alambik.com

demos to Rebol. Check them at:

They look very nice, Cyphre! Can you produce a Alambik translator? :) Andrew Martin ICQ: 26227169 http://valley.150m.com/

-- --------------------------------- : sabin densmore : www.onegecko.com : [sabin--onegecko--com]

Hi, cool! I saw that these are from March... So we had this topic already? However, there should really be a rebol-plugin at least just to provide a drawing canvas like Java applets do. Robert

usable

Same for me. I use Mozilla too and I was send from their homepage to some other "homepage" because my "browser may be incompatible and sorry for any inconvenience" blah blah. So I lost interest. It may be cool as hell but it isn't because it's only Explorer specific.

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Yes, that's true. And that's the reason why I don't think that REBOL/View should have DirectX support as some people suggested. Maybe REBOL isn't fastest right now but there are other ways than using some tricky proprietary API existing just for one platform. Bye, bolek --- Odchoz=ED zpr=E1va neobsahuje viry. Zkontrolov=E1no antivirov=FDm syst=E9mem AVG (http://www.grisoft.cz). Verze: 6.0.371 / Virov=E1 b=E1ze: 206 - datum vyd=E1n=ED: 13.6.2002

Rebol could use every trick possible. If source code remains cross-platform, then what is the problem? Maybe Mac or other platforms have their DirectX equivalents too .... We are quite not multimedia ready, yet .... -pekr-

Yes, we just need - to allow Rebol to be downloadable and registrable as plug-in to browsers, to pressing .r to invoke at least new rebol/view window (not to mention ability to display directly in browser window would be a great win for rebol public acceptance, as ppl tend to think that if something lives inside browser's window = it is standard ...). Alambik uses sound, and 3D - we currently lack both .... Cyphre reported to me, that one of demos he converted was completed in Alambic in 2 sec, but in rebol it takes much more time to complete. We definitely also need 'compile function to speed-up math and bitmap calculations at least .... -pekr-

Ups! I left some wrong datestamps in index.r ;-) I did the demos yesterday night, right after I tried the Alambik engine. It was lot of fun. Unfortunately Rebol is not fast enough to draw point-by-point on canvas. FYI the barnsley shape is drawn in less than 2 seconds in Alambik but Rebol works on it more than one minute on the same machine :-(. I would invite rebol player plugin(with sound) with optimized framebuffer routines(at least like TinyPTC) and compile on demand feature useful for faster math operations. regards, Cyphre

it

Yes, that's true. And that's the reason why I don't think that REBOL/View should have DirectX support as some people suggested. Maybe REBOL isn't fastest right now but there are other ways than using some tricky proprietary API existing just for one platform. I think each port of Rebol/View should get maximum from the possibilities of the platform where is runnig. So why should REBOL use slow and ugly software rendering on systems with great graphics power? I think this has nothing with multi-platformity. We are talking about visualising techniques not about language itself. I'll bet every programmer will be glad to see the same code is runnign way smooth on accelerated machine than on some old-timer from 90's... Regards, Cyphre

I agree :)

Just to this point (and it's a good one). The JVM is a great example. Java Swing is a langauge-specific GUI rendering language, and it's the biggest RAM hog I have ever run into. The Compaq Armada I run at work chokes while running Swing-based app., and has anyone ever tried Limewire on OSX? Man. Slow-city. My point is that Rebol/View has broad platform support with a fast and fairly pleasing (and if not, we can make our own) GUI. I think it would be great to make us able to call DirectX or Quartz or ActiveX or what-have-you, but i don't want to see it built in, per se, as I think that would turn Rebol into bloatware. We already have enough bloatware. Yes to speed. No to bloat. Think small. Think fast. Build good software. Make people happy. sd -- --------------------------------- : sabin densmore : www.onegecko.com : [sabin--onegecko--com] : irc: dal.net #rebol

Hi, I totally agree here. Adding platformspecific fast rendering/blitting code to the binary should't bloat it and mostly each platform has some kind of accelerated blitting. It's not to hard to add as I'm sure RT has some internal blitting routines. These just need to be altered to use the faster versions... Like TinyPTC ;-)). I hope we will see this soon... If not: RT I'm going to do the windows blitting stuff for you for free :-)). Robert

Maybe they need two versions then. The average programmer is not up to the task of calling Direct X directly to just write an application that performs resonably. Companies don't like to write applications in languages that eat up 10 times more cpu resources than compiled code. What attracts me to Rebol is the productivity benefits of having to write and maintain less code. If I have to write my own GUI framework in Direct X DLL calls to get reasonable performance and a good look and feel, it will have to be relegated to just writing quick and dirty console mode utilities. _____________________________________ Think you can't get high-speed Internet? Now you can! StarBand offers high-speed Internet via satellite. No phone lines needed. New lower prices. For all 50 U.S. States. See for yourself at: http://www.StarBand.com

And what I meant was that with Rebol we don't need to to DirectX calls, and shouldn't. Rebol seems completely capable of full-blown apps (as soon as some of the license issues mentioned previously on the list are sorted out ;) ). sd -- --------------------------------- : sabin densmore : www.onegecko.com : [sabin--onegecko--com]