World: r3wp

Is something even better available?

There is only event/control and event/shift,   nothing to detect 
Alt key.

Tab and Shift+Tab  can be trapped by Rebol.  But Ctrl+Tab cannot 
be caught by Rebol because Windows consumes this key event before 
it is sent to the application window (eg. Rebol's window).

wasn't there the Alt support in a prior version.  I am almost shure 
I used to support it in an old app of mine...

nope

but it can be surelly overriden, or can't it?

events are a datatype not objects, you cannot set any values in them.

which is why Anton reversed enginerred the do-face mechanism... but 
in any case, the events are generated by the internal REBOL HAL which 
accepts some (but not all) OS events and feeds the event port with 
them.

it has been a long standing request that more OS events been sent 
to scripts...

and that was my point. It could accept even ctrl+tab, as that is 
trappable. But, I remember how Holger argued with me about cross-platform 
issues ....

as long as Cyphre is on View part of R3, I believe the situation 
will be corrected :-)

ahh cross platform is a moot point for many of us. really... the 
fact that REBOL runs on all platforms is very good.

the fact that OUR apps run on all apps is not needed in many/most 
cases

especialy in corp env.  and in any case, we will adapt our apps to 
use any os features REBOL gives us :-)

that's the point for a user to use Apple or windows... why strip 
their power from them.?

example... why no OS icon drag support in apple and window.

Rebol gives you all the OS features you can digest... via the External 
Library Interface.

yes, just like following 3 years of mechanics will allow me to change 
my pistons in my car myself... the question. is... do I want to? 
 when the whole platform is the one taking away those events!  for 
compatibilitie's sake?

and even then... that means I have to try and make it work for apple... 
hum.. I dont' own one, how can I make it work.

(sorry if I sound negative here, its not against you... I'm just 
a bit tired these days...)

You just gotta relax and focus a bit.

hehe

but Anton, is it really possible to add icon drag events in a rebol 
window?  how will I receive my events within the wake-event?  AFAICT... 
its not dooable.

You mean from the OS ? Yes, it is, I far as I remember.

http://www.rebol.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/rebol/view-script.r?script=sys-port-drag-accept.r

The above works for Windows.

the whole platform is the one taking away those events!

  -- that's kind of saying it the other way around. The platform (rebol) 
  has not provided us with an OS-independant way of trapping drag events, 
  yet.

You could express everything that you want but do not have as something 
"taken away" from you. That's the "glass half-empty" way of looking 
at things. Are you a programmer or not ? If you want something, just 
make it !  If it's hard, work hard !  The whole art of programming 
is to make something previously difficult, easy.

I don' t have the time to take a week getting my hands in MS window's 
dev stuff just to implement icon support. (for one platform)  That's 
one feature out of SOOOOOOO many.  I am happy if you have the time 
to implement such tricks.  But then only some of the hard core will 
benefit.. since OS-lib interface is not free!


We need a second, (and compatible) lower-level API  (like amiga has 
vanilla and direct).  then its just up to RT to provide a switch 
case of all supported features it can take from a host OS.  and let 
us pick out of that.


I use REBOL cause its more productive.  I want to stay in REBOL. 
 and I just wish VIEW where less limiting.

VIEW is the one deciding for me what is usefull or not... yes it 
takes a raw freedom away from me.  It is deciding in my place what 
events IT listens to.  There are ways for it to allow us to decide. 
 and this would allow us to take advantage of some OS features.


I remember reading a chat between Jaime and Carl where they where 
talking about OSX events and stuff...  basically they where looking 
at WHAT events to handle and in what apis... so what I (and sooo 
many others have asked) is possible.

I agree with Maxim - I don't want Rebol to contain just and only 
features, available on all platforms ...

I know it can be problematic, I do remember some hot discussions 
with Holger about e.g. why some key events are not trapped by REBOL. 
What do we do, if e.g. Mac keyboard does not support Alt, or Win-Keys? 
:-)

Holger was pretty anal about making REBOL the next christ... I love 
everyone... but we ended up with Rael.  ;-)

who loves everyone (with certain peculiar attributes l wont name 
here  ;-)

its funny, cause I have a list of rants I never send out about REBOL. 
 I just accumulated them and see how over the years... they are similar. 
 Things in REBOL have not changed a lot.  R3 is the first really 
profound change since v1.2 core.  and its very welcome IMHO.

(When I mean change, I mean for users... not internals which we don't 
really have to cope with)

Ah for heaven's sakes !  How can you see things that way ? You just 
want something badly and you can't get it easily. You are willing 
to erode the cross-platform nature of rebol, which would inevitably 
waste other people's time. Yes, it's a rant.

Is there some easy way to change font globally? Something like:
>> set-global-sans-font "Segoe UI" ;I need this function
>> desktop ;everything is in Segoe instead of Arial

So here's Cyphre's sollution:

change-vid-font: func [font-name [string!]][

 system/standard/face/font/name: system/view/vid/vid-face/font/name: 
 font-name
	foreach [n f] system/view/vid/vid-styles [
		all [f/font f/font/name: font-name]
	]
]

hehe Anton, I like heated discussion like this... it brings out the 
passion in each of us  :-)

there are two modes of development IMHO:


- making wonderfull scripts and tools for the whole words to use 
and enjoy, here yes multiplatform is cool and such tools will obviously 
only use the most available options... hey apple doesn't have alt-down... 
does that keep anyone here from providing extra functionality for 
it?


- having a client breath down you neck telling you that a specific 
feature is needed, and you replying that adding such a simple thing 
(in REBOL) will tripple the cost of the project, cause you will have 
to go out of the box and try to hack something in, in which case 
in REBOL, its worse/more buggy than implementing it in C directly.

I only wish, and I'm surprised you are not appreciative of, the fact 
of allowing REBOL view give me more of what its already doing.  it 
wont add anything substantial to interpreter in file size, wont remove 
any features, won't even affect current VID objects, as they already 
handle the most basic event types.  But at least, I will be able 
to cater more precisely to client's needs without it removing the 
core reason I would propose REBOL for a client in the first place... 
cause I can just do it.


an example, in many apps, having the middle mouse button would have 
been very usefull (especially in my field, where all computers have 
3 buttons), and sorry, but having to try and hack such a thing in? 
 I don't even know where to start, how do I then reverse hack such 
a thing so that it gets into view cleanly?  how will a word be assigned 
in the event/type correctly?  and then linux... my god, do I have 
to understand the whole X,  just to figure out how to add a middle 
 mouse buttons?

there's only one button on Mac mouse IIRC, so how is it that REBOL 
supports right mouse click?  :)

I'm not asking RT to change anything, only prevent it from filtering 
out events , we really could use.  Especially when coding for clients 
and for which multiplatformness is Irrelevant.  I'd say that so far, 
business wise, its been about 90% don't care for my clients.  They 
use windows, or linux, or mac. but rarelly more than one!

hehe

I've been told that holding down the button triggers a right-click 
style event in macs, poping up a contextual menu, but I wonder if 
that is set to REBOL view as the alt-down?

there are three button mice, but they are seldom used by non-3d artists. 
 in 3d XYZ,  Scare RotateTranslate, camera Tilt -Orient-Pan  all 
map so cleanly to 3 buttons.

rebolek, Macs support as many mouse buttons as your mouse can handle, 
but right click operations are the same as command-click operations. 
Perhaps that could be mapped to alt-down.

If you use a mouse with more than one button on a Mac, you can check 
for it as in this example:

view layout [b: box "click" [b/text: "left" show b][b/text: "right" 
show b]]

There's a problem on Macs, if you only have one button, because event/control 
and event/shift isn't set, so you can't check for that in the engage 
function.

eek... that's not sexy.