books they are certainly needed, and there needs to be a way to consolidate documentation. I keep find in losing important information, and then discovering bits by accident. The only other thing I would suggest with documentation is to make it so it can be downloaded coherently and usefully (I am going to look after my mother for a week, and not have internet access). The last is printing the documentation - PDF maker is a must and at least two forms are needed, one an open traditional layout, the other in a compressed form that saves paper. But thanks again Carl and everyone on the list. REBOL deserves a much wider audience, and has what is needed to make a big change in how things are done on computers. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Carl Read <carl-cybercraft.co.nz> To: rebolist-rebol.com Reply-To: rebolist-rebol.com Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 13:20:20 +1200 Subject: [REBOL] Re: First attempt at Rebol - 16 hours later On Wednesday, 26-September-2007 at 18:53:56 greg.schofield wrote,
>Anton, I did not want you to think I am rude. > >I am still trying to get my head around Layout activation, I am missing s >omething simple and obvious. I can display the GUI, but not make them wo >rk.
Hi Greg, By 'not making them work', what do you mean? (I tried Anton's example and while I couldn't get it to run by cutting and pasting it into the console, (even after I'd tidied up the wrapped lines), it did run after I'd turned it into a script. Not that I knew what to do with it then - but it was alive.) My general approach to layouts is to have a main layout from which other layouts can be opened (if required) using view/new. An example... ;-- Layouts... main-lo: layout [ text-box: area 400x200 across btn "Add Random Line" [add-line] btn "Open Second Window" [view/new second-lo] btn "Does nothing" btn "Does nothing too" [] ; Needs stuff in the block to do anything. return btn "Close all Windows" [unview/all] ] second-lo: layout [ banner "Hello REBOLs!!!" black btn "Close Me!" [unview/only second-lo] ] ;-- A function. add-line: func [ "Add a line of characters to the text in text-box and display it." ][ loop random 6 [append text-box/text random " qwertyuiop"] append text-box/text "^/" ; Add return character. show text-box ] ;-- Open main layout... view main-lo Note with this approach only one version of the second window can be opened at once, which is what you mostly want. View docs I'm afraid are all over the place. The official REBOL/Core guide (in book form and online) is very good, but there's never been a decent (or any?) book in English released for View, though Olivier Auverlot's French one is supposed to be very good. Hopefully it'll all be rectified when R3 leaves beta. Anyway, hope the above helps and don't be afraid to ask any questions here. It's what the list is for and REBOL sure needs more newbies! -- Carl Read.