World: r3wp

It would be nice if we ask users to present examples etc in a structured 
format so that we can data mine the information here and publish 
automatically to a knowledgebase.

There's a REBOL 2 section in DocBase for just that kind of thing 
:)

So, I take it you have updated the information on array ?

Just trying to avoid duplication of effort ... if we structure the 
post here, it could be automatically be used to update somewhere 
else.

Nope, but it's on my list. I think a new R2 manual built on the same 
foundation as the R3 manual would be nice too.

Of course from history we know this will never happen.

can't we parse the archives we some clever algorithm to have it done 
?

*not we, with

graham, don't you see some changes in the REBOL spectrum in the last 
months?

Years ago I released a program that collected all the mailing list 
into a personal database .. and I allowed users to execute programs 
in the emails if they were enclosed in blocks .. an old Rebol trick.

Ah Maxim, i'm sure you can do that with your liquid

I mean, come on... pekr hasn't been negative, for like... months... 
that has to mean something   ;-D

No one ever posted their short scripts enclosed by blocks :(

(your program, not your body fluid)

< present examples etc in a structured format >
There is the underused checklists /code snippets

so, such a simple thing as [ my script ] was not possible.  No wonder 
people go off topic :)

Or off the list altogether.

Human nature ...

We can create rules to try and rein in the anarchists

How about putting a Rebol [] header in front of examples?  then a 
parser would at least know to start from there .. until it hit some 
syntax error and would then know the example had terminated.

It also makes it easier to copy-run the examples. If you have a rebol 
[] header in front of your code, you can copy it and do clipboard://

Clipboard is bugged in Altme.

yes it is !

but once it starts working, it doesn't bug anymore... which is what 
I find strange about it.

not for me .. once it stops .. it maintains this state.

I have been teasing my script into action and not asked any questions 
for hours... now I am off to bed.

It would be simple to add the ability to execute a script embedded 
in the REBOL.org archive of this world, eg:
do http://www.rebol.org/aga-execute-post.r?post=r3wp174x26

Provided the post (like the one in the example) consists solely of 
script. Headers can be added if needed.

Is this a common need?

As a noob I am more likely to want to copy the script into my editor, 
then modify it a bit to see if I have understood the example.

Just running an example would be handy to check it had no errors 
in it, but not very educational as far as I can see.


As the web public version of the chats is not right up to date I 
would find improving the AltME client the most usefull thing to help 
me learn. Paticularly fixing the cut & paste functions & adding mouseless 
navigation & perhaps the ability to use fixed width font to view 
code in messages.  Thanks,

And the ability to edit previous messages to correct errors.

I get a 404 on that link at rebol.org

I think it was potential idea.

because the clipboard is problematic .. I think it's a good idea.

Something I have learnt today...

I have been looking again at some of the examples I have been given 
here & now I have a bit more understanding of Rebol I am able to 
reformat the examples into multiple lines and indent them appropiatly 
which makes them more understandable for a noob like me. I needed 
enough understanding to see where one complete statement part ended 
& the next one began before I could do this. What I have learnt is 
that I should have tried harder, sooner to do this & it would have 
speeded up my learning...


I am looking at graphics today & giving parse a break for the rest 
of the weekend.

Is there a document that describes each feature in view and all the 
options etch please?  e.g. for slider

So far I can find tutorials that mention some aspects of slider, 
but nothing complete.

etch=etc.

First, there needs to be a distinction between VID and View. View 
is the basic display engine, faces, feel. (lower level). VID is the 
layout dialect, styles, etc. (higher level)

With that in mind:

http://www.rebol.com/docs/view-system.html

so slider is part of VID?

yes and no. it's a VID face, which is a more complicated version 
of a face. You would typically lay it out with VID and you would 
use and manipulate it with View functions.

ok

You could create and manage a layout with View alone, but it would 
be a lot harder, since you have to specify faces manually. That's 
why VID was created.

? face

will show you a basic face.

? system/view/vid/vid-face

will show you a VID face.

I have not quite understood what a face is yet.

I quite like learning by going through command descriptions, but 
it seems tricky to find them with Rebol.

Perhaps I should try & write the ones I need in the Wiki?  It seems 
strange that slider is not documented anywhere.

Then there is also DRAW, which is another engine used in conjunction 
with View. In REBOL 2 it works as a slap-on solution to more complex 
drawing with anti-aliasing, etc. It also has a separate font rendering 
engine, but DRAW is close to useless for layout. It's best for pretty 
drawings, that do very little.


REBOL 2 generally suffers here with multiple overlapping solutions 
for slightly different purposes, so it can be a bit confusing. View 
and VID is probably the most hacked part of REBOL.


In REBOL 3, DRAW is the only engine combined with the concept of 
GOBs: Light weight graphical objects. There are now 3 wholly separate 
parts and that concept is much less confusing.

VID (and slider) is not very well documented.

If you do:

? face


you'll see that a face is a simple object. If you do something like:

f: make face []

view f


It'll display a gray area in the upper left corner of your screen. 
View simply takes that object and converts it into graphics.

With the above example, you are using View alone without VID.

That's about as fundamental you can get. Now, a more complex layout 
consists of many faces and this works by grouping them in a tree 
of objects.


In the FACE object, there is an entry called PARENT-FACE, which is 
how faces are grouped together in a tree. PARENT-FACE can be another 
face object or a block of face objects.


This is fundamentally how a typical View layout works, and you can 
build a layout like this by hand, by creating each face, setting 
position and size, color, text, etc. for each face, and put them 
together in a tree and display them with View.

I see the grey square...  and I probed f too to see how the object 
is made..

I'm sure you can now figure out, that if you did something like:

f: make face [offset: 100x100 size: 200x200]

You can figure out what happens. :-)