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lost the case ...

 [1/18] 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-

 [2/18] from: ptretter:charter at: 3-Nov-2003 18:22


Pekr, I totally agree with the frustration. However, RT's mission is not to first create a language. I was also very confused over the developer updates and thinking it would be published eash month and that never happened. I never did look at VID as anymore than a sample of what we can do. I think that there is alot more that could be done. CALLBACKS are really in need for alot of us. That was one of the big walls we hit - I know at least a few of us anyway. We want REBOL to do much more than it is and are so excited about it only to wait and wait and then get dissatisfied. I hope something comes soon. So lets wait.... Carl has a way of keeping us guessing. The DLL thing was as close as a NEWS release last time so maybe he will hit us with that soon. I gotta feeling we will be singing REBOL praises again very soon. Paul

 [3/18] from: warp:reboot:ch at: 4-Nov-2003 1:28


Hi Pekr, On 4-nov-03, at 00:34, Petr Krenzelok wrote:
> - 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 ... >
Can't even try them (yea in Virtual PC 8/) ..still waiting for an OS X version since..
> Now read those and look into the dates: > November 2002: > Monthly "State of the REBOLion" updates - Starting as of this message > we >
remember being very happy about that, how many month did it go?
> -pekr- > -- > To unsubscribe from this list, just send an email to > [rebol-request--rebol--com] with unsubscribe as the subject. >
Viva la rebolution! ..but maybe better "Viva la r-sharp-ution" Happy and frustrated reboller 8) Will Arp [warp--reboot--ch]

 [4/18] from: tim:johnsons-web at: 3-Nov-2003 17:17


I'm not going to quote anyone here, because I'm taking a different attack than Pekr did - but it is worthwhile to take the same subject line. Given the context for which I generally use rebol - web programming - it is the most productive programming language that I have ever used. And I know wherefore I speak because I've worked in about a dozen of them. Currently, about half of my income comes from rebol code, about 40% comes from python and another 10% from C. But I am self-employed, own my own business and in most cases, I can deliver product in whatever source I choose. I am also fortunate that my domain hoster hosts rebol. If I were to use python as an example - rebol is more productive *but* python has more resources. *And* is more less propietary ----- real important concept. The same can be said for perl and that is why my business/programming partner is sticking with perl rather than switching to rebol despite being very impressed with it. I've hammered this time and again on this list, and I will say it again, there is *so* much talent in the rebol community that a real *distro* could be put together that could rival anything that python or perl have to offer. I have no doubt whatsoever that would attract more programmers. On another note: Let's say I have a client who says "Tim, I want your code in C. I don't care if it will take more time than rebol. Rebol is obscure." Now, given that scenario, suppose I've got rebol imbedded in my editor (which is VIM), just as python is imbedded in vim. If that were that case, I could program rebol to automate the writing of "C". That would make for a remarkable plugin, and I'm sure that the vim developers and the vim community would work with RT to make that happen. that would be just awesome and give rebol that much more exposure. And BTW, I don't believe that RT would have to provide source code. Vim doesn't care about python binary source. Rebol has taken a proprietary path that I am not sure that I agree with. I won't program in view, because TK has so much more application. This isn't an opinion, it is a business decision. And anytime that I need to do stuff with compressed files, I will use python. Why - rip files are proprietory. Not too long ago, I suggested on this list, that rebol might benefit from incorporating the regex engine (which is public domain code), such as perl does. On of my brothers is project engineer for Motorola. He uses rebol and perl extensively in-house. Rebol for TCP/IP stuff, perl for regex. He tells me that if rebol would adopt regex, that his perl programmers would be getting real used to square brackets. That is - they would be using rebol instead. Just my 5centsworth. Time to put some break on the table. -- Tim Johnson <[tim--johnsons-web--com]> http://www.alaska-internet-solutions.com

 [5/18] from: AJMartin:orcon at: 24-Dec-2003 22:44


> > Now read those and look into the dates: > > November 2002: > > Monthly "State of the REBOLion" updates - > remember being very happy about that, how many month did it go?
Just the one. :( I sent in feedback after a few months requesting it be removed as it indicated that the site was dead and no longer alive (which was bad for Rebol). Andrew J Martin BREATHE, REBOL! ICQ: 26227169 http://www.rebol.it/Valley/ http://valley.orcon.net.nz/ http://Valley.150m.com/

 [6/18] from: petr:krenzelok:trz:cz at: 4-Nov-2003 9:12


Paul Tretter wrote:
>Pekr, >I totally agree with the frustration. However, RT's mission is not to first
<<quoted lines omitted: 9>>
>with that soon. >I gotta feeling we will be singing REBOL praises again very soon.
Ah, then you know something we don't. Look, as for me - I know what the situation is. I know we can hardly do anything about it, my frustration goes from loosing another 2 potential users for the rebol case. I tried my best, but can't do more about it. We talk about updated VID for more than year and I was given a question - "when?", and asked for realistic answer .... which I am not able nor willing to provide, as I know nothing about RT's concrete short term plans in that regards ... -pekr-

 [7/18] from: Christophe:Coussement:mil:be at: 4-Nov-2003 8:41


We just can't let it to agree with you, pekr :( We are now working since 2000 full time with REBOL for developing business core applications, and it is a monthly work to convince our management to keep it that way. We had a few meeting where we could demonstrate the power of the underlying concepts of REBOL, and they agreed to it. But the raising question is : what about the future ? what if RT does not survive a bad financial situation ? Life goes on... when I see how PHP/Python/Java or even C# community are dynamic and growing on, how does the REBOL community stands there ? Lot of very great peoples are working on very nice projects, but can we speak of community work ? are there out there projects developed by -let's say- 10 people. Very good idea's - PDF-maker, steel, anamonitor, ... - are supported by one or two people, I think... I'm feeling even more uncomfortable when my bosses ask "how is it with your projects ? ... and still using REBOL ?..." I'm afraid one day will come we will have to switch to more dynamic env, even if its less revolutionary and productive, but better supported. Just look at the history: if a revolution is not supported by a critical mass people, it will not become a success, being overthrowed or becoming a dictature... Please RT, save our code ! As always, just 5 (euro-)cents thoughts ==christophe

 [8/18] from: ingo:2b1 at: 4-Nov-2003 11:55


Hi Will, Will Arp wrote:
> Hi Pekr, > > On 4-nov-03, at 00:34, Petr Krenzelok wrote:
<...>
> >>Now read those and look into the dates: >>November 2002: >>Monthly "State of the REBOLion" updates - Starting as of this message >>we >> > > remember being very happy about that, how many month did it go?
Well, it DID state monthly, and exactly one month it DID go! :-(

 [9/18] from: SunandaDH:aol at: 4-Nov-2003 6:26


Not every language is going to make it to the big time. Maybe REBOL will, maybe it won't. I hope it will. This sort of discussion goes on in discussion groups about any less-than-mainstream language. As an example, check this Usenet message from comp.lang.forth: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=xnSYa.30993%24k94.2 4858%40news02.roc.ny&rnum=7&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Drebol%2Bforth%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D %26ie%3DUTF-8%26scoring%3Dd%26selm%3DxnSYa.30993%2524k94.24858%2540news02.roc. ny%26rnum%3D7 If that URL is mangled by the time you read it, try a Google Groups search for robustness and momentum of REBOL Sunanda.

 [10/18] from: bry:itnisk at: 4-Nov-2003 14:27


It would be nice to see some group projects. I would like to see a project to put together a real library of xml functionality for Rebol, something which I think might be too much for one or two to accomplish realistically.

 [11/18] from: Steven:White:ci:bloomington:mn:us at: 4-Nov-2003 11:44


>>> [petr--krenzelok--trz--cz] 11/03/03 05:34PM >>> >>>- lack of View documentation ... >>>Sorry for frustration, but I think I am not only one thinking along
the
>>>lines ...
I would have to agree, although I think that in my case it is a combination of my limited mental capacity and Carl being as far ahead of his time with REBOL as he was with the Amiga. I finally have found an excuse to use REBOL on a tiny project at work. I could have done it in half a day with COBOL by typing my little fingers off. With REBOL, I can do it (I think) in a relatively few lines of code, but it sure is hard to figure out what those lines of code are. I'm on my fourth day. Steven White City of Bloomington 1800 W Old Shakopee Rd Bloomington MN 55431-3096 USA 952-563-4882 (voice) 952-563-4672 (fax) [steven--white--ci--bloomington--mn--us]

 [12/18] from: greggirwin:mindspring at: 4-Nov-2003 17:01


Hi Steven, SW> With REBOL, I can do it (I think) in a relatively few lines of code, SW> but it sure is hard to figure out what those lines of code are. Ask here! I know I learn a lot by seeing other questions and answers. You may not always get an answer, but sometimes you'll save a bundle of time and effort thanks to the good folks here. -- Gregg

 [13/18] from: andrew:martin:colenso:school at: 24-Dec-2003 22:44


Bryan wrote:
> It would be nice to see some group projects. I would like to see a
project to put together a real library of xml functionality for Rebol, something which I think might be too much for one or two to accomplish realistically. I'd be interested in this as well. But I'm pretty busy at the moment, working, learning C# and trying to make R#. Andrew J Martin Attendance Officer Speaking in tongues and performing miracles. Colenso High School Arnold Street, Napier. Tel: 64-6-8310180 ext 826 Fax: 64-6-8336759 http://colenso.net/scripts/Wiki.r?AJM http://www.colenso.school.nz/ DISCLAIMER: Colenso High School and its Board of Trustees is not responsible (or legally liable) for materials distributed to or acquired from user e-mail accounts. You can report any misuse of an e-mail account to our ICT Manager and the complaint will be investigated. (Misuse can come in many forms, but can be viewed as any material sent/received that indicate or suggest pornography, unethical or illegal solicitation, racism, sexism, inappropriate language and/or other issues described in our Acceptable Use Policy.) All outgoing messages are certified virus-free by McAfee GroupShield Exchange 5.10.285.0 Phone: +64 6 843 5095 or Fax: +64 6 833 6759 or E-mail: [postmaster--colenso--school--nz]

 [14/18] from: maximo:meteorstudios at: 4-Nov-2003 21:15


> -----Original Message----- > From: bryan [mailto:[bry--itnisk--com]]
<<quoted lines omitted: 5>>
> something which I think might be too much for one or two to accomplish > realistically.
I'll butt in here, as I am one who is trying to create a concerted development effort. why is rebol not as widespread as it should? its scary and easy to put down for IT managers who often have less knowledge about IT than about their dog's digestive proteins. All they want is a sense of security. rebol does not provide that. python does, perl does, .net does. what mega corporation claims and is proud to say that it uses ios or even rebol/core? ......... none I heard of. python uses google... and that is a powerfull statement if any. Problem is that many of us don't use rebol as our main development package, working a lot of our stuff at home in a hobby-like environment, so many projects are stale or move on only slowly. France might be the one exception to this, I hope it succeeds in becoming a beacon which light up the rest of the world to rebol. I have used rebol commercially, but when projects aren't comming in, I have less justification to put time on my tools. Take the steel project, for example, its always advancing. But I'm currently only putting a few hours on it every week, usually that's not enough to call it an update. Documentation also takes soooo much time, that it slows down development a lot. I started steel in the mindset that people might join me with specific tools which all complement themselves (my main contribution being glass). Steel is a core to which anything can be grafted, but I need to actually get that core to a release state and all that is quite tedious. releasing QAD code tidbits is easy, but implementing liquid-vid, for example, means that I must re-engineer 50 types of gadgets (30 are done ;-), make them stable, some quite hard to taim (even for the most advanced of us), in their current form... And that's just one of 20 pieces of the puzzle. I've shifted the development of steel so that low-level constructs are done which are released, which can be used by anyone. This is instead of making the code editor, which is what everyone expects, which would be rebuilt every few months, making any of your projects corrupt... lets take GLASS. I worked on it almost full time for 2 months. Man, it has its own dialect, complete dynamic nested layout, it supports run-time switchable localization (which even supports multiple datatypes, not just text), run-time skin swaping, all in a pretty fast and REALLY easy to use package... but there you go, I lost that job (because the company got stabbed in the back) and glass development all but stopped (at least I was officialy given the rights to all the code :-). I know have an advanced experimental layout engine, "in the closet", ready to be be put into an official release state (read as: completely re-coded), a complete and true VID alternative which goes beyond anything any of you have seen in rebol, but, again ... time is against me, steel must be done before I start again on glass. What's the point in releasing code if no one's going to use it cause its not usable enough, even if already great... liquid is a different issue... it is release stable, everyone seems to like what they hear of it, but I have not gotten a lot of feedback of people actualy trying it out... and trying to grasp its subtleties. Liquid.r really is a core tool which is meant to be used as a data flow architecture, also as the basis to create other tools, which plug into that data. Liquid-vid is a working example of such a thing, liquid-net and liquid-sql would be others... Do you have time to learn it, and code a module for it? probably not, unless you think that its advantages will outweigh the time spent on learning it, but how can I explain/convince people without real examples!? again, time. And I understand. I have a release plan which is pretty immutable. everything will be there in time, but sometimes I have so much work at home, that I can't do 1/10th of what I wish I'd do. The only thing that is certain is that steel is a project built on solid foundations with a tenacious and stubborn person at its head. I WILL see it through. It is a project 10 years in the making, and When I started steel in rebol, I though about it long and hard... and I decided that if I was going to start, it had to be finished, even if it would take years. I want all of those years designing and implementing obscure ideas on my old and trusty A1200(in language E), to be of some worth. If steel does not get to a certain point, it will be like I've been working hundreds of hours for absolutely nothing. ON ANOTHER NOTE: rebol.org is a great team effort. All of you please use it when you can. Also please give them feedback. I know how fun it is to get questions and even criticism... Nothing is worse than NOT knowing what people think. cheers! -MAx ------------- Steel project coordinator http://www.rebol.it/~steel

 [15/18] from: antonr:iinet:au at: 5-Nov-2003 13:56


Well, I haven't given up yet. Anton.

 [16/18] from: nitsch-lists:netcologne at: 5-Nov-2003 16:15


I don't worry about rebol. But i worry a bit about us. Eventually we are outgrown it? The "simple for simple stuff, then the other features", this simple may be to easy for us? I like Carls recent style in the cookbook. Seems he has some fun with "rebol for simple things" again. Regarding cookbook: there are some examples which are quite usable to draw peoples to rebol. simply try to do that in other languages, and they would drop them. But rebols area is web-upload-scripts and searching IMHO. I agree the editor (area) is very weak in rebol. Not for real text-editing. not without emacs, vim, some others and word inbuild. (fast, rich-text, and everyones keybindings). the limit is the inbuild desktop-editor. usable for quick changes, for heavy tasks switch. field/area are good to show and enter stuff, its very repid to set up and use. Seeing such c#-examples i think "Uh, writing that much" since rebol. Instead of writing a real editor, i would like better connection to external editor. I can call my running emacs with file and line-number, and call rebol-scripts from there. could work for example as a file-requester in rebol, or calling text-processing scripts. -Volker Am Dienstag, 4. November 2003 00:34 schrieb Petr Krenzelok:

 [17/18] from: nitsch-lists:netcologne at: 5-Nov-2003 16:42


Am Dienstag, 4. November 2003 03:17 schrieb Tim Johnson:
> Now, given that scenario, suppose I've got rebol imbedded in my > editor (which is VIM), just as python is imbedded in vim.
<<quoted lines omitted: 6>>
> And BTW, I don't believe that RT would have to provide source code. Vim > doesn't care about python binary source.
===Rebol as emacs-plugin: http://www.frozen-north-linuxonline.com/Howto/REBOL+Emacs.html http://www.frozen-north-linuxonline.com/Howto/REBOL+RMAIL.html I guess vim can work similar. ===some of my beginners emacs-code. it saves, calls a script, reads result and jumps to old position. in this case it prettyprints the sourcecode with rebols own cleaner.: (defun cleans () "clear rebol script" (interactive) (progn (save-buffer) (shell-command (concat"rebol -cs ~/xenv/cleans.r " (buffer-file-name (current-buffer)))) (let((old (point))) (find-alternate-file (buffer-file-name (current-buffer))) (goto-char old) ) )) ===a rebol-script in the background: this o(not presented) script uploads the file with ftp. or downloads. or shows date and size and header of both. since its a shared ftp-site i want to check before. all actions are on hotkeys, so its "c-x c-g c-u" from emacs. (the c-u goes to the rebol-window ;) (defun run-uni () "run rebol-buffer through emacs.r" (interactive) (progn (save-buffer) (shell-command (concat rebol-binary " -s ~/xenv/uni.r emacs " (buffer-file-name (current-buffer)) "&" )) ;;(other-window 1) (delete-other-windows) )) ===using emacs for the real editing from rebol (view 1.2.10 beta) line: length? parse/all copy/part d-area/text system/view/caret "^/" set-browser-path "emacsclient" browse probe join "+" [line " " a-file] wait 1 quit -Volker

 [18/18] from: greggirwin:mindspring at: 5-Nov-2003 9:51


Hi Max, MOA> Nothing is worse than NOT knowing what people think. Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more. One of the things that is interesting about the REBOL community is that a single person *can* create really useful stuff; it doesn't require a team. Look at Rugby, pdf-maker, the async protocol stuff, Steel, Phil's email client, many of Carl's examples (EasyVID, make-doc--and it's derivatives, etc.), the REP site, and so many more! For a small community, we have so many things to keep up with, it's hard to support all of them. I try to do what I can in spare moments here and there, but I often feel I don't do enough. So, let me say "THANK YOU!" to everyone in the community for all the cool stuff you've done. I only wish I had time to play with them all. -- Gregg

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