[REBOL] Re: win-offset? screen-offset? bug
From: brett:codeconscious at: 25-Mar-2002 19:57
Hi Romano,
> Here it is my last version of panel, the previous one did not work
with local > words (because layout do not preserve binding):
Now you are getting innovative ;^)
I was thinking some more about the issue of bugs, patches and
distributed systems. The situation with the bug in layout is a bit like
the Intel Pentium floating point bug that came out a few years back.
Compiler writers included code that could tolerate that problem to take
the burden off the programmers.
Now my preference is to write scripts as much as possible against a bug
free environment - I don't want to clutter my code with exceptions
(bugs) that having nothing to do with the logic of my script. But I
take your point that patches introduce potentially more problems.
So perhaps the solution of the compiler writers should be used here.
Obviously not a ground-shaking conept, but it seems like a good
compromise. It comes back to the smart script builder (or library) idea
that has ben discussed before. Perhaps we could use a smart Rebol
script builder to "finalise" (make) a script. To finalise a script
might mean applying patches and bug fixes automatically, with a version
check in built to warn the user if they are using the script against an
untested version or product of Rebol. This is close to what Rebol does
with NEEDS anyway. The problem then is that a given script has a built
in obsolesence and another later version script would need downloading
when the old one "expired". Back to the "upgrade to solve" problem :-/
Oh well.
Brett.
