World: r3wp

Such projects might be a good testbed for some new or different ideas, 
but I am carefull in becoming too excited about them. What is the 
purpose of "clone", e.g. Orca, which has something like 50% of natives 
available only? Other thing is the project potential - dunno why 
- maybe because we trusted in RT, or because our community was too 
small, there was not much of a progress with any clone we ever heard 
about. Unless that changes, I want finished R3, because that is right 
now the shortest path to having "new powerfull REBOL" ....

Sure, we all want that, but that's quite different from anything 
else being crap if it doesn't match R3 to the last bit

Nick, I think R# and ORCA also had Windows binaries many years ago

Graham, I'm not using Boron yet, but as you know, some of the Syllable 
system tools are written in ORCA. I'll port them to Boron when I 
get to it

Kaj, do you have a Windows binary of Orca available?

I'm sure there would be an an enormous learning curve for me, but 
I'm really tempted to spend some time digging into this source...

There was also a REBOL clone on .NET that some french group started, 
don't remember the name.

Just wondering what you can do with a clone that has no ports ... 
can it read and write files?  Do cgi ?

Graham - you are requesting too advanced functionality? :-)

Why? You're in luck: Boron just got ports

Nick, there's not much point in digging into the ORCA source. It's 
superceded by Boron

Of course, ORCA has been able to read and write files for years, 
and that's what I use in Syllable. And when it can do that, or just 
print to standard output, you can also do CGI with it

How is Boron different than ORCA?  Are you working on it?

Can I use it for CGI now?

There's no 'system, let alone system/options/cgi.  Is there any method 
for retrieving GET or POST data?  I'd work agressively at implementing 
some useful web site applications with Boron if there was even rudimentary 
CGI support.

Boron is not my project

Oh - I thought it was.

I guess it's Karl?  Is there a way to contact him?

ORCA was quite REBOL compatible. There was an intermediate project 
Thune that was much more Forth like and not compatible. Boron has 
prefix syntax again but is less compatible than ORCA

Yes, it's Karl, and he has a mail address and mailing list at SourceForge

Thanks :)

There has been a continuous line of development over about half a 
decade from ORCA via Thune (and Rune) to Boron. Boron is the newest 
and the only current project

Not much is needed for CGI, so I'd guess it's possible. ORCA had 
a getenv function to get the environment variables and so does Boron, 
I guess

I don't know about getting standard input

CGI is not the kind of stuff Karl does, so it may be missing. They're 
just small things to add, though

As it stands, Boron seems reasonably capable of processing strings 
and lists - I could certainly have a go at writing some useful stuff 
if CGI were possible.  I'll send Karl an email...

Right  now I'm very excited to be playing with a working open source 
REBOL implementation in Windows :) I wonder what dependencies it 
has, and if it can be compiled to run on Windows Phone or any other 
potentially useful operating systems.  Even just for simple file 
managment and text processing, it would be really cool to see this 
running somewhere where real REBOL isn't currently available.  And 
since it's open source, there's potential to expand it's capabilities.

Porting it to other platforms shouldn't be hard. I just compiled 
it on Syllable and that was it

ORCA only optionally depended on LibBZip2. I don't think Boron even 
needs that yet

Oh, it does need CMake to compile. That's the most tricky part

Here's the recipe from my build system:

http://syllable.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/syllable/syllable/system/apps/utils/Builder/packages/Boron--current/Boron--current.recipe?view=markup

Thanks!

Don't mind the patch directive; that's left over from ORCA

I want to try to compile ORCA for Windows too - I tried briefly once 
in the past, but ran into problems and didn't have time to play with 
it.

Look like it needs files from  http://wsrebol.sourceforge.net/- 
 currently a 404 error.

That would be M2. You can also get that included in my source package 
in the Syllable downloads

Cool, thanks :)  I'm NOT looking forward to re-installing Visual 
C++.  I wonder if Dev-C++ or Digital Mars would work...

DevC++ is using GCC, isn't it? That should work

Yep (and there's a devpak for the BZip2 library :)

I had a quick look at Boron and at second look I got the impression 
that it can be a real alternative, if  R3 does not move faster.

Nick, any luck?

Boron just got the choice between compiling COMPRESS with ZLib or 
BZip2

unfortunately only for the m2-based build, it seems. cmake-based 
build is currently broken

(easy enough fix: http://gitorious.org/~earl/boron/earl-boron/commit/73e33bd.diff)

Prevx has decided Boron.exe is medium risk malware :(

too easy...

I've been communicating with Karl about getting Boron CGI working, 
so I'm sticking with Boron for now :)

I assume you also nead POST handling :) ?

need*