[REBOL] Re: OSx news and external world reaction ...
From: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 6-Feb-2003 8:26
Karl Robillard wrote:
>Yes, I'd use different tools where appropriate, but use them tightly coupled
>together. Because I cannot embed REBOL in a C program and write my own
>natives I cannot use REBOL in such an application.
>
Hello Karl,
I would like you to explain me those issues. I have no low-level
language experience, but if you can explain it to me, I can understand
it. The problem is, we hear above requirement from time to time, but can
you tell me, how it can be accomplished?
1) writing own rebol natives - what does it mean? Do you want to write C
or ASM code, and have rebol.exe contain compiler so it would compile
your code? What about library interface? You can put your "native" code
into some library and hook it into rebol, creating wrapper function -
that way you get your "native" into rebol. Or do you know any other way
of how to acomplish it?
2) What does it mean "embed REBOL in a C program"? You can currently
pass parameters to external rebol.exe or you can use tcp hook, but maybe
you have something other in mind? rebol.dll - linkable library, so you
can directly call rebol functions from your app, pass them parameters,
and obtain results back? Well, but anyway - rebol works with blocks
etc., simply structures not directly available in C language level - you
would have to create transform functions anyway ....
3) as for "some cheap-ass GUI" - yes, View has its limitations. One
month ago or so Carl asked here what direction to take. My opinion is,
that RT should concentrate upon kernel only stuff and plug-ins. What
bothers me is inability to have multimedia-capable apps. View is
compositing engine, but it can't do more than it is designed for. We can
link to OpenGL, other GUI libs probably, and have separate display, but
then we don't need View. I would like to see at least ability to hook
some memory space into View face - simply said - having e.g. embedded
.avi player into View face. Maybe it could be technically possible even
today, as we can pass View face pointer to library call, but noone yet
showed it is technically possible ...
Without such features along with mentioned better fonts, printing, color
text, better keyboard, Unicode etc. we are going to stay behind, and
View is gonna be regarded as a nice toy, with limited feature-set,
always dependant upon what RT decides to put inside ... and it would be
nice to know, what RT thinks about future language/platform direction ...
-pekr-
