World: r3wp

this allows you to remove the complexity of an API and integrate 
it within the normal flow of a language.

There are no object! accessors, to be sure, except for field setting 
and getting. It definitely makes sense to add them to object! types, 
but it doesn't make sense to add them to non-object types.

why not?

conceptually, in rebol all the types are private classes.  if we 
had access to the accessors of integer, we could fix/adapt the "out 
of bounds" conditions, for example.

I understand that this raises some points as to the loading part, 
but within an application this is not an issue, it does not change 
REBOL itself, it changes the application of a type within a specific 
use.

In the blog and here I was in favor of adding property accessors 
to object types (think get and set handlers). There was much debate 
as to whether such a concept would be added to REBOL 3 - I was in 
favor.


If what you want is general redefinition of the actions associated 
with a type, what you are really asking for is user-defined types, 
and those have already been promised for REBOL 3.

they still boil down to pretty much the same thing... they could 
simple be the same api.

IMHO.

Brian: trampoline actions: interesting idea.
For:
- simplifies some scripts
Against:
- may complicate/slow down the interpreter
- may make debugging harder in some cases

so, I am neither 100% for nor 100% against it

Maxin, I like that there are two models for types, with different 
semantics:

- Datatypes: Classes with polymorphic methods handled by dynamic 
dispatch.

- Objects: Unique objects with methods directly associated, where 
you can emulate class-based or delegation-based systems at your whim.

The advantage of having two models is that you can balance efficiency 
versus flexibility. The only disadvantages are that there is a fixed 
set of datatypes (to be fixed with user-defined types), and that 
the usage patterns for objects are somewhat limited (which would 
be fixed by the get/set handler proposal if implemented properly).

Ladislav, another to add to the For list:

- Lets programmers used to imperative programming code using algorithms 
they already know, rather than having to adopt a functional style.

That may be one for the Against list as well, depending on your attitude 
towards such things.

I think I meant to say that I hope the api, can be uniformitised... 
so we decide if we want instance or class based method.

As for complicating or slowing down the interpreter, I don't think 
that it will. The trampoline code would be contained in the actions 
associated with two datatypes, not in the interpreter at all. The 
interpreter would not need any changes.

Maxim, what does it matter if the API is uniform, as long as the 
syntax is similar? You can't make the API completely uniform when 
you are supporting different semantic models.

The speed of datatypes comes from the fixed action list. It allows 
the dispatch to be a simple retrieval from a fixed offset into a 
function table, no lookup required. It is not the same thing as general 
class-based methods, which in a language with dynamically typed variables 
would need to do a lookup to figure out where to find the method 
to call, same as with instance-based methods.

- Lets programmers used to imperative programming code using algorithms 
they already know

 - there is no algorithm you cannot use in REBOL even now, those are 
 mainly C idioms as far as I can tell?

I meant style I suppose, though even C is expression-based. The idioms 
would actually be more assembler-like than C-like, for 2-address 
instruction sets like x86. Still, this wouldn't add anything to the 
language that isn't there through other means, except speed. And 
while it wouldn't complicate the interpreter, it would complicate 
the semantics of REBOL, making it harder to explain, debug or reimplement.

agreed

http://www.rebol.com/priorities.htmlIn the green little box, there 
is an item called "Deci". What's that?

A new deci! datatype for storing floating point numbers in BCD (Binary 
Coded Decimal) format.

Tanks Anton.

=> Thanks

good news about the STACK function: http://www.rebol.net/cgi-bin/r3blog.r?view=0075

hah! A percent datatype as well. :-)

yes... singing with Queens... I want it all, I want it all,I want 
it all, and I want it now:]

Oldes, how spooky, I have a Queen song running in the background!

I agree Queen songs are spooky ;-)

:-) Good to be back!

Hi Peter, sadly, this isn't reddit. I so want to vote your comment 
up :-D

Minor Bitsets - http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0077.html

is it just me or is it obvious R3 is about giving us what we always 
asked for and need? so far, all I read is user requests coming to 
life.


If people think 100% open source is the universal panacea...  I think 
its time people looked at how REBOL is evolving.


I think R3 might be the middle ground which allows much of the "open" 
discussion to be irrelevant.  user types,  open  linking and compilation, 
 lexical allowance for unrecognised tokens, somehow, this seems like 
we will be able to mold (sorry for the pun) REBOL into what we need, 
finally, rather than molding what we do to what REBOL (the interpreter) 
wants  :-)

pekr, I think you're going to have to book a flight to paris... to 
much of what you and I have criticised about  for you not to show 
up.  ;-)

Make sure you comment on the relaxed lexical parsing.  I've been 
working around this one for a long time...but it may hold traps my 
giddy little mind is missing today.

I guess I'm getting annoying with all my comments  ;-)  this really 
is a subject I have been wishing for about 5 years and am constantly 
reminded how usefull extending lexical analysis would be.

Yep, agreed (not about the annoying part - keep them coming)  The 
comment from Norm caught my eye.  If REBOL can attract the attention 
of the academia...why we might get paid to be rebols.  :)

Maxim, I really like your load/extension way. It would be very useful.

Sorry to take so long to reply - I was sidetracked. I've put an alternate 
idea to relaxing the lexical rules on the comments. Take a look.

The idea is to add a LOAD directive to the PARSE string dialect. 
LOAD would treat the sequence of characters at the current position 
as a REBOL value, and then check it against a block-dialect rule. 
If it is not a valid REBOL value or if the check fails, the directive 
fails and triggers any appropriate backtracking. If you are not interested 
in checking the value, just use SKIP for the rule. If you want the 
value, use SET (or COPY perhaps?) before the LOAD to assign it to 
a word.

The problem with relaxing the lexical rules of the LOAD function 
is that REBOL can't handle natural language syntax, particularly 
punctuation. You would need to convert a word to a string to tell 
the similarity between "Hello" and "Hello,", at which point you are 
doing string parsing again, but slower.

It makes sense to be able to parse REBOL values in the middle of 
non-REBOL text, but not as much the other way around.

Nonetheless, I can see the advantage to having a comma! datatype 
that would be a syntactical noop, so you can put one anywhere in 
REBOL code and it would be ignored by the standard dialects. Then 
we can give these commas meaning in our own dialects, or ignore them 
too.

Why not parse/load ? Would it be possible to parse the code as it's 
loaded? if load fail, I know position in the string so I  could modify 
the string and continue.

load/next would be enough  as proposed by Carl iirc

load/next is already available

But I'm not sure if proposed load/relaxed can help me. It's one more 
pass for me. 1. load, 2. check for invalid types, 3. parse

and I don't  want much, I want just << to be loadable in my dialect.

brian I like your idea VERY much.

I just posted a second vote with an example of how brian's idea actually 
is exactly like the load/extension.

Keep going guys.  This feature is going to rock if it gets implemented...in 
any form.  But I'm leaning towards Carl's original load/relax (load/lazy) 
:) with an invalid? or nonsense? test.  Mainly because my brain hurts 
thinking about parse too deeply.