World: r3wp

well, if you are totally depending on those, you should probably 
stick to R2 for now and try out R3 for simpler scripts and wait for 
similar solutions to be ported to R3.

Henrik - re VID - currently simple apps, because of incomplete style-set, 
no? But foundation is stronger than VID2, isn't it?

Ok, so there has to be a plan to keep mainstream app building with 
forward momentum while building up R3.  imho.  So doesn't that mean 
wrapping at least a production release of 2.7.6?

pekr, yep, incomplete style set. a few issues to be worked out with 
the layout model, bugs here and there and optimization.

brian, I think 2.7.6 is a good idea. It currently requires that someone 
clones Carl, so he can finish 2.7.6. :-)

Part of my involvement over the last few months has been rebol.org, 
and I plan on being one of the grunts getting it R3 ready, but consulting 
work will still need to be a viable option for rebols until R3 can 
be taken to say an Insurance Company or small business, no?  Or is 
R3 going to hit the ground running so fast that it can be taken to 
an Executive sooner than later?

driver developers will be essential.
Why? I thought, REBOL had a minimum interaction with host OS.

Geomol, OpenGL, DirectX.... maybe? :-)

Skip DirectX, use OpenGL and implement it using GLUT. It works the 
same on all platforms.

No I think that RT will try and have a minimal interaction with host 
OS...that's what I took from the DevCon talks.

btiffin - I would not depreciate r3. Remember - when r2 came, it 
was better than r1 even in beta state. It will not probably happen 
with r3, but otoh r3 provides you with many more capabilities, e.g. 
threading ....

I can live without 2D hardware acceleration, I guess. But if there 
is a standard way of having it across platforms, it could be a good 
idea.

Geomol, that's the beauty of R3: We don't have to skip DirectX, since 
a developer can make that interface if he/she wants to.

Geomol - I jus hope rebcode is there, with refinements guys outlined 
... it should help too ...

Geomol, but I agree for the first round, OpenGL is more important.

I'm all for porting, but not if wating for key features means delaying 
work for "normal" folk.  I'm at a point where some of the bosses 
are actually getting pretty good at R2 data types.  :)

And I'm just starting to get people here involved with GNU/Linux...so 
I'm banking on that R3 release not being too far behind.  :)

Pekr;  Re r1 to r2.  I was a dropout from the computer biz from 1999 
till about January this year, so I was watching from a purely curiosity 
perspective, no vested interest.  Now the interest is much higher 
and far more vested.  :)  In that regard I'm still new.

Henrik, it's good, that R3 is open in a way, that it's possible to 
interface all kinds of systems. But I wouldn't recommend interface 
too deep into anything, that is tied to a certain platform, like 
DirectX is. We should find good cross-platform standards and interface 
with those from REBOL, so all REBOL software can run on anything.

Geomol - each coin has its two sides. Maybe there are some Windows 
only developers. From their POV, there is simply DirectX available 
on each PC, so no special need to install one. In the case of GLUT, 
they will have to either install it separately (I don't know anything 
about it, so maybe it is just few libraries), or simply pack with 
their app ...

Afaik, OpenGL is on Windows. I'm not sure, if GLUT is or it is linked 
with app.

My point is, it's good that REBOL is open for interfaces. I just 
wouldn't recommend interfacing with DirectX. That's it.

Like I wouldn't recommend interfacing with e.g. the Velocity Engine 
on Macs, because it's tied to Mac OS and the Altivec technology found 
in G4 and G5 processors.
REBOL is about cross-platform also. Write-once-run-everywhere.

OTOH - why not to optimise to what is native on all platforms? Under 
the hood, so that the programmer does not need to care? Well, app 
performance would probably vary between the platforms, but ....

Geomol, I think you mean that _RT_ should not focus on DirectX. :-) 
I don't see anything wrong with a 3rd party developer doing work 
on interfacing DirectX.

I would like to first see new View with rich-text, VID, ability to 
embed externall windows (e.g. video player, etc.), decent sound, 
really good VID, tools like screen painter, debugger, cross platform 
rebgui to give initial boost to apps, and then further fine-tuning 
using DirectX or View plug-ins (access to buffers etc.)

Yeah, something like that. If you interface to something special 
found only on one certain platform, your software will only run there. 
If you support many such technologies on many different platforms, 
you end up having huge problems supporting new versions. Trick is 
to find the right things to interface with. Carefull selection! But 
of cource some specialized developer can interface with such things 
for some special software only to be run on that single platform.

cross platform rebcode
 in my above text ...

Yes, rebcode everywhere solve many performance issues! I agree!

I think that we need few tweaks to it. BrianH and one other guy had 
some nice suggestions. Adding few instructions would allow emulation 
of some old machines :-) Porting some nice simple games could be 
easier :-)

Galaga already looked promissing :-)

And we are waiting for RPaint as well :-)

Look a our situation with truetype fonts in DRAW. It's one single 
little issue in one corver of REBOL, yet we don't have it on all 
platforms, even if there is truetype fonts on all platforms. Imagine 
the situation, if we had many such things with all different areas 
of REBOL. So not only RT should choose carefully, also us developers 
who would like our software to run everywhere.

corver = corner

that might be valid point ....

I am curious if r3 will be usable on smaller devices :-)

About OpenGL: On this Windows 2000 machine, I have access to, I see 
"OPENGL32.DLL" and "glu32.dll" under /c/winnt/system32/

It might be necessary to install GLUT on Windows. See http://www.xmission.com/~nate/glut.html

and that is something I refuse to use, if it needs isntall, and can't 
be automated with my app install, or just by running some script 
...

if I can copy that somewhere and register it to registry (if needed) 
via some script, then I am ok ....

I think, you just have to include the glut dll with your app install. 
It's only a file to be copied.

Geomol why do you think that opengl access should be done with GLUT?

what is glut? Some kind of wrapper?

Rebolek - maybe because it is available for most platforms?

so is OpenGL, I just do not understand why we should need some wrapper

GLUT have many things, we lack currently in REBOL, like key-up events. 
Also some window-handling, mouse-handling, etc. I just suggest GLUT 
as a shortcut to have these things. In the final version, when all 
that C code is found for all platforms, GLUT can be droppen again.

GLUT is just some extra functions, that have same kind of interface 
as OpenGL OpenGL is just only basic graphics, where GLU and GLUT 
add things, that is used in e.g. games ... or in REBOL.

A list of all the functions is found here: http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net/documentation/manual/index.xml
Scroll down to see the GLUT functions.

GLUT also add joystick support to some degree across platforms, so 
for e.g. game writers, GLUT is a good library to use.

OK, thanks for info