World: r3wp

not sure where/how view looks for such library ...

Running View as a CGI can be a problem.
I don;t know any solutions to that.

switch to a windows host.  solves that.

ldd rebol-view-executable

 under Linux could tell you what libraries are needed. If that is 
 not much (e.g. one library being dependant upon other etc.), you 
 could try to upload those libraries to where your view executable 
 resides. The question is, what is Linux OS strategy to look for libraries 
 - current dir, some central libraries storage path, elsewhere ...?

configured library path (usually /lib/, /usr/lib/, etc), or the value 
of the env variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

(iirc)

When I tried it, View seemed to want to try to install itself, and 
errored out when it tried to show an installation window. Various 
combinations of command line options were no help. I didnt try using 
old versions of view, or tricking view into thinking its already 
installed.

Let me know if anyone figures this out.

I susoect View may be trying to pop-up an installation window......And 
so that appears on the server's console (if any). meanwhile, you 
wait at the end of an Internet connection unable to see anything.

Possible work-around: manually install whatever files View is trying 
to configure?

I found that in my case on Linux RebViev needs linux-gate.so.1!

I tried to google for "download linux-gate.so.1", but there was a 
lot of links for different things and it seems form me that it is 
included in some installation packgage.

Could some body help with this library  an is it worthwile (will 
RebView takes it from current dit)?

according to Gabriele, Linux might have some default library locations 
... but e.g. I run sqlite as dll, and I point rebol to load the library 
and it loads it from anywhere. The question is, if the same is right 
for executable dependant libraries

what about asking server admin to add the library for you? He just 
could unpack it for you from his distro CD/DVD to the location where 
it belongs ....

Ryan, are you sure that the -i or --noinstall command-line argument 
option does not help ?

or all these ? -csiw

petr, load/library is probably a bit different from what ldd does 
on startup. i suppose ldd wants current dir in the lib path to load 
libs from current dir (same issue as executing programs from current 
dir...)

I asked for mu web service provider to add linux-gate.so.1 to the 
server he did not aprove that he did (actualy I did not get any answer 
yet), but today I found that my test script:

 #!/var/www/cgi-bin/rebview -cs

REBOL [Title: "CGI Basics"]

print ["Content-type: text/html" newline]

print "Heloooooo!!!"

works differently - I am getting following response:

** Near: size-text self

You can check: http://www.jk.serveris.lv/cgi-bin/test

What could it mean?

first guess view may not work without X installed (does not on solaris) 
and there is no good reason to run X on a web server ... and then 
there are all those fiddley fonts

and if you do have X installed the cgi script is likely not run  
from a graphicly aware shell so there may be virtual frame buffers 
involved

It is on Linux!

Another story on Win:

Anybody noticed any differences in instalation of Rebol on MS IIS 
6.0 and IIS 5.0?

It looks like all things is the same but I am getting on my test.r 
 "The page cannot be found", while index shows that test.r is there.

Well - I found it: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=315122

And Rebol script works well when in Web Service Extensions you set 
as Allowed All Unknown CGI extensions.

But then you will get warning message, that it could be potential 
security threat - then the next question is from dummie:
Is it safe to install rebol in such way?

I haven't set up Rebol with IIS myself, but my immediate reaction 
is to ask another question: "How much do you believe Microsoft?" 
Of course Microsoft will lead those who are a little unsure to believe 
that alternate software is less secure.

Personaly I do not like M$ as it is monster. ;-)

But in my last and current work I am not responsible on which web 
server to chose and therefore neither for security of web server.

And I am trying to separate my  resposibility and SP responsibility, 
but of course there is cases when they overlaps.

I am just trying to find  as much as possible info about security 
of web servers and it does no matter if it is M$ or not .

My first installations was on IIS 5.0 in intranet - so I relied on 
firewall. The last case is in public internet. 

So I think if there are no possibility to upload danger cgi scripts 
or pass danger code to existing scripts, than from my side I did 
all.

Anton, do you have any idea about ** Near: size-text self  with Linux 
and rebview for cgi?

hmm, size-text - it does sound like a native. IMO it is wrapper for 
OS level function, returning pixel size of particular text .... could 
that be a problem of some missing os library?

I haven't used rebol much on linux, yet, but the error sounds suspiciously 
like the common mistake of running rebol without X running, as Tom 
said. The linux server you are uploading rebview to may very well 
*not* be running X.  If that is the case, you will have to settle 
with Rebol/Core only.  Do you really need View features ?  I know 
some people found that they missed some image manipulation functions 
from Rebol/View that are not available in Rebol/Core.

Do you have a linux box at home to play with ? You could try install 
Rebol/View on it without X running and see what error you get...

size-text: xwindows is client/server. the x-server , that is your 
local computer, which offers to aplications to display things to 
you. And it has some important informations locally, especially the 
fonts (and can cache images and such).

/view needs access to the fonts and so access to a running x-server. 
the x-libs are only an interface to connect to the server. (The xserver-libs 
could be used directly, but well, /view does not do that. Seems to 
be tricky.)
A incomplete sketch how to do it, with no attention to security:

So with /view you need a running x-server, one way to do that  headless 
is vnc.  Can also run on another machine. 

Then you need to tell  rebol where it is, there is an env-var $DISPLAY. 
Which must be set before rebol runs. Did not figure out how to configure 
that. Running a bash-script as cgi, set  $DISPLAY, call the real 
rebol-script should work. And there may be issues with authentification, 
x-windows does not like everyone to connect by default, or the other 
way around, its too easy to make it too open ("xhost + ip"). There 
are more secure ways, but looked more complicated and i never tried. 
All in all i would run such things on windows.

Sounds like I should to think about other solutions of human control 
and image resizing & texts on them.
It is a pitty.

Human control could be organized by just set of image files with 
some "kidnaping" fonts letters and some simple script in Core.

Image resizing (f.ex. when uploading) theoreticaly could be done 
with Core - but it seems too much work for me now, because I dont 
know yet how image files is built and those resizing algorithms.
And about text placing on uploaded images I can forget.
All things above could be done in View just fine.
:(

It was good idea, that I made first my private blog site on Linux. 
Despite Rebol runs on so many systems - running the same things on 
other systems should be checked before. Especialy if there are no 
expierence of work on that system.


BTW I found in the google the similar response was caused from uncomplete 
View instalation: http://demo.rebol.net/list/list-msgs/34071.html
But it looks that this is not the case.

why don't you use imagemagick with rebol ?

Because I don't know it.

And I whanted to use my blog site as demo for all those good things 
that could be done with Rebol.

But whell - as I undertood I can use it on Linux web server. Anyway 
thanks, Graham, I will check how can I use them.

It's looks like I first try to negotiate with SP - probably he could 
help.

So Graham, is ImageMagick working okay with you in Rebol? Which version 
did you finally use?

graham, and how fast is it?

I'm using the com+ server at present stil as I wasn't able to get 
your script to work.  When I have time, I'll try again.

Henrik, at present I am converting PDFs to JPG, and since it uses 
ghostscript as well, it is not that fast ... but I don't have too 
long a wait.

ah, so it's not useful for realtime stuff?

I'm missing a compact solution to make high quality thumbs. if only 
DRAW was up to the task...

imagemagick is very fast

just not for the things I'm doing with it.

it's not easy to bundle with an app, is it?

sure ...

just include the dlls you need

or, presumably, include the ole object, and register it when the 
program installs

although again, I could not get the ole object to work just by registering 
it with regsrvr

No time to figure this all out .. just ask users to install Imagemagick 
:)

well, it's a no go for me. everything has to be bundled into a single 
lightweight package. I think it's a little absurd having to blow 
up the app by a factor of 2-5 in size, just to get pretty thumbnail 
generation for it. I hope a future version of DRAW will allow better 
downscaling.

my app is less than 1 mb, and the installer is 40mb :)

Does anyone have any ideas about how to approach a web-based gui 
that allows users to upload multiple files at one time without having 
a series of  "inputs?" I'd like to have users do a ctrl select when 
they are browsing for multiple files to send. Thanks.

I'm doing multiple file uploads using flash8