AltME: REBOL3

Messages

Ladislav
Yes
PeterWood
That's good.

Ladislav
Hi all, as far as I know, Rebol is considered a high-level cross-platform language. For example, in Windows and in all GCC-compiled platforms it uses two's complement signed integers. I think that to be truly cross-platform, it should use two's complement signed integers on every platform. What do others think on this?
Ladislav
Note: currently, the two's complement signed integer representation is already tested by the core-tests, otherwise it is not enforced.

Ladislav
Please check the ~Humour (my apologies for misusing the group) and #Topaz for the discussion/poll related to undefined variables, #[datatype! unset!], etc.

Arnold
@Reichart Will R4 be open sourced? I have PM ed with Bo about what I thought has to be done about R3.
As well Carl and Earl do not attend to the R3 repo so something has to be done.
In my plan at least 3 sourcekeepers must be assigned.
I think there should be at least three and 2 of three should support an update to have it accepted and if the other one disagrees this must be regarded as you win some you lose some. Good valid arguments will persuade for the better. Besides the 3 keepers, they need to know each others real name and physical address and emailaddress as well as a contactperson to call upon when there has been no contact for a longer period without given reason (holiday).
Any keeper must be replaced when no contact is made over a certain period of time.
Rebolek
That's sure better than your plan to abandon R3 repo totally.
Arnold
I do not know who the lucky ones should be. But if other communities can get the ball rolling so should ours.
Thanks Rebolek!
Bo has agreed to talk to Carl about this.
Rebolek
Anyway, I'm afraid it's hard to find one person to do it, it would be much harder with three.
Arnold
There is so much modesty around...
Well I no one else I will do it, but I need good advice.
Well I => Well if
Geomol
My view on things.
With R2, there were certain shortcommings or errors, that meant, we couldn't finish projects the way, we wanted. I saw R2 as a way to develop cross-platform for the major platforms, Windows, Linux, and OS X. And in a way with very fast development, a short way from idea to product.
For some server-side tasks, R2 was good enough in many ways (approaching perfect), but wanting to do graphics and sound and responsive events, there were obstacles.
The desire for an open-source R2 was there. Then we could fix things ourselves. Not develop new, but fix things to get R2 to work as intended across all platforms.
R3 meant new development, not just a fix of things in R2. But if almost starting over, then it could be from any ground, not only R3. And the world around us changed fast with new mobile platforms. We saw new approaches to solve the problem of 'programming' in efficient and rebolish kind of ways, World, Topaz, Red. I started development of World before Rebol was open source. I don't know if this is the case for Topaz and Red too.
On open source, I see benefit in open source, if things needs to be fixed. I don't always see benefit in open source, when new stuff is being developed. You run into the too many cooks problem. I see huge bloat open source projects all over the place. I am being presented them at university, and I run away in horror. They sucks!
New development should be done by one or very few people, if you want somethings really good out of it. That is my view, and I think, it is true in general. But you can probably find projects, where this is not the case.
I hope, Red succeed. I hope, Topaz succeed (it maybe already did, I haven't followed it). I hope, R3 succeed. I hope, Carl succeed with R4. I will do, what I can to get a success out of the World Programming Language.
There are many old-kind-of-languages out there, and we need new modern next-step future-proof rebolish kind of languages!
Not one such language, but several.
Rebolek
So Carl asks "why are people moving forward with Red as oposed to building on Rebol 3?" and then he mentions that he is working on Rebol 4. In private, not using the public open repo. I guess he answered his own question.
Arnold
Red also started before R3 was open sourced.
I agree with you John that it would have been easier to fix things in R2 then create them in R3. Facts are R2 is closed source and investors interests prohibit open sourcing that. R3 development had already started also as closed source from RT. Carl has managed to free this source from investors interest and could give this source out. But then asking why there is no development is asking for the sake of asking. Nobody was maintaining its source!
Geomol
About succeeding, we already have had success in many situations with these languages (and some crash and burns). I am using the World language every day to do things, I couldn't do with any other language, i know of, in such a short time.
And I use Rebol often, e.g. to produce LaTeX documents using NicomDoc 2, I developed in R2:
http://www.fys.ku.dk/~niclasen/nicomdoc/
Other students at university can't understand, how I can produce LaTeX documents so fast. They have never seen anything like it.
And I have great success these days and weeks developing software in World to produce HW accelerated graphics and 24-bit/96kHz audio. I have waited almost 30 years, since I got my Amiga500, to be able to do the things, I do now. I can thank Carl for showing the way to efficient languages. I use AGG graphics from DRAW in R2 to create the GUI, and it looks very nice. A bit annoying, that I have to go to my Windows PC to have R2 produce the text, as DRAW doesn't work well with fonts under OS X, but it is doable.
We should remember all the good things, and then keep on going to make things even better.
Geomol
(I should say, that the gfx and audio, I'm doing, is in a combination of World and C code, but World working as the scripting part makes the whole thing so much easier. My experiences with this can lead to further development of World.)

Last message posted 161 weeks ago.