[REBOL] Re: starting to be really late!?
From: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 7-Jan-2004 13:06
> First there was the rebol - x-internet app, nearly alone .... then
> others stepped in into the game - Flash MX ... now they are moving ahead
> to mobile devices :
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/64/34740.html
Actually there has been recent discussion and complaints, even in the
excellent Flashcoders list, about too little real progress by Macromedia in
the mobile area.
http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/
Yes press announcements, but too little new tech, products or applications
in real life. Largely a by-product of the lousy economy I think There has
been lull and now lurch in cheaper compact memory. Color iPod/camphones
with Flash in 2005/2006 ? I hope and think so.
> Is rebol ever going to catch up once again? We need Rebol with more
> media capabilities, better memory consumption characteristics and even
> better with general virtual machine in 2004, or probably never ....
While View is nice and capable of more, I really think Rebol's best
strengths are not graphics/media, unless RT got massive investment and had
some very different kind of marketing director working for them. imo Rebol
is best for invisible stuff. As things stand I believe it would be a
relative disaster for RT to spend too much more effort on /View devlopment.
Better to integrate and use make-swf, and work on tight useful Flash
integration. Look at the cool swf2exe prodcuts which have come out
Screenwaever, Northcode, FlashStudioPro. That's easy money and opens up
desktop flash applications to compete with Rebol very quickly. FlashStudio
pro adds 400 fscommands including socket, http, ftp, mail, file i/o.. What
more does one want or need? Even a Rebol-based swf2exe for Windows, Mac and
Linux [in that order] could be a very successful and useful product. And a
viable way to introduce Rebol to much larger and visible audience . The
mobiles will follow.
Rebol Projects worth investing in?
How about a really *great* http server in rebol with integrated tfp, xmpp
[Jabber], mail etc.?
How about a really good mod_rebol component for Apache?
How about rebol for bluetooth/wifi enabling digital video and still cameras?
Let the others build media engines, let rebol be the modular engine they use
to communicate.
Anyway the mobiles will move moer and more to become embeded linux type
devices I expect. so better to enjoy the broad media sdks avaialbel there
don't you think?
It is soo much work to develop viable media capabilities - sound video etc.
For it ito be sucesful has to embrace many formats for improt and export.
Thats a huge amount of expensive testing, debugging, extra documentation
etc. Cool Proof of concept is not the same as globally adoptable,
industy-ready product.
- Jason
