[REBOL] Re: Is Rebol OO?
From: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 12-Jan-2004 17:17
Hi Gerard
> http://www.vydra.net/esl/paper/
Thanks I'll look into it.
> May be someone has yet to write the ultimate book that will permit every
programmer that wants to do some steps in this way to be
> able to do so ... by itself - as easily as it can be done !
There is no 'ultimate' - just keep learning keep growing keep changing..
But a high level book which discussed dialects would be a very interstnig
thing. There are maybe some good Phd. thesis papers on the subject.
> generally lost since they are not of general interest and not much useful
in a planned learning. This is what is missing. The Zine
> was the part that permitted every newcomer to study some material of this
kind - planned for more or less advanced stuff.
Yeah I like Zine very much. If Rebol population grows then I expect rebol
blogs to appear just as they have for Flash. It fills in nice learning space
bewteen mailing lists and elsewhere.
That's one reason I think Vanilla is a natural fit for beginner. It
icombines wiki wiht blog. And beacuase it in rebol very motivating to learn
hands-on as needs emerge. In fact virtually all my Rebol experience is based
on hacking aroudn Vanilla. Nothing sophisticated compared to people here,
but satisfying useful and motivating. I owe you a post about Vanilla from
discussion many days back. Will try to complete it this evening.
> For example I find it so annoying to me to completely rewrite my complete
paths (switching the / for the \ plus adding the " at both
> ends and stripping the : after the Drive name) each time I have to type
some copied file name and path from my Windows Explorer to
> the console prompt - I mnow ther must exist some script to help somewhere
but this could be useful to have defined a dialect for
> managing files any time it would be needed to
> express for example the listing of the files contained in
E:/DOCUMENTS/Gerard/credit card Orders/Alibris/
Well yeah it is annoying. Rebol and Python both have their own consistent
intenal syntax. But it strikes me they shoul dbe smart enough to just check
for the path syntax of the platform being used and then accept and convert
to the internal. . I imagine such functions have been written many times
over already by people.
> Just to give you an idea of the involved difficulties, imagine a customer
that phones at the arena and want to know if he can take a
> reservation one time each week for the next 12 weeks preferably during the
wednesday evenings.
> This should not be of a real problem if the 12 wednesdays are free. The
problem begins when some of the weeks are not free and the
> clerk must go back and forth interrogating the system to see where it will
fit another evening to accomodate the client for all of
> his needs - IN REAL TIME PLEASE - the client is waiting at the other end
of the phone.
That's the kind of problem interactive calendars are great for. As it
happens I've just been working on this problem using Flash for online house
rental bookings. And its one of the reasons I am big fan of Jabber because
its presence mechanism makes it ideal transport for connecting collaborative
apps like this. I want the user interface elements to be both control and
display devices, capable of changing state when send or receive events. Of
course Rebol/View can be good for that too. Personally I just find Flash is
much more sophisticated and fun for that kind of gui development.
I don't know how far the calendar component of IOS went. Perhaps it has
what you want already in it ?
Generally dialects and local uses of parse seem to emerge from some direct
need.
Some job grows really repetitious or lengthy. So a dialect can help simplify
the code keep focus to the task at hand. Beyond that is the idea of hidden
smarts, where they can embed logic and contextual behavior hiding the guts
from the casual use. Extreme example was already provided:
Computer do [what I want]
Life do [what I need] not [what I want]
etc..
If I understand correctly Rebol dialects are a *much* kinder version of what
XSLT does.
- Jason
