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[REBOL] lost the case ...

From: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 4-Nov-2003 0:34

Hi, today I lost second person who started with rebol some few months ago. Sorry if you will find my comments off-topic, or negative, but I can't resist. And what is more - I think current situation deserves some criticism. Maybe you will tell me you don't know how my lamenting can help rebol, but otoh I may ask you - how current state of no visible progress can help it either. I know there are several groups of rebol users - those who are real rebol hackers, who can accomplish really nice things using rebol, but otoh there is group of ppl, who will start to be frustrated, after some time of usage. Today I met such person - my long time friend. He is a programmer - average one. He tried to do very simply thing - press the button and insert some text into area, into caret position. While I am sure few even few lines solutions could be posted, the problem is, that my friend does not care anymore. And sadly - I have to agree with him, as the cause is: - VID is 70 - 80% complete, which means it pushes ppl to adapt styles. - styles don't provide proper encapsulation - why such thing as caret position of certain face is not simply a property of face object ... - styles are inconsistent from the point of user data storage - styles are incomplete in 'feel area of behavior - lack of View documentation ... I am (was) a programmer too. I think I know what I talk about. Don't get me wrong - VID is beautifull concept, but in current state it pushes ppl to often try to hack into View level, but then - there is a lack of documentation. When I learned Visual Objects, there were 2 things important - event model and class hierarchy. The same goes for View imo - I remember that with View beta 1 came one doc, which left VID completly - it explained how concept of faces, events, its filtering etc. works. I think, that from programmer's perspective, something like that should reappear and upon such doc things like VID should be explained. VID only docs are nice, if VID itself is complete enough so it will not push ppl to touch under its level ... I am also asked - for nearly one year - hey, - what is new with rebol? And I have to say - nothing. SDK here or there does not count. I know that money are priority probably, but in such case, I think that is is inproper identification of long term business strategy. I would not bother with SDK for BSD or so, but would focus onto bringing Rebol to mobile devices arena, OSx etc. Now read those and look into the dates: November 2002: Monthly "State of the REBOLion" updates - Starting as of this message we will provide regular monthly news updates to keep you informed. (We also hope to recruit members from the REBOL community to contribute useful information, hints, docs, and scripts.) http://www.rebol.com/news3203.html http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=199 I think that those things should not be stated, unless fullfilled in reasonable enought timeframe. From external pov rebol totally lacks on development. I was trying to be helpfull as much as I could to my two friends, but they are not blind and I refuse to fool them around. I was also asked some two years ago to write about View for magazine of 12K monthly issues sold, but I refuse to, because of inability to guarantee any single thing regarding rebol's future. Gee, last official View release was when? Well, sadly I have to admit, that Rebol is becoming another Amiga - I will use it till the last day, but to be fair I would really have to think twice before suggesting Rebol to newcomers. Yesterday I received renewal for payment of rebol.cz domain. Some time ago I had intention to build some czech portal. I expected someone to help. I expected growing community, but now I think I will let the domain go. Should I do it for 3 - 8 active rebols in Czech Republic? Ask yourself how many rebols there are in other countries? Rebol was/is not succesfull in generating criticall mass of developers/users, so that most rebollers have another primar jobs and having less and less time for rebol related projects. I feel sorry for loosing two ppl to rebol case, but untill there is publicly stated short and long term strategy and at least some sign of sticking to published words I wonder if situation can get any better soon. Sorry for frustration, but I think I am not only one thinking along the lines ... -pekr-