[REBOL] Re: How to use system/*
From: brett:codeconscious at: 28-Dec-2001 12:15
> A GUI browser for system exploratin and editing would be useful.
> Anything being worked on?
Volker suggested a comprehensive tool too. I haven't heard of any other
activity.
I thought of a commenting or annotation system to help me record what I
found where could be useful. Something that just associates a path with a
string, with some set/get functions. So that one could do something like:
get-comment system/view/vid/vid-styles
and get a response like:
"VID Master Stylesheet."
These functions could then be called by a comprehensive tool or added into
HELP. The set function could validate
the string to ensure that if it contained newlines, that it would follow the
make-doc format. For bonus points a network
aware version might allow people to colloborate directly from the HELP
function or the comprehensive tool.
My favourite exploration tool is the extended help patch by DocKimbel.
Romano's slick looking monitor.r is useful too.
I also tend to:
write clipboard:// mold :layout
and paste into my usual text editor (Notetab) so that I can browse and
create small experiments quickly.
The exploration tool I use is guesstamation - a module in my brain that
generates weird ideas which are subsequently tested
against Rebol queries.
> Am I right in understanding that VID is just one possible GUI dialect
based
> on /View developed by RT? Others might be like Max's currently suspended
> Glass project, etc.
Yep. There's something in one of the RT documents that says something like
that.
> If so do you see as the tradeoffs for using VID vs. other developemnt
> [Glass-like]?
If I'm not wrong I think VID is the only released GUI framework so far for
Rebol/View. So for me there is not a lot of
choice :)
Once you accept the face paradighm of Rebol/View, VID shows itself to be
very sophisticated at producing such face models. However, I'm sure many of
us have used other GUI frameworks where the role of GUI control developer vs
GUI control user (application developer) is far more clearly defined than in
VID - so maybe we feel VID is not supporting us well in this respect. But
then such frameworks (presuming some are created) where the roles are more
clearly defined will have a tough time against VID in attaining the
X-Internet vision because VID and it's machinery are so concise. It will be
interesting
too see how things develop.
BTW, I'd like to see a GRID style for VID that may have to sacrifice the
flexibility of LIST in order to gain ease of use. I suspect GRID if it
existed would end up being one of the most used styles in VID - probably
useful for 80% of applications.
The only risk to GRID would be that it could end up too bloated. If people
need too many features for a single
GRID style then maybe there is a way to extend a basic version with
functionality on demand.
> How nice would be to walk into the bookstore and find a fresh copy of
> REBOL/View-In-A-Nutshell..
Yep.
Brett.